Culture and the Economies of POW Camps

Embedded Behind Barbed Wire: Culture and the Economies of POW Camps

Benjamin Manning

A dissertation submitted for the fulfilment of the

requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

School of Social Science and International Studies

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW Australia

2011

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Manning

First name: Benjamin Other name/s: David

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: Social Science and International Studies Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences

Title: Embedded Behind Barbed Wire: Culture and the Economies of POW Camps

Abstract

This thesis draws on a ‘natural experiment’ to examine the role of culture in economic activity. When Australian, British and American troops were held as prisoners of war by Japan during the Second World War, their survival depended to a large extent on their own economic organisation. Despite extreme deprivation, the camps were places of vibrant economic activity, which included not only trade, but also redistribution and reciprocity. Camp economies typically included welfare schemes alongside manufacturing and services. By viewing these camps as quasi ‘natural experimental’ sites, they provide an unusual opportunity for the study of economies which are small and contained enough to be thoroughly studied, but which are also real economies upon which survival depended. Furthermore, because the prisoners were usually separated by nationality, the camps also offer the opportunity for comparative analysis.

Whereas an individualistic approach, such as that dominant in mainstream economics, might expect to find either uniformity or randomness as individuals go about pursuing their own objectives in this unusual situation, the empirical record shows that there are instead clear patterns of behaviour. Repeatedly, across hundreds of camps and over three years of captivity, in similar conditions each national group organised and conducted their economic activity differently. There is consistent variability between national groups and consistency within them. Using Karl Polanyi’s analytical framework of embeddedness, the thesis demonstrates that even though the cultures of each national group are quite similar and closely related, the instituted processes of the economies of each national group are dominated by a different form of integration. This thesis, then, provides rare quasi-experimental evidence of the structuring force of culture in economy.

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Originality Statement

‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’

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‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.’

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Acknowledgements

Completing this thesis has been a long and difficult journey, but I had a lot of help along the way. First and foremost were my three supervisors. Jocelyn Pixley was my primary supervisor originally, and I couldn’t have asked for a more dedicated one. Her support and encouragement began with convincing me to apply for doctoral study and continues still. When Joc left UNSW, Michael Pusey kindly agreed to come out of retirement and stepped in to take over. He was instrumental in getting the dissertation written. As Sondheim put it, ‘A vision’s just a vision if it’s all inside your head/ If no-one gets to see it it’s as good as dead/ It has to come to light/ Bit by bit/ Putting it together’. Michael was the taskmaster that I had asked him to be, but he was also the psychologist and the promoter, endlessly enthusiastic and encouraging. Throughout the whole period there was Maria Márkus, originally in a co-supervision role with Joc, and then as joint supervisor with Michael. Maria’s contribution is immeasurable. I don’t know what this dissertation would have been like without her formidable intelligence, erudition, insightfulness, and incredible memory. As the last PhD student for all of them (at least at UNSW), I was very fortunate to have had the opportunity to benefit from their experience and expertise.

As a sociologist who found himself conducting primary historical research I would have been quite lost in the archives (if I could even have found the archives) were it not for the generous assistance of several historians and archivists. Gavan Daws was tremendously generous with his time, his expertise, and his interest. He directed me to very rich sources that I would never have found, the US Army Military History Institute (USAMHI) and the library of University of North Texas, both of which were very important. Gregory Urwin was helpful too. He not only provided me with some of his own unpublished work, but also put me on to Gavan Daws and introduced me to Michael Lynch at USAMHI, who was a very welcoming fellow PhD student. Michael in turn introduced me to his colleague Rich Baker, who was really incredibly hospitable, driving me to and from the archives every day, introducing me to his family and taking me sightseeing, and even having me stay at his home. Brian Pennington of Children and Families of Far East Prisoners of War very helpfully arranged for me to interview former POWs in England. I owe those (anonymous) former POWs a great debt. The interviews were demanding and tiring for them, and they were very generous with their time and in sharing their experiences with me.

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I benefitted from the institutional support offered by UNSW, the Faculty of Arts and the School of Sociology and its successor the Social Science and International Studies. Rogee Pe-Pua as Head of School was very supportive, as was Stephen Fortescue as Associate Dean (Research). I benefitted greatly from the funding available that provided the opportunity to conduct research overseas and to participate in international conferences. The PhD seminars organised by Maria Márkus during the first couple of years of my candidacy were very stimulating and helpful in my development as a sociologist. I would also like to thank the International Sociological Association and particularly Bert Klandermans (VU, Amsterdam) and Izabela Barlinska (ISA), for the opportunity to participate in the ISA’s methods lab for PhD students, which was a very valuable opportunity from which I am still benefitting.

Colleagues in the faculty, both staff and students, provided an intellectually stimulating and supportive environment that contributed to the development of my ideas, particularly Clive Kessler, Paul Jones, Mira Crouch, Sarah Maddison, Michael Johnson, Norbert Ebert, Harry Blatterer, Benedict Taylor, Jared van Duinen, Peter Balint, Sean Hosking, Declan Kuch, Ben Mudaliar, Demelza Marlin, Dinah Borinski, Diana Tahhan, Shannon McDermott, Carol Sullivan, Nathan and Jenny Wise, plus Shaun Wilson, Eliza Muldoon and Kumiko Kawashima (formerly of this parish).

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Table of Contents

Front Matter Thesis/Dissertation Sheet ...... iii Originality, Copyright and Authenticity Statements...... v Acknowledgements...... vii List of Tables and Figures...... xi Abstract ...... xiii

Chapter 1 POW Camps as Social Experiments ...... 1 Introduction...... 1 Inspiration for the thesis ...... 2 Camps as social experiments...... 5 Radford’s ‘Economic Organisation of a POW Camp’ ...... 8 The Particular Conditions of the Japanese Camps ...... 11 The Comparative Element...... 13 Notes on Methods and Data...... 14 The Question and the Argument ...... 20

Chapter 2 Theoretical Considerations: Polanyian Embeddedness...... 23 Introduction...... 23 Comparative Approaches to Culture and Economy ...... 24 The ‘New Economic Sociology’ ...... 26 The substantive definition of ‘economy’ ...... 33 Polanyi’s typology...... 36 Integration ...... 41 Embeddedness and Disembeddedness...... 44 Conclusion...... 52

Chapter 3 The Context of Captivity: Background to Empirical Material .... 53 Introduction...... 53 Japanese and Western Norms of POW Treatment ...... 53 The Historical Development of Western Norms ...... 53 International Law on the Treatment of POWs ...... 59 The Japanese Attitude toward Prisoners...... 63 Japan’s Position on the Conventions ...... 65 Individual Variation ...... 67 Prelude to War ...... 69 Japan Attacks...... 71 Allied Defeat in Singapore, Malaya and Dutch East Indies ...... 71 Americans in the Philippines ...... 72 Background ...... 72 Attack, Invasion and Surrender ...... 73

The Fall of Bataan ...... 73 The Fall of Corregidor ...... 75 The Scale of Captivity...... 76 Overview of the Camp and Conditions ...... 80 Changi ...... 80 The Burma – Thailand Railway ...... 82 Prominent Camps in the Philippines ...... 86 The economic conditions of captivity...... 88 Basic POW Camp Organisational Structure...... 93 Conclusion...... 94

Chapter 4 Symmetry and Centricity: Australian and British Camps...... 95 Introduction...... 95 Organisation and Leadership ...... 96 Changi ...... 98 The Railway...... 100 Centralised Redistribution — Rations and Stores ...... 103 Collective Production...... 108 Wages and Welfare — the Distribution of Money ...... 112 Exchange ...... 114 Status and Stratification ...... 118 Theft ...... 120 Reciprocity and Symmetry...... 122 Conclusion...... 129

Chapter 5 Every Man for Himself: The Americans in the Philippines ...... 131 Introduction...... 131 A Traumatic Beginning: The Death March and Camp O’Donnell ...... 131 Beginning Captivity: The Death March...... 132 Camp O’Donnell ...... 136 Organisation and Leadership ...... 146 Distribution and Redistribution...... 153 Exchange...... 158 The Buddy System ...... 164 Interim Conclusion...... 167 Hellships: Leaving the Philippines ...... 169

Chapter 6 Rice Now for Rice and Soup Tomorrow: Hard Trading in Japan ...... 175 Introduction...... 175 Background ...... 177 Economic Conditions...... 180 Scrounging on the Docks and in the Factories...... 181

Exchange ...... 182 Levels of Exchange ...... 183 Equivalency ...... 184 Exchange Integration ...... 186 Non-Integrative Exchange...... 187 Hard Trading: Rice as a Futures Commodities Market ...... 188 Bankruptcy ...... 190 Corruption...... 192 Comparisons ...... 196 Conclusion...... 209

Chapter 7 POW Camp Economies as Instituted Processes...... 211

Glossary of Terms ...... ccxvii

References ...... 219

List of Figures

Figure 1. Schematic map of the forms of integration...... 37 Figure 2. Flow of basic rations...... 107 Figure 3. The distribution of pay ...... 113 Figure 4. Monthly pay rates for armies of United States, Great Britain and Australia in 1940...... 204

List of Tables

Table 1. Mortality totals on the Burma-Thai Railway ...... 85 Table 2. Workforce and mortality rates calculated by Leffelarr & Van Witsen...... 85 Table 3. POW mortality rates in all Japanese camps...... 92 Table 4. Relative rankings of three English-speaking countries according to certain pattern variables (ranking according to the first term in the polarity)...... 207

Abstract

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Introduction The relationship between culture and economy was central to the project of sociology from its inception and remains so today. One aspect of that broader question has been the observation that there are differences in economic organisation, economic norms, and economic outcomes between societies, even broadly similar societies. This research makes an original contribution to that project of exploring the relationship between economy and culture by drawing on the rare empirical evidence presented by a ‘natural experiment’, or ‘quasi experiment’, to explore the relationship between these two aspects of social life. The setting is not an everyday situation, but it is a real life and death situation; one that is small and contained enough to be observable.

Since the discipline’s inception, comparative research has offered some of the most persuasive and illuminating insights in sociology. Comparative work allows us to distinguish the particular from the universal in social systems. Weber’s comparative work is seminal in the field of economic sociology. Contemporary comparative work in the field of economic sociology tends to be very large in scale, comparing states, or even groups of states, but rather narrow in scope. Or else it tends to isolate and compare a single factor, such as welfare regimes, or an industrial sector. The particular value of the research in this thesis is that the empirical data is drawn from quasi- experimental conditions, and that it takes place on a much smaller scale, sufficiently self-contained to allow for a more thorough local comparative analysis than is usually possible.

The thesis explores the differences in the patterns of economic activity undertaken and the institutions developed by three cultural groups, namely American, Australian and British prisoners of war (POWs), when they were held as prisoners by the Japanese Imperial Army in camps across the Asia-Pacific region between 1942 and 1945. These prisoners were unable to survive in this extreme situation without engaging in constant economic activity to secure a livelihood. Entering captivity with little more than their culture, and encountering similar conditions, each national group tried to survive in

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distinctly different ways. Given the unusual conditions, a direct comparison between each of these groups is possible, and this comparison demonstrates the importance of culture as a strong variable in economic activity. Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s work on embeddedness, the analysis reveals that each national group’s economy was integrated by a different principle. With some simplification we could say that in one group the economy was integrated by reciprocity, in another it was integrated by redistribution, and in the third by exchange.

Inspiration for the thesis This research was inspired by a claim made in Hank Nelson and Tim Bowden’s radio documentary Prisoners of War: Australians Under Nippon (here on, often referred to simply as the documentary), which was broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National.1 Because of Australia’s geographical location, and the threat of Japanese invasion, the war against Japan had, and continues to have, greater prominence in Australia than in the northern hemisphere. Indeed, northern veterans have often complained that their experiences are unrecognised by their communities. When Australians returned home from Japanese camps their ships were met by cheering crowds, but in Britain the war in Europe had already finished and people were getting on with post-war reconstruction, and the former POWs were disheartened to find that they arrived home to empty docks and no fanfare at all. In Australia the fate of the prisoners of the Japanese was particularly well known, partly because although the absolute number of Australian POWs was smaller than it was for other countries, given Australia’s much smaller population, it was proportionately much greater. Nonetheless former POWs were reluctant to speak about their experiences. This may have been partly a result of the trauma and partly a sense that they could not really explain to others what they had been through. It is very commonly said that anyone who had not experienced it could not possibly understand. Those that did try to discuss their experiences found that their friends and relatives tended to change the subject, which gave the veterans the impression that no-one was really interested. In fact they had been warned that it could be dangerous for the mental health of a veteran to discuss their experiences, and in changing the subject they were actually following medical

1 This twelve-hour documentary was originally broadcast in 1984. I first heard it when it was repeated in the form of sixteen episodes broadcast over four weeks in 2003. The documentary was based primarily on oral history interviews with veterans, mostly Australian but also some other nationalities, and most of whom were apparently speaking for the first time about their experiences. A book was subsequently published, Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon.

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advice.2 Perhaps this is the reason that even in Australia where Japan’s treatment of POWs was popularly familiar, the finer grained detail was not so well known. Yet, people were aware of the basic story of the prisoners of the Japanese. There had been press reports and war crimes trials. Some of the veterans had become prominent public figures and advocated for the former POWs, particularly Lt. Col. ‘Weary’ Dunlop. Others were vocal in their condemnation of Japanese direct investment in Australia and the importation of Japanese manufactured goods, and some of them appeared in the media criticising it. There had also been popular books published in the years immediately following the war and later there were British and American films based on memoirs and fictionalised accounts, such as King Rat, Bridge Over the River Kwai and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, as well as Australian films such as Blood Oath.

Like most Australians, I was aware of the general events and conditions of the Japanese POW camps. I knew of the Changi camp and the Burma-Thai Railway. I was aware that the POWs had been mistreated, starved, tortured, beaten and killed, and that they had been subjected to forced labour. I had a general sense that there had been atrocities, and some post-war prosecutions for war crimes. Most of my impressions came from the films that I had seen. The dominant strand in the representations of the POW camp experience that I had seen focussed on the cruelty of the Japanese. Inevitably, that too was one of the themes of the documentary by Nelson and Bowden, but it also contained a lot of information that was novel to me. The length of this documentary allowed a broader scope, and a more textured account of this extreme situation, that revealed some very interesting aspects of the experience of imprisonment, particularly with regard to similarities and differences in the way in which the prisoners dealt with the unusual conditions in which they found themselves.

The part of the documentary that particularly sparked my interest was the claim that the behaviour of the POWs — the ways in which they coped in this extreme situation — differed significantly and noticeably according to their nationalities. This is perhaps even more surprising because the cultures of the main groups concerned — Australians, British and Americans — are in some ways very similar. The differences between them, it was claimed, were especially pronounced in situations where the different nationalities were living in close proximity to one another, which allowed for direct comparison. Seeing the differences in the ways that they each coped with the same conditions made it apparent that what they took for granted as the ‘natural’ way

2 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 211.

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of things, or ‘human nature’, was actually neither universal nor merely individual, but clearly and strongly associated with culture, though they may not have thought of it in those terms. The experience of direct comparison under the same conditions broke through ethnocentric normative expectations and highlighted how significant culture was in structuring the behaviour of the prisoners in these camps. This finding was succinctly articulated by another social historian of the camps, Gavan Daws.3 Having spent over a decade thoroughly researching the experiences of the POWs, Daws reflected in his monograph on the surprising finding that national cultures could yield such differences in human behaviour:

I began in great ignorance, imaging that if human beings were worked and starved and beaten to the point of death, they would be reduced to barely functioning skeletons, scraps of biology, with all the so-called veneer of civilization flayed away, all national culture and character trampled out of them. Not so...What emerges is that much of the life-or-death behaviour of POWs was based on national origin, the sum of what men carried with them from the place of their birth and upbringing into prison camp. I would go so far as to say that it was nationality above all that determined, for good or ill, the way POWs lived and died, often whether they lived or died. In fact the most surprising and unexpected impression left on me is the force and inextinguishability of these national-cultural-ethnic differences and divisions, and all the behaviours that went with them...I started coming across national differences in behaviour from the very first days of my research, and evidence kept piling up.4

What particularly caught my attention was the claim that there were quite starkly different approaches to economic organisation in the camps, and the patterns of individual economic behaviour level differed between each of the national groups.

Some of these manifestations are so clear as to register on the written page, fifty years later, as nothing but clichés. The Americans were the great individualists of the camps, the capitalists, the cowboys, the gangsters. The British hung on to their class structure like bulldogs, for grim death. The Australians kept trying to construct little male-bonded welfare states.5

Perhaps many people would, like Daws, expect that under the extreme conditions of life in Japanese POW camps, the responses of the prisoners would either be universal or individual and random. But as Nelson6 had also discovered this was not the case,

3 Daws and Nelson, both of whom were historians of the Pacific and neither were military historians, began working on the POW project together at the Australian National University. The task was so great that they divided the work: Daws pursued the history of the American POWs and Nelson the Australians. 4 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, pp. 22-3. 5 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 23. 6 The claim is made in various parts of the documentary series and the subsequent book; see particularly Chapters 5 and 14 of the book, Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon and Episodes 5 and 14 of the documentary series, Prisoners of War: Australians Under Nippon, ABC.

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and both historians documented the patterns of economic behaviour and organisation associated with national cultures.7

One of the reasons that this sparked my interest was that it reminded me of Radford’s study of the economies of the European camps in which he was held as a POW8 (I will turn to a brief discussion of Radford’s work later). The events in these camps seemed to contradict Radford’s account. This might not mean that Radford was necessarily wrong, but that the ability to generalise from his particular case was limited, which would be just as important a finding. On hearing this documentary, it occurred to me that the Japanese POW camps could be looked at as rare ‘natural experiments’, and used to explore the relationship between culture and economy in an empirically rigorous way.

Camps as social experiments The opportunity for experimentation, the heart of the scientific method, is rather limited in the social sciences. This is one of the reasons that neoclassical economics has become so dependent on econometric modelling, which is used as a surrogate for empirical experimentation to produce what is claimed to be scientific evidence. As a result, economics is seen to be, or at least purports itself to be, the most scientific of the social sciences. The value of these methods has long been questioned by those outside of economics, as well as some economists who reject the neoclassical methodological orthodoxy. Yet, increasingly in recent years, there has also been a movement within orthodox economics itself against the use of econometric modelling — modelling which is after all based on assumptions and simplifications — and toward a more empirically grounded approach. This is expressed, for instance, in the growth of behavioural economics and economic psychology, the popularity of empirical studies in micro-economics such as those reported in Freakonomics,9 the ‘Post-Autistic Economics’ movement of postgraduate students in economics, and particularly in the increasing use of game theory simulations to test hypotheses. There have even been calls for sociology, and in particular economic sociology, to adopt so-called

7 Subsequent reading revealed that while these observations of cultural-economic differences are quite common in memoirs and autobiographies of former POWs, they are rarely explored in the publications of professional historians. 8 Radford (1945), 'The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp'. 9 Levitt and Dubner (2005), Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything.

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‘experimental methods’,10 though these seem to refer to simulated games, which are of questionable significance. While each of these approaches to research has the potential to offer some insights beyond those produced by standard econometric modelling, they are also rather limited themselves.

Unusual situations such as POW camps offer quasi-experimental research opportunities that are not usually available in everyday life. The personal experience of internment in a civilian or POW camp inspired several notable scholars to later become social scientists. Examples include: sociologist T.H. Marshall,11 social psychologist J. Davison Ketchum,12 and economist A.W. ‘Bill’ Phillips.13 In each of these cases, it is claimed that the experience of witnessing the ‘spontaneous’ production and reproduction of social structures was the spark that inspired their curiosity in social science. For T.H. Marshall the experience of being interned at Germany’s Ruhleben camp during WWI and watching, with fascination, the social structure emerge within the camp, led to him abandoning his studies in history and instead pursuing sociology. For J. Davidson Ketchum, the study of the same camp became his life’s work, surveying and interviewing his fellow former internees and analysing the findings right up until his death in 1962. For the New Zealander Bill Philips, the experience of watching and comparing the development of social structures in the Japanese camps led him to give up his career in electrical engineering and undertake undergraduate studies in sociology and a PhD in economics at the London School of Economics. Philips was driven by a desire to find a way of ensuring macro-economic stability following his experience of extreme deprivation.14 He later became famous for the Phillips Curve and the Monetary National Income Analogue Computer (MONIAC).

The Nazi concentration camps were researched to some extent in the immediate post- war years by sociologists such as Herbert Bloch, Theodore Abel and Elmer Luchterhand and also by psychologists, such as Curt Bondy, Norman Jackman, Victor

10 Henrich et al. (2001), 'In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies'; Henrich et al. (2005), ''Economic Man' in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies'; Camerer and Fehr (2001), 'Measuring Social Norms and Preferences Using Experimental Games: A Guide for Social Scientists; Fehr and Gintis (2007); Bowles et al. (1997), 'Homo Reciprocans: A Research Initiative on the Origins, Dimensions, and Policy Implications of Reciprocal Fairness'. 11 Low (2000), 'Class and the Conceptualization of Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Britain', and see Marshall (1973), 'A British Sociological Career'. 12 See Ketchum (1965), Ruhleben, a Prison Camp Society and Low (2000), 'Class and the Conceptualization of Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Britain'. 13 Leeson (1994), 'A. W. H. Phillips M. B. E. (Military Division)'. 14 Leeson (1994), 'A. W. H. Phillips M. B. E.', see especially the footnotes on p. 611.

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Frankl and Bruno Bettleheim.15 Some of this primary work has been drawn on by sociologists, notably Goffman, Bauman and Anthony Giddens.16 Similarly, medical researchers have recognised that the unusual conditions of such camps offer quasi- experimental conditions from which much can be learnt. Yet, for the most part, POW and other camps seem to have been overlooked by sociologists.17 This is unfortunate as they can provide valuable data that can contribute to our understanding of social life, albeit from unusual situations and extreme conditions.

All such events offer important data from which much can be learnt. But the special conditions of the Japanese POW camps of WWII offer a particularly rich source of data. POW camps are different from ordinary criminal prisons and from other types of camps such as refugee camps and concentration camps that tend to contain particular social groups, such as oppressed minorities. While limited to males within a certain age range, in a time of total war and military conscription the population of POW camps is still much more representative of the general population. For the purposes of comparison, the fact that the population of the camps is limited by age and sex actually aids in the comparative process because it limits the number of variables. The fact that the Japanese did not separate the officers from other ranks also makes these camps unusually rich sources of data, because the class/status/wealth composition of the camp population is not distorted as it would have been if they had followed international law and separated them. The special conditions of the Japanese camps are explained in more detail in Chapter 3.

15 Bloch (1947), 'The Personality of Inmates of Concentration Camps'.; Abel (1951), 'The Sociology of Concentration Camps'.; Luchterhand (1967), 'Prisoner Behavior and Social System in the Nazi Concentration Camps'.; Luchterhand (1980), 'Social Behavior of Concentration Camp Prisoners: Continuities and Discontinuities with Pre-and Postcamp Life'.; Bondy (1943), 'Problems of Internment Camps'.; Jackman (1958), 'Survival in the Concentration Camp'. On Frankl and Bettleheim see Adamczyk (2005), 'Frankl, Bettelheim and the Camps'. 16 Goffman (1961), Asylums.; Bauman (1995), Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality.; Bauman and Bauman (2000), Modernity and the Holocaust.; Giddens (1979), Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis.; Giddens (1986), The Constitution of Society: Outline of Theory of Structuration.; Giddens (1989), Sociology. 17 Cultural historian Ron Robin has drawn on Goffman’s sociology of total institutions in his analysis of German POWs held in camps in the United States, but this is not really a sociological analysis, and the camps are viewed as just another total institution, rather than as quasi-experimental sites. (See Robin and Robins (1995), The Barbed-Wire College, esp. Ch. 2. Psychiatrists Wolf and Ripley similarly complained that POW camps were not utilised as sources of data on reactions to extreme situations in the medical literature. They explicitly draw on the psychiatric examination of veterans of the Japanese camps for quasi- experimental purposes (Wolf and Ripley (1947), 'Reactions among Allied Prisoners of War Subjected to Three Years of Imprisonment and Torture by the Japanese').

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Radford’s ‘Economic Organisation of a POW Camp’ This is not the first time that POW camps have been used as ‘natural experiments’ in economic activity. One of the reasons that the claims made in the documentary struck me as particularly important was that they seemed to be sharply at odds with Richard Radford’s famous account of his own experiences in various European camps as a prisoner of the Axis powers, ‘The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp’.18 Radford left his undergraduate studies at Cambridge to enlist in 1939. He was captured in Libya in 1942, and from there sent to camps in Italy and Germany. After the war he returned to Cambridge and completed his studies in 1947 (after the publication of the article), and worked for the International Monetary Fund for the whole of his post-war career.19 He appears not to have published anything else.20 Yet a simple internet search reveals how well this case study must be known among economists, because the article is widely used as a text in undergraduate and even high school economics syllabi. It is included in introductory economics textbooks and continues to be cited in contemporary economics scholarship.

Radford’s article describes the vibrant trade that emerged in all of the camps he experienced, explaining the development and organisation of the market. He goes into detail about price movements and relative values, the use of cigarettes for currency, the way that information flowed, and how and when prices rose and fell. He discusses the role of middlemen and entrepreneurs, and the attitude of the prisoners toward them. He also discusses a failed attempt at price-fixing and a planned economy and debates around inequality and the morality of market exchange. The conclusion of Radford’s article is that the POW camp economies prove that planned economies are inferior to free trade. Perhaps the reason why Radford’s article is still so widely read is that it purports to offer real-world empirical evidence, evidence in the form of a ‘natural experiment’, and, most importantly, that his evidence and the way he interprets it supports the postulates of neoclassical economics. As Radford himself argued:

After allowance has been made for abnormal circumstances, the social institutions, ideas and habits of groups in the outside world are to be found reflected in a Prisoner of War Camp [sic]. It is an unusual but vital society…One aspect of social organisation is economic activity, and this, along with other manifestations of group existence, is to be found in any P.O.W. camp…

18 Radford (1945), 'The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp'. 19 Obituary in the Washington Post, dated 14 November, 2006, available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/13/AR2006111301396_pf.html 20 Apart from a short piece, which is really a re-statement of a section of the original paper, Radford (1971), 'Money in a Prisoner-of-War Camp'.

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Although a P.O.W. camp provides a living example of a simple economy which might be used as an alternative to the Robinson Crusoe economy beloved by the text-books, and its simplicity renders the demonstration of certain economic hypotheses both amusing and instructive, it is suggested that the principle significance is sociological. True, there is interest in observing the growth of economic institutions and customs in a brand new society, small and simple enough to prevent detail from obscuring the basic pattern and disequilibrium from the working of the system. But the essential interest lies in the universality and spontaneity of this economic life; it came into existence not by conscious imitation but as a response to the immediate needs and circumstances. Any similarity between prison organisation and outside organisation arises from similar stimuli evoking similar responses.21

It is interesting to note the contradictions in Radford’s claims. Radford claimed on the one hand that the institutions, ideas and habits of the outside world are reflected in the POW camp, but also that this is a new society, an alternative to the Robinson Crusoe situation so commonly drawn on by classical and neoclassical economics. Of course, as noted by Marx22 and Weber23 among many others, there are significant flaws in the Robinson Crusoe conceit. Crusoe is taken to be an example of a person living in a ‘state of nature’, a tabula rasa devoid of culture, and hence evidence of the naturalness of homo oeconomicus. Yet he is a thoroughly cultural creature, a manifestation of eighteenth century English Protestantism. Economically, his tale of survival is also one of transplanting his own cultural knowledge to the desert island. He takes tools from the shipwreck, and sets about establishing something resembling a British estate, cultivating the land according to a calendar, dutifully adhering to a system of bookkeeping. Indeed, rather than the ‘man in his state of nature’ as he is depicted in economics textbooks, Crusoe has also been interpreted as a manifestation of British cultural (as well as economic and political) imperialism.24

As Radford indicated, the story of Robinson Crusoe has long been a favourite of economists. Both the classical political economists and neoclassical economists have used it to represent the workings of the capitalist system in a simplified form. It represents a kind of thought experiment that rests really upon the basic building block of orthodox economics, namely the rational individual. But, rather bizarrely, it is the individual in isolation. In fact, in rejecting the idea that Defoe intended Crusoe to be the

21 Radford (1945), 'The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp', pp. 189, 190, emphasis added. 22 In the Grudnrisse and Capital. 23 In the Protestant Ethic. 24 For example, James Joyce saw Robinson Crusoe as the embodiment of British imperialism: "He is the true prototype of the British colonist. … The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity." Joyce (1964) [1911], 'Daniel Defoe'. Ulla Grapard adds that “the joy economists take” in the Robinson Crusoe story is “indicative of the way the discipline deals with issues of race and gender”: Grapard (1995), 'Robinson Crusoe: The Quintessential Economic Man?', p.33.

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exemplar of homo oeconomicus, Diana Spearman cogently argued that “[n]o one in his senses would choose the story of a man cast alone on an uninhabited island to illustrate a theory which only applies to the exchange of goods and services”.25 Furthermore, as Ian Watt argued, the basis of Crusoe’s prosperity is the stock of tools that he takes from the shipwreck and the land he claims on the island. He is neither a primitive nor a proletarian, but a capitalist.26

While Radford acknowledged that the “social institutions, ideas and habits of groups” are reflected in the camps, a phenomenon, that to a sociologist or anthropologist is the cultural patterning of social reproduction, is interpreted by the economist as a natural response to stimuli. Just as with the economists’ interpretation of the Robinson Crusoe story, the role of culture is entirely ignored and the prisoners like Crusoe are supposed to be starting entirely from scratch, with no recognition that the shipwrecked or the imprisoned have brought their culture into the new situation. Radford claimed that soon after capture people realised that the giving of gifts was both “undesirable and unnecessary”, and that goodwill was soon replaced with “trading as [a] more equitable means of maximising individual satisfaction”.27 He appears to be showing, indeed proving empirically, that commodification and market exchange is not only the best method of economic distribution, but that it is also natural and, given the multi-national character of the camps he describes, that it is universal. He does not make assessments of some of the cultural traits that he actually observes as being characteristics of the trade he describes. For instance, ‘utility’ or ‘preferences’ that are satisfied by exchange include a desire on the part of Hindus to trade meat for other foods, by some other nationals to trade coffee for tea. He also mentions that the French organised things differently to the Anglo prisoners, establishing more collectivist ventures, pooling their goods to be used to value-add and then on-selling to the more individualistic British and Americans. However, these interesting factors are mentioned only in passing as examples of individual utility, and do not constitute part of the analysis.

Whereas the Robinson Crusoe approach is based merely on a fiction, a notional situation, Radford appears to be presenting hard empirical, indeed experimental evidence that confirms the assumptions of neoclassical economics. Strangely enough,

25 Spearman (1966), The Novel and Society, p. 166. 26 Watt (1974), The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, p. 87. 27 Radford (1945), 'The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp', pp. 190-191.

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although it conflicts with my own ideological biases, I had not questioned the veracity of Radford’s claims when I first studied the article. Which is why I was all the more intrigued by the claims that I heard about the Japanese camps in the radio documentary. However, apart from the problems with interpretation of the observed phenomena, there are also limitations with the empirical basis of Radford’s paper, which, in comparison, make the Japanese camps a better source of data. The economy that Radford described in European camps is essentially a situation in which livelihood is provided by the guards, and the trade that takes place is limited to ‘extras’, whereas the economic activity that took place in the Japanese camps was the serious stuff of obtaining a livelihood, trying to survive in a situation of extreme scarcity.

The Particular Conditions of the Japanese Camps There are several reasons that the particular conditions of the Japanese camps allowed for a greater range of diversity in economic organisation and activity. The first is that the camps were not organised and run in the usual fashion. One might expect cultural variation in POW camps to be a reflection of the captor’s culture rather than the prisoners, and the range of cultural variation in the behaviour and organisation of the prisoners themselves to be quite limited. But for reasons explained in Chapter 3, the Japanese camps allowed for much greater variation. The Japanese left much of the organisation of the camps up to the prisoners themselves. They provided some inputs, such as cash and rations, and they demanded outputs such as labour, but how the inputs were distributed and how the outputs were achieved was, not completely but to a significant degree, left up to the prisoners themselves to organise.

Another relevant difference is that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the Japanese did not separate the officers from other ranks. This meant that much of the military hierarchy remained in place, and in fact the Japanese used these lines of command to manage the camps. Perhaps most importantly, the Japanese did not provide adequate rations for the prisoners to survive. Calculations of calorie intake, discussed in Chapter 3 as well as in subsequent chapters, put it at around one third of that deemed necessary to survive. In order to survive then, the POWs in these camps had to engage in some sort of economic activity to supplement their rations. This included a whole range of activities: from simple bartering to manufacturing, services and trade, as well as theft and the redistribution of goods through welfare schemes. These factors also make the camps in this study rather different to those that Radford analysed. Furthermore, Radford’s camps were small (containing he says between 1,200 and

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2,500 prisoners) compared to many of the Japanese camps.28 They were also Oflags, which were camps that contained only officer prisoners, who were paid a wage, which they could spend at the camp canteen, but were not required to work. Hence, as Radford put it, “the economy was not complicated by payments for work”. In other words, there was no labour in the economy, which is a significant deficit when it comes to generalisability to the outside world. Although, he did point out that the currency the prisoners in these camps were issued had very little purchasing power because there was very little available in the canteen that was desirable, and so the medium of exchange that was actually used in trading was cigarettes.29 The prisoners were also relatively well fed on the rations provided, and regularly received both Red Cross packages and private parcels from home containing items such as toiletries, clothing and cigarettes. In other words, the vibrant trading economy which Radford described was one which consists mainly in the exchange of luxury goods, which are given more or less equally, and which do not contribute directly to subsistence.

True, a prisoner is not dependent on his exertions for the provision of the necessaries, or even the luxuries of life, but through his economic activity, the exchange of goods and services, his standard of material comfort is considerably enhanced…Nevertheless, it cannot be too strongly stressed that economic activities do not bulk so large in prison society as they do in the larger world.30

However, the most significant difference between the camps that Radford described and the Japanese camps is that economic activities did ‘bulk so large’, as the subsistence of the starving prisoners of the Japanese depended on it. Theirs was not an exchange based on preferences for coffee and tea, meat and jam as Radford described, but rather a struggle for survival in extreme circumstances. Whereas Radford’s economy was rather like those used by game theorists, the economies of the Japanese camps were real economies in which economic action is essential to survival and literally has life and death consequences. Importantly, the economies of the Japanese camps did not just include labour, but also inequality and stratification. So as ‘natural experiments’ they are much closer to the reality of ordinary civilian economic life. Given these complexities, that are absent from the Oflag, they hold much more potential for developing and testing theories of economic action.

28 Radford (1945), 'The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp', p.191. 29 This has a significant drawback for smokers, so that some voluntary labour did enter the economy with some prisoners selling services such as laundry for cigarettes. 30 Radford (1945), 'The Economic Organisation of a P.O.W. Camp', p. 189.

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Furthermore, as quasi-experiments, the case study of the Japanese camps invites a comparative method that is missing from Radford’s account. Whereas the Oflags contained only officers, albeit officers of different nationalities and ethnicities, the prisoners of the Japanese were generally segregated by nationality and not by rank. So they allow us to directly compare how different cultural groups reacted to the same structural conditions, or ‘respond to stimuli’ as Radford put it, and the fascinating thing is that they responded quite differently, thus pointing to the importance of national culture as key variable in explaining economic behaviour, and away from the idea of the ‘natural’ or ‘universal’.

The Comparative Element This study is based on the use of the Japanese camps not only as ‘natural experiments’, but as comparative test sites. There were hundreds of thousands of men, women and children who were held in Japanese internment or forced labour camps who are deliberately excluded from this study. I limited my research to the Australian, British, and American male prisoners of war for several reasons. Pragmatically, it reduced the scope to a more manageable level, and avoided the problems of language, given the large numbers of Dutch-speaking prisoners and civilians from various European and Asian countries, and also avoided the problem of the apparently unwritten history of the Asian labourers from many countries. The civilian internment camps were composed of men, women and children, and usually from different countries, but largely from one class. The servicewomen who were captured, nurses who were held separately from men, but often with civilians, were quite rare and an isolated separate sub-group. By limiting the comparison to these three national groups of male POWs, the number of variables is greatly reduced. They were all male and serving in the military. But as they were serving in the military at a time of total war, they constitute a more representative sample of the general adult male population (admittedly skewed toward youth) than would ordinarily be the case with either a regular military population or civilian penal population. Furthermore, the subjects were all Anglophone with closely related cultural backgrounds, sharing to a degree a British heritage, Christian background, and so on. Indeed, in broad-scale comparative work, such as that of Esping-Andersen31, they are generally grouped together as Anglo- Americans. Yet, as Lipset argued, specifying and analysing variations among such cultural groups “is useful precisely because the differences among them are generally

31 Esping-Andersen (1993), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.

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smaller than between each [of them] and non-Anglophonic societies.”32 By limiting the number of variables, the differences that emerge are even more stark.

Notes on Methods and Data This study is an ethnography, based largely on textual analysis of published and unpublished documents: primary and secondary sources, supplemented with a few interviews. Initially I had expected that it would be quite easy to go beyond the initial source of Prisoners of War: Australians Under Nippon, by finding similar historical works on which to conduct a comparative analysis of the different national groups. I expected that these histories would have been written, and that my empirical work would involve steps such as the confirmation of their findings, the collection and comparative analysis of relevant social statistics, and perhaps projecting backwards and forwards from the time in the camp, to examine conditions prior to and after capture. Mainly I had expected to be able to conduct a textual analysis, drawing on authoritative accounts. However, after much searching, I discovered that historians had largely ignored the social history of these POW camps, and that of the few who had researched them, even fewer included much detail about the camp economies.

The history of the prisoners of the Japanese seems to have been neglected, for two main reasons. The first is that POWs generally have been largely ignored by historians, and the second is that the war in the Pacific has received a disproportionately low level of attention, particularly from scholars in the northern hemisphere. Christina Twomey suggests that while the distance from home may partly explain the lack of interest, it is not a sufficient explanation. Twomey points out that while, from the British perspective the Pacific was the Far East, and the real war was thought to be on the doorstep with constant bombing and the threat of German invasion very real, the same could not be said for the Americans. Instead, she suggests that the reason for the ‘forgetting’ of the war in the Pacific is more likely due to a combination of the shame of defeat in a military catastrophe that was the “final nail in the coffin of Empire”, and the racial implications of that defeat at the hands of an ‘inferior race’.33

If one asks Americans today in what way World War II was a race war, and in what way an atrocious war, they respond overwhelmingly with the Nazi genocide of Jews in Europe – for valid, obvious reasons. When the war was being fought, however, the enemy perceived as most atrocious by Americans was not the Germans, but the Japanese; and the racial issues that

32 Lipset (1996), American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, p. 34. 33 Twomey (2007), Australia's Forgotten Prisoners: Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War Two, pp. 14-15.

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provoked the greatest emotion among Americans were associated with the war in Asia. That Americans, with few exceptions, were obsessed with the uniquely evil nature of the Japanese seems incontrovertible. Allan Nevins, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize in history, observed immediately after the war that "probably in all our history, no foe has been so detested as were the Japanese."34

It seems that POW camps occupy an awkward scholarly space: they seem to fall within the domain of military history, but they don’t contain the type of strategic and operational action that tends to be of interest to military historians.35 As historian Rosalind Hearder points out, there is an assumption that nothing much happened in the camps.

Operational history has remained at the forefront – the events, strategies, and personalities that shaped the course of the war and ultimately affected its outcome. This early relative absence of interest in prisoner-of-war history implies that captivity represented a situation of stasis – men were imprisoned and nothing changed except that some lived and some died. Nothing could be further from the truth.36

Joan Beaumont argues that, “enticed though they often are by catastrophe”, academic historians have largely left the history of the 35 million people who were held as prisoners of war during WWII “to popular historians, memoirists and film and television producers”.37 While this situation has begun to change in the last two decades, she points out that POW historical studies is seen as a specialist field, rather than a part of military history, and a field in which academics tend to further specialise, with writing that has tended to focus on one particular camp or a specific national group, or otherwise has focussed on a small number of sensational issues, such as medical experimentation. Yet, “prisoner of war literature, as a genre, has tended to be methodologically and theoretically unadventurous”.38

Beaumont also points to some of the problems that result from this lack of interest on the part of academic historians:

34 Downer (1996), 'Race, Language, and War in to Cultures: World War II in Asia', p. 169. 35 Indeed, it seems that POW camps generally are under-researched. It seems that historians have overlooked the experiences of modern POWs going right back to the first instance of it, the Napoleonic wars see Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions: French Prisoners of War in Britain, 1803 – 1814, p. 362. 36 Hearder (2007), 'Memory, Methodology, and Myth: Some of the Challenges of Writing Australian Prisoner of War History', p. 1. 37 Beaumont (2007), 'Review Article Prisoners of War in the Second World War', p. 535. 38 Beaumont (2007), 'Review Article Prisoners of War in the Second World War', p. 536. She also notes that writing on civilian internees, and particularly women, has been more theoretically informed and innovative.

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Prisoners of war are among the forgotten victims of war. Although while any particular conflict in the past has been raging they have been the source of fierce emotions, when the history of warfare has come to be written, they have been comparatively neglected. The British official history of World War II, for example, devotes none of its ninety volumes to prisoners of war – either its own or those it captured – and the number of English language monographs on the subject of prisoners of war has likewise been small in comparison to the deluge of material that has been published on strategy, tactics, diplomacy and military technology. Popular perceptions of the experiences of prisoners of war have therefore been conditioned largely by memoirs, diaries and biographies of those who survived captivity. Since the vast majority of this literature has been published by commissioned officers rather than prisoners from the other ranks, a result has been that popular images of prisoner of war life are in many respects unrepresentative. Escape plans, prison ‘universities’, sabotage and resistance to enemy interrogation – these are common perceptions of the life of a prisoner of war, but what is often forgotten is that these are largely the experience of a privileged elite, not of the many millions of prisoners of war from the other ranks.39

The few historians who have looked at the Japanese camps have generally done so either in the context of the history of a particular military unit (such as the history of a particular regiment) that happened to be captured at some point,40 or included the POW camps as part of a broad history of the war or the war in the Pacific.41 Understandably, the camps are only a small part of these broad histories, so they contain little detail. More recently there have been a few historians who have researched a particular camp in isolation,42 or a particularly notorious incident, such as the Bataan Death March or the massacre of prisoners at Sandakan,43 or a particular aspect of the camp experience such as medical practice under these extreme conditions.44 However, even in these exceptional cases, the economic issues of interest to me are given little attention. Of the professional historians, it is only Daws and Nelson, who have directly dealt with this key issue of the different national-cultural patterns of economic action in the camps. However, because each specialised in the overall history of one national group, even their analysis has been necessarily limited by the scope of their project. So the direction of my empirical research had to change, and I had to do a lot more historical research myself. This led me to the published and unpublished accounts of the prisoners themselves.

39 Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 67. 40 Notably Beaumont (1988), Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity 1941-1945. 41 Wigmore (1957), The Japanese Thrust. 42 Such as Emerson (1977), 'Behind Japanese Barbed Wire: Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong 1942– 1945,; Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience: The Changi POW Camp, Singapore, 1942-5.; Nelson (1974), The Story of Changi, Singapore. 43 For example, Dawson (1995), To Sandakan: The Diaries of Charlie Johnstone. 44 Hearder (2009), Keep the Men Alive: Australian POW Doctors in Japanese Captivity.

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It is interesting to note that in the cases of both Nelson and Daws these were primarily oral history projects. When the former POWs were telling their own stories, economic matters tended to loom large. In addition to work by professional historians and sources such as official reports from various sources, I began to read the hundreds of memoirs of veterans of the camps, often based on contemporary diaries. Given how central the economic aspects of the POW camp experience were, these tended to include much more relevant detail, and provided a much richer source of data.

Despite the fact that they were numerically the smallest group, there were far more published accounts by Australian veterans than there were for either the British or Americans. This is probably because the proportion of Australian servicemen interned, and particularly who died in captivity, is much higher than is the case for the other two countries. Moreover, several former POWs became notable public figures after the war.45 This was a much more prominent war story in Australia than elsewhere, and there is consequently a greater awareness of the history in Australia today, though less so than was the case immediately following the war. Many Australian accounts were published, particularly in the years immediately following the war, which probably indicates that publishers perceived a market for such books in Australia. Several of these books were bestsellers. As time has passed, though, the Australian accounts tended to be published by smaller publishing houses. Secondary accounts, such as biographies of former POWs and collections of oral history continue to be published.46 Australian published sources were so plentiful that there was little need to conduct primary archival research. This was not the case with the other nationalities. In the case of the British memoirs, unlike either the American or Australian cases, the published literature is dominated by the accounts of former officers. There appeared to be few, if any, that were published by other ranks. This may have been an instance of broader issues around social stratification in Britain at that time, but might also have been because other ranks took more seriously the government instructions that were sent to them in leaflets on their repatriation not to tell their stories.47

In the case of the Americans, the number of memoirs published is disproportionately low, and they were often published much later and could therefore be unreliable. The

45 For example, ‘Weary’ Dunlop and Tom Uren. 46 For example, Ebury (1994), Weary: The Life of Sir Edward Dunlop. 47 The leaflets warned veterans not to talk. “Your story, if published in the more sensational press, would cause much unnecessary unhappiness to relatives and friends”: Shephard (1996), 'A Clouded Homecoming?', p. 12.

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American memoirs also tended to include much less detail about the internal organisation of the camps and instead offer much more condemnation of the Japanese. This may simply be a result of their later publication, or could be a reflection of the publishers’ ideas of what is marketable.

Given that there are a lot of Australian published accounts available, which needed to be balanced in the case of the British and Americans, I conducted archival research in each of those cases. I drew on some of the wealth of archival sources available, particularly at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London, England and the United States Army Military History Institute (USAMHI), in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The relative scarcity of American memoirs is more than made up for by superb oral histories collected over decades by Donald Knox48 and by Gavan Daws.49 A common response encountered by researchers is that veterans will say ‘If you weren’t there, you can never understand’.50 Knox and Daws overcame that resistance, perhaps because they were closer in age to their subjects than other researchers, but largely by attending reunions for many years and interviewing the veterans repeatedly over time. They were thus able to gain the trust of their subjects and to elicit a great deal of information that is lacking from other accounts. This is something that I could not have achieved.

Interestingly, neither of them was a military historian. Knox was a television documentary maker and Daws a social historian of the Pacific, particularly Hawaii. Gavan Daws was extremely generous with his time and knowledge, and helpfully advised me how to find material efficiently. He alerted me to the large collection of interviews with Texan veterans, conducted by another non-military oral historian, Ron Marcello, which are held at the University of North Texas. I collected a lot of data at that archive. Daws also directed me to his own original material, held at the archives at USAMHI, which included many boxes of interview transcripts and correspondence, and other research material, as well as some of Donald Knox’s original material. These were extremely valuable sources of data. I spent a lot of time at the British Imperial War Museum (IWM), visiting three times in three years, for a total of around eight weeks. There is a wealth of material there from British former POWs which includes

48 See Knox (1981), Death March: The Survivors of Bataan. 49 See Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese. 50 Rosalind Hearder recalls asking a veteran, whom she had just interviewed for three hours and whom she describes as “a lovely man” and “anxious to help”, what he thought about a young person such as herself wanting to write about this topic. He leant foward and said gently, “Girly, you’ll never get it right”: Hearder (2007), 'Memory, Methodology, and Myth: Some of the Challenges of Writing Australian Prisoner of War History', p. 1.

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diaries, letters, unpublished memoirs, and interview transcripts. However, this material is also dominated by the accounts of officers. In trying to overcome the dearth of material available from the perspective of British other ranks, I interviewed six veterans myself. Time was against me though. Sixty-five years and more after the event few veterans were still alive. The passing of time, compounded by the traumatic nature of the events experienced, can make memory unreliable. I was warned by staff at the IWM that their testimony had become less reliable with the passing of time. Because these veterans have often spent six decades obsessively reading about these events and discussing them, their own experiences tend to get mixed up with those of others. I was warned that veterans who write memoirs at this distance have a tendency to describe in detail events that they could not possibly have witnessed because, for instance, their war records show, they were never in that part of the world. This calls into doubt anything else they write. Moreover, memory can also be unreliable because the suppression of memory is a common response to trauma. For instance, Rosalind Hearder found that one of the veterans she interviewed, a British doctor, claimed to have been beaten only once during his time as a prisoner, yet his diary recorded many beatings. When asked about this discrepancy, the veteran reflected that he had suppressed the memory so that he wouldn’t have to deal with it.51 For these reasons I could not rely on collecting my own oral histories. The interviews that I conducted did not provide much directly useful data, but they did yield some helpful material, particularly background material, which gave me a much better sense of the historical- cultural context from which the men came. However, it was clear that to spend a great deal of time attempting to locate, recruit and interview veterans was unlikely to be fruitful, and given the time constraints, a reliance on documentary material and the transcripts of much earlier oral history interviews would be a more efficient method to proceed with.

Finding accurate statistical data is also very difficult. I tried to locate sources such as demographic data on the POWs in order to compare the groups, but was unable to find enough due to fire damage and lost records. In the American case, the decentralisation of records presented a significant problem. Japanese record keeping was poor to begin with, and it seems little survived. So serious reliance on statistical data has been abandoned. Where possible and necessary I have relied on the statistical data gathered by historians, but the numbers never quite tally, and are often wildly different.

51 Hearder (2007), 'Memory, Methodology, and Myth: Some of the Challenges of Writing Australian Prisoner of War History', p. 2.

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So the numbers are generally better seen as guides to proportionality rather than as accurate sources of data.

All in all, I collected sufficient data for drawing certain conclusions, and certainly far more than I could possible include directly in the thesis. I have therefore, where possible, cited published sources, which are more easily verifiable than archival sources. I have done so with the knowledge that they are representative of, or supported by, a range of other materials.52 One methodological problem identified by Rosalind Hearder is the possibility that a sense of group loyalty might create bias in veterans’ accounts, possibly preventing former POWs from criticising their countrymen, for instance. She noted the tendency among the Australians she interviewed to never reveal the names of other Australians whom they criticised, but it was “always open season on British or Dutch prisoners”.53 Where possible, I have tried to ‘triangulate the data’ by using the accounts of third parties to the action in order to bolster the case. So, for example, where positive claims are generally made about one national group I have used the statements of other nationalities, and where critical claims are made I have used the accounts of members of that national group, in order to avoid perceptions of chauvinism or prejudice. For instance, if Australians are being depicted in a positive light, I have used Dutch, British and American accounts rather than merely Australian sources and vice versa. This is to show that the impression of a cultural pattern is recognised by other cultural groups and is not an ethnocentric bias. Similarly, where negative observations about a group are being made, I have tried to use testimony from members of that group in order to quell suspicions of ethnic bias.

The Question and the Argument In her critique of the state of POW studies, historian Joan Beaumont argues that comparative studies of POWs are needed, and cites one that she identifies as important:

[POWs] need also to be studied within a comparative perspective. As mentioned, much of POW history has been focused on particular national groups. But it is clear from the mythologising of Colditz – and for that matter, of the Burma-Thailand railway – that cultural practices shape the memory of captivity at the national and popular level. Do they also affect how captivity was experienced and endured? Australians popularly believe that their nationals were better able to survive the privations of working on the Burma-Thailand railway than were the British because of

52 There are also difficulties associated with using much of the archival material due to the need to try to find living relatives of deceased authors in order to seek permission to use the materials, which is too time- consuming for the production of a thesis within the time allowed. 53 Hearder (2007), 'Memory, Methodology, and Myth: Some of the Challenges of Writing Australian Prisoner of War History', p. 3.

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the supposedly unique Australia capacity for mateship. Such an idea might be fanciful; yet another manifestation of national mythology. But the question remains as to whether some national groups did have a greater resilience and ability to survive the stresses of being prisoners of war because of their distinctive social dynamics and cultural mores.54 This is, incidentally, quite similar to the questions that I asked following the inspiration from the Nelson documentary. The questions pursued in this thesis are twofold. The first is to verify the claims made by Nelson and Daws, that there were distinct patterns of economic behaviour associated with nationality, and that their characterisation of these patterns were accurate. The second set of questions relate to the sociological analysis of these patterns.

Though, as previously described, the empirical research turned out to be much more difficult and laborious than expected, the conclusion is that the claims made by Nelson and Daws are largely correct, and that their characterisation was more or less accurate. These empirical findings are reported in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Chapter 3 provides background information on the historical context of the events. This includes some basic historical information on the war and an overview of the conditions of captivity. It also includes information on the prisoner of war regimes of the period, as well as material on both Japanese and Western cultural attitudes and norms of imprisonment at the time, and their historical development. Chapter 4 details the findings from my investigation into the experiences of the Australian and British prisoners in South-East Asia. Chapter 5 covers the findings from my investigation into the American camps in the Philippines. These three groups came together in camps in Japan, where the conditions were slightly different, and this is explored in Chapter 6.

The second set of questions seeks to understand how this empirical phenomenon can be explained: Why is it that the prisoners did what they did? How can we explain theoretically the emergence of these patterns in this setting? Why was it that there was variation between the national groups, and uniformity within them? How is it that culture influenced the production and reproduction of these particular patterns of behaviour in this particular context? And, what does this imply for more general theoretical understandings of the relationship between culture and economy? This set of questions is explored through a theoretical framework based on Karl Polanyi’s theory of embeddedness, which is explained in Chapter 2. The basic argument is that, in Polanyian terms, the economy of each national group was integrated by a different factor. Although in each case, all of the three instituting processes identified by Polanyi

54 Beaumont (2007), 'Review Article Prisoners of War in the Second World War', pp. 543-4.

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were present, only one was dominant in each case. The economy of the American camps was integrated by exchange, while the British and Australian camp economies were integrated by redistribution and reciprocity respectively. This theme is taken up in the next chapter.

22 Chapter 2 Theoretical Considerations: Polanyian Embeddedness

Introduction This chapter contains theoretical considerations for the reader to bear in mind when reading the subsequent empirical chapters. Its focus is on the work of Karl Polanyi, and his core concepts of embeddedness, the economy as an instituted process, and his typology of economic activity and institutions. The research was conducted inductively, and the empirical research was completed before I began to search for a theoretical explanation of the phenomena that I had documented. While all research is influenced by previously-held ideas, predispositions, ideologies and so on,55 I did not begin this research with a particular positive theoretical agenda. My initial interest really was in exploring the veracity of the empirical basis of the claims made in the Nelson documentary. If the claims made by Nelson and Daws were true, the case study of the camps appeared to offer an empirical refutation of individualist theory in general, and particularly of rational actor models. I was certainly interested in pursuing this because it accorded with my own collectivist bias. In fact, it seemed to offer a direct rebuttal to Radford’s apparently convincing use of POW camp economies as empirical proof of homo oeconomicus. However, beyond that refutation, or theory falsification, I did not have a particular approach in mind to offer an alternative, positive explanation. The initial enthusiasm for simply forming an empirical refutation of rational actor theory was soon exhausted. It seemed of little interest to add to the already large body of evidence against such a widely discredited theory, influential though it may continue to be. In looking for a positive theoretical explanation of the phenomena — that is, a way to explain the clear patterns of behaviour that were apparent, and the differences between the economic activities of each national group of POWs and the regularity

55 Jeffrey Alexander argues that every social theory is pulled between the poles of individual freedom and social order, Alexander (1987). Twenty Lectures; and Sharon Hayes adds that these two ideals have been treated not just as equally crucial, but as competing, and this basic ideological dichotomy is at the heart of the confusion and disagreement over the core sociological concepts of culture, structure and action, Hays (1994), 'Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture', p. 59. My own inclinations are definitely toward the collectivist and away from the merely individualist approach.

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within each of them — I began by spending a long time looking at the literature from the so-called ‘new economic sociology’, but eventually discovered in the work of Karl Polanyi a way to better understand the phenomena, and to contribute to our understanding of the relationship between economy and culture.

Comparative Approaches to Culture and Economy The link between cultural differences, particularly what Swidler terms the ‘culture as values and norms’ approach,56 and differences in the economic organisation of societies is well established in the comparative sociological literature, particularly at the level of civilizations and nations. From the foundational texts such as Durkheim’s Division of Labour, Weber’s Protestant Ethic, and Tönnies Community and Society, through to contemporary approaches such as the varieties of capitalism, comparative welfare states, and work on social capital such as that done by Robert Putnam57 and Francis Fukuyama.58 All of these approaches emphasise the importance of culture and institutions in structuring economic activity. Perhaps the most influential of these approaches in contemporary research is the large literature on comparative welfare states59 and more broadly on varieties of capitalism.60 These studies demonstrate that, contrary to the assumptions of convergence theories61 popular in the 1960s, and indeed to some assumptions in more recent globalisation theories, cultural and institutional variety persists.

However, the scale of these comparative approaches makes understanding the direct causal mechanisms of culture in social action difficult to grasp. Studies that look at the development of civilizations or national cultures tend to look at the development of institutions over long periods of time in one country or culture, or compare the total economies or vast tracts of economic activity, such as labour markets, state welfare or industrial sectors. A vast multiplicity of contingencies and complexities that make it necessary to resort to simplification through the use of ideal-typical typologies, which though valuable, leave many questions unanswered and important factors obscured. The comparative element is important and very revealing, but at the same time, the

56 Swidler (1986), 'Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies'. 57 Putnam et al. (1993), Making Democracy Work. 58 Fukuyama (1996), Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. 59 Esping-Andersen (1993), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. 60 Hall and Soskice (2001), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. 61 Kerr et al. (1960), Industrialism and Industrial Man; Bell (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society.

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scale necessarily obscures some potentially important factors. For instance, an Australian, British, or American person who visits one of the other countries in this group will notice stark differences between the economic organisation of the other society and their own. Yet these three societies are consistently grouped together in broad scale comparative work, and the similarities between them are stressed in order to concentrate on the differences between this group and others.62 It may be true that they have more in common with each other than they do with other societies, but there are also important differences between them. Similarly, the analytical separation of one factor for analysis, such as technology or labour regulation or the development of a certain industry, necessarily obscures the important interrelationships and complexities of social embeddedness.

At the national level, as Neil Fligstein notes, national differences matter. He raises the importance of path dependence by asserting that the initial formations of policy domains and institutions produce cultural templates that determine how to organise in a new society, and that the initial configuration of institutions and practices accounts for the persistence of, and the differences between, national capitalisms.63 At the more local level, Clifford Geertz64 employed a Weberian approach, though on a much smaller scale, to explore the relationship between the cultural differences, particularly religious values and norms, and economic practices of three distinct social-religious groups in a small city in Java. All three were not only Indonesian but also culturally and ethnically Javanese. Geertz’s research demonstrated that while all three lived in one location, shared a language and heritage and broader institutional context, between these very similar groups there were also clear and important cultural differences — related to social status and religion — which explained their different approaches to economic life and the differences in economic outcome. In a cross-national comparison, Geertz’s subjects would have been grouped simply as Indonesian, and even within a regional comparison within Indonesia, say between ethnic groups or islands, his subjects would have been grouped together as Javanese. No doubt there would be value in such research, but the important fine-grained detail that Geertz revealed would have been lost in aggregation.

62 For a recent critical comparison and overview of the different typologies used in the comparative welfare states and varieties of capitalism approaches see Ahlquist and Breunig (2009), 'Country Clustering in Comparative Political Economy. In all of these typologies, Australia, the UK and the USA are grouped together as similar institutional structures and political-economies. 63 Fligstein (2001), The Architecture of Markets, p. 40. 64 Geertz (1956), 'Religious Belief and Economic Behavior in a Central Javanese Town'. 25 Chapter 2 Theoretical Considerations: Polanyian Embeddedness

Similarly to Geertz’s work, the value of this research lies in the small scale of the empirical economy under analysis, and the similarity of the groups being compared. Just as with Geertz’s Javanese, the Australian, British and American POWs have a lot in common culturally. Not only do they come from common stock, they share a language, and to some extent religion, and a lot of other values and traditions. Yet in comparing them, distinct differences emerge between them. This helps us to see where the key differences between these cultures might lie, and helps to elucidate what impact relatively small cultural differences can have in creating quite distinct economic patterns. Also, the types of analyses discussed above, including that of Geertz and Fligstein, must try to look for causation somewhere in a long line of cultural- institutional history and development. This leads to an inability to differentiate between path dependence, power relations and so on. The value of this case study is that each of these national-cultural groups is building institutions more or less from scratch, in more or less the same situation, and they bring with them little more than their cultural schemas and some military organisation. Yet they build very different institutions to cope with the same circumstances. It is not a case of merely reproducing the familiar intuitions of home. Furthermore, once established, these cultural patterns have to be continually reproduced under these extreme conditions.

Each of the approaches discussed above point to the importance of culture and institutions in differences between economic systems, particularly in established and ongoing systems. Yet they don’t seem to provide an adequate explanation for the differences that emerged when these three apparently very similar cultural groups established new systems in an extreme situation. While they do offer evidence that contradicts the assumptions of rational actor models, they don’t specifically provide an alternative. So my search turned next to the so-called ‘new economic sociology’.

The ‘New Economic Sociology’ The study of the relationship between economy and society was at the heart of the project of classical sociology, but it seemed to become less central to the project of sociology in the twentieth century. Many authors assert that there was a lack of interest in economic sociology in the post-war era, but as Jens Beckert more carefully put it, sociologists continued to study economic phenomena, but they tended to do so by selectively focusing on the societal and cultural effects of capitalism, such as consumption, class and stratification, or by focusing primarily on issues of the organisation of the capitalist-industrial work process, such as work and labour markets. Missing was the broad approach developed by the classical sociologists who examined 26 Chapter 2 Theoretical Considerations: Polanyian Embeddedness

the social preconditions of capitalist economies and their core institutions, especially markets.65

Over the past twenty-five years there has been a revival of interest in economic sociology, and it has developed into one of the fastest growing and most important subfields of sociology.66 The so-called ‘new economic sociology’ (henceforth NES) has had a great deal of impact in raising the profile of economic sociology in the United States and in Europe.67 There is neither space nor need to survey the vast literature of the NES here.68 Rather, this section will briefly look at some of the key aspects of the NES that might be relevant to this study, and point out how it is that they are generally not sufficient in interpreting the empirical findings in this case.

The key unifying idea of the NES has been the embeddedness of economic action. It is surprising that with the renewed interest in economic sociology, the essential concept was not derived from a classical author concerned with economy and society such as Marx, Weber or Durkheim, but rather from Mark Granovetter’s (1985) seminal paper, ‘Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness’. Granovetter’s article on embeddedness has had an extraordinary impact, and is typically posited as the starting point for the development of NES. The concept of embeddedness has since been so widely adopted that Neil Fligstein sees ‘a broadly Polanyian’ view as the defining feature of the field.69 As Beckert points out, hardly any publications associated with the NES fail to mention embeddedness. “Few economic sociologists would disagree with the statement ‘We are all Polanyians now’”.70 However, despite the constant use of the term ‘embeddedness’, it is questionable how Polanyian much of the work that is typically taken to be part of the NES truly is.

65 Beckert (2007), 'The Great Transformation of Embeddedness', p. 2. 66 Smelser and Swedberg (2005), 'Introducing Economic Sociology'. 67 Swedberg and Smelser (1994), The Handbook of Economic Sociology; Guillén (2002), The New Economic Sociology; Swedberg (2003), Principles of Economic Sociology; Triglia (1998), Economic Sociology. 68 For such surveys see Dobbin (2004), The New Economic Sociology; Fligstein (2002), 'Agreements, Disagreements, and Opportunities in The "New Sociology of Markets"'; Gilding (2005), 'The New Economic Sociology and Its Relevance to Australia'. For excellent critiques, see Ingham (1996), 'Some Recent Changes in the Relationship between Economics and Sociology' and Ingham (1996), 'The New Economic Sociology'. 69 Fligstein (2002), 'Agreements, Disagreements, and Opportunities in The "New Sociology of Markets"', p. 62. 70 Beckert (2007), 'The Great Transformation of Embeddedness', p. 7.

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Granovetter argued that the utilitarian tradition favoured by economists posits an under-socialised conception of human beings as rational and atomised individuals, while sociology suffers from the opposite extreme. Granovetter drew on Denis Wrong’s complaint about the “oversocialized conception of man in modern sociology”, in which humans are presented as acting always and only in response to social norms.71 This is related, as Granovetter mentions, to the formalist-substantivist debate in anthropology. Granovetter asserted that both of these approaches, the over- and under-socialised conception of action, are flawed. By invoking the concept of embeddedness, Granovetter attempted to mediate between these extremes. However, Granovetter’s reinterpretation of the concept is so narrow as to be antithetical to Polanyi’s intention.72 Indeed, he has recently admitted that he was not actually familiar with Polanyi’s work and had thought that he had come up with the term embeddedness independently.73 It would be odd for him to use Polanyi in order to mediate between substantive and formal approaches, or over- and under-socialised, if he were familiar with his work, when Polanyi’s work is very much the touchstone for substantivist anti-formalist approaches.

Granovetter’s use of the term embeddedness is quite different to Polanyi’s. Granovetter claims that economic action is “embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations”.74 In other words, he uses embeddedness to refer only to the structural location of actors in social networks. Furthermore, he employs the notion of embeddedness not to completely reject rational actor theory, as did Polanyi, but rather to amend it very slightly by pointing to the context of the constraints applied through embeddedness within social networks:

Insofar as rational choice arguments are narrowly constructed as referring to atomized individuals and economic goals, they are inconsistent with the embeddedness position presented here. In a broader formulation of rational choice, however, the two views have much in common…What looks to the analyst like nonrational behaviour may be quite sensible when situational constraints, especially those of embeddedness, are fully appreciated…That such behaviour is rational or instrumental is more readily seen, moreover, if we note that it aims not only at economic goals but also at sociability, approval, status, and power.75

71 Wrong (1961), 'The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology'. 72 For critiques of the use of ‘embeddedness’ in NES and their relationship to Polanyi see Krippner (2002), 'The elusive market'; Krippner and Alvarez (2007), 'Embeddedness and the intellectual projects of economic sociology'; Gemici (2008), 'Karl Polanyi and the antinomies of embeddedness'; and Lie (1991), 'Embedding Polanyi's Market Society'. 73 See Krippner and Alvarez. (2007), 'Embeddedness and the Intellectual Projects of Economic Sociology'. 74 Granovetter (1985), 'Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness', p. 487. 75 Granovetter (1985), 'Economic Action and Social Structure', p. 506.

28 Chapter 2 Theoretical Considerations: Polanyian Embeddedness

Thus, in contrast to the deep embeddedness proposed by Polanyi, this network approach isolates a single aspect of markets — the networks of ongoing social relations — as the proper domain of economic sociology, and in doing so neglects the social content underlying the observed structure, failing to explain even why the networks are structured the way that they are. As Beckert notes, far from providing an alternative from within action theory, Granovetter does away with action theory altogether; leaving network structures rather than social action as the explanatory variable. Little wonder then, he comments, that this notion of embeddedness has been readily taken up by institutional economists and rational choice sociologists, as it can be so easily slotted into the rational choice framework.76

One of the leading figures in the ‘new institutional’ approach of the NES is Victor Nee. In an agenda-setting piece, Nee and Ingram77 criticised the network embedded approach for ignoring institutions; arguing that while “Granovetter criticised the neoclassical model for building a house of cards on the fragile assumption of rationality, ironically, personal relationships as a basis present similar problems”.78 In particular they point out that personal ties cannot tell us about degrees of trust, which is essential to understanding economic performance. Furthermore, it does not include a theory of social norms, and in particular the reliability of institutions, which provides the key to understanding economic action. Rational choice theory, they argued, generally ignores the origin of preferences and takes a well-ordered set of preferences as given, but they argued that there needs to be an understanding of what preferences really are, and where they come from. The answer, they suggested, is that social approval should be taken as the “universal preference of human beings,”79 and that this explains the conformity to social norms, that might otherwise appear irrational. They suggested that the key to providing the ‘missing link’ between networks and institutions can be found in the social exchange theory of George C. Homans,80 whom they credit with having anticipated the development of the network embeddedness approach and the link with the ‘choice within constraints’ approach of new intuitional economics.

To overcome the shortcomings of Oliver Williamson’s synthesis of new institutional economics and Granovetter’s network embeddedness, Nee and Ingram proposed a

76 Beckert (2007), 'The Great Transformation of Embeddedness', p. 9. 77 Nee and Ingram (1998), 'Embeddedness and Beyond: Institutions, Exchange, and Social Structure'. 78 Nee and Ingram (1998), 'Embeddedness and Beyond', p. 22. 79 Nee and Ingram (1998), 'Embeddedness and Beyond', p. 33. 80 See Homans (1958), 'Social Behavior as Exchange', p. 597.

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“fully integrated model of institutions, embeddedness and group performance”, by separating formal and informal constraint norms, and assigning the latter to small group interaction. Formal norms, they argued, are usually responses to, and a reinforcement of, informal rules that emanate from group interaction. At first blush, this seems like it is connected to Polanyi’s embeddedness project. However, underlying all of this is the assumption of fundamental rationality. Nee and Ingram stated that they:

assume that actors are rational in that they make decisions according to cost-benefit criteria. However, we do not see humans as hyperrational – as does neoclassical economics – possessing perfect information and unbounded cognitive capacity...Cognitive constraints make information imperfect and force decision[-]makers to use heuristic devices. Moreover, cultural beliefs and cognitive processes embedded in institutions are key to understanding actors‘ perceptions of self- interest.81

It is ironic that embeddedness should be used to extend the work of Homans. Jeffrey Alexander convincingly argues that Homans’ project was an ideologically motivated attempt to “turn back the clock, theoretically and ideologically” to classical economics.82 This is precisely the opposite of Polanyi’s project. Whereas Alexander argues that Homans “exemplifies the rationalistic individualism of the American marketplace”,83 Polanyi argued that the analytical tools of neoclassical economics (and classical political economy) were unsuited to the study of actually existing economies, past and present, with the exception of the market society of the nineteenth century.

Lionel Robbins defined economics as “the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”.84 This definition captures the core assumptions of the formalist approach: the idea that actors are rational, and that what they experience is always scarcity. Polanyi’s thesis, in The Great Transformation, was that market society, that is to say, an economy instituted by price-making markets, was unique to the nineteenth century. In all other empirically known examples, the economy was embedded in, and indeed, subsumed within social reproduction. But with the commodification of land and labour in the nineteenth century,

man and nature had been subjected to the supply-demand-price mechanism. This meant the subordinating of the whole of society to the institution of the market. Instead of the economic system being embedded in social relationships, social relationships were now embedded in the economic system…To speak merely of an ‘influence’ exerted by the economic factor on social

81 Nee and Ingram (1998), 'Embeddedness and Beyond', p. 30. 82 Alexander (1987), Twenty Lectures, p. 160. 83 Alexander (1987), Twenty Lectures, p. 197. 84 Robbins (1945), An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, p. 16.

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stratification was a grave understatement…The working of a capitalistic society was not merely ‘influenced’ by the market mechanism, it was determined by it…Moreover, since no human community can exist without a functioning productive apparatus, all institutions in society must conform to the requirements of that apparatus.85

In this unique situation, he claims, the fear of hunger and desire for gain became the sole factors that motivated economic action. Never before, nor since, had such a situation existed. Yet, the conceptual apparatus for economic analysis, based as it is on that unique market society, is not adequate for the analysis of other economic systems.

In the nineteenth century the machine forced an unprecedented form of social organisation, a market-economy, upon us, which proved to be no more than an episode. Yet so incisive was this experience, that our current notions are almost entirely derived from this short period…These views were broadly based on the conviction that human incentives can be classed as ‘material’ and ‘ideal’, and that in everyday life man mainly acts on the former. Such a proposition was, of course, true in respect to a market-economy. But only in respect to such an economy. If the term ‘economic’ is used as synonymous with ‘concerning production’ we maintain that there do not exist any human motives which are intrinsically ‘economic’; and as to so-called ‘economic’ motives it should be said that economic systems are usually not based on them.86

Whereas Polanyi sought to completely turn neoclassical economics — and particularly the idea of homo oeconomicus — on its head, the NES scholars have tended to rather cautiously work around the edges of the dominant discipline. Viviana Zelizer87 characterizes the general thrust of the NES over the past twenty to twenty-five years as clinging closely to mainstream economics, but supplementing it by providing either contextual or extension analysis. Extension analysis basically extends the ideas of mainstream economics to ostensibly sociological and non-economic topics, such as the family or sporting teams; while context analysis looked at standard economic processes, such as labour markets or corporations, and showed how the actions of economic actors are shaped by the social organisation of their context, particularly interpersonal networks. Indeed, Marion Fourcade argues that “the engagement with economics was so profound that one may say without much exaggeration that economic sociology constituted itself as that part of sociology that deals with the objects of economics, rather than economic objects broadly conceived.”88 Chajewski89 attributes this ‘context and extension’ approach to the limited notions of embeddedness

85 Polanyi (1947), 'On Belief in Economic Determinism', p. 100. 86 Polanyi (1947), 'On Belief in Economic Determinism', p. 97. 87 Zelizer (2007), 'Pasts and Futures of Economic Sociology'. 88 Fourcade (2007), 'Theories of Markets and Theories of Society', p. 1017. 89 Chajewski (2007), 'Agency Relationships, Embeddedness and Employment Relations'.

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employed in the NES. Chajewski claims that the most common definitional practice regarding embeddedness in the NES is to juxtapose a social factor and its purported outcomes, and there are thus as many types of embeddedness as there are types of factors affecting actors’ behaviours. He cites Zukin and DiMaggio’s90 influential piece, arguing that there are four types of embeddedness: structural, cognitive, political and cultural. But, as Chajewski notes, each is explained differently because it is the nature of the embedding factor rather than the logic of embeddedness as such that constitutes these definitions. Therefore they remain descriptive rather than analytical, which is contrary to Polanyi’s intention. Even Francis Fukuyama, who contends that neoclassical economics’ assumption of rationality is ‘eighty per cent correct’ argues that what is missing is important, and that it can only be found through sociology:

Modern neoclassical economics, with its focus on rational organization, will never be able to fully explicate the functioning of a modern economy. Embedded social norms, path dependencies, and moral commitments that come not from rational calculations of individual self-interest but from received authority, religion, history and tradition, will be important to full understanding of the economy, and yet remain outside of the scope of the science of economics as currently understood. These necessary aspects of modern economic life are accessible only through an economic sociology.91

Can this gap be filled by the NES? It seems unlikely. The dominant strands of the NES, which tend to equate ‘economic’ with ‘markets’, appears to have little to offer in terms of understanding how the POWs made their livelihoods, when much of it was not traded on markets. In an influential piece, Hirsch, Michael and Friedman92 cautioned sociologists not to be too enamoured of the success of economics, and to be wary of the degree to which they saw sociology as starting to mimic economics. The core difference between the disciplines, they argued, was the preference on the part of economists for deductive ‘clean models’, which they also described as economics’ fatal flaw, and the sociological preference for empirically directed description, or ‘dirty hands’. This is much more in line with Polanyi’s rich empirical engagement and inductive theorising, and with my own approach to this study. To understand the whole of that provisioning, requires a different understanding of what constitutes ‘economic’, and Polanyi’s definition is much more useful in analysing the economies of the POWs of this case study. My journey into the NES, though, did lead me back to the source of the embeddedness concept, that is, back to Polanyi’s original work, which I found very helpful in my analysis of the findings.

90 Zukin and Dimaggio (1986), 'Preface to Special Double Issue on the Structures of Capital'. 91 Fukuyama (2003), Still Disenchanted?, pp.17-18. 92 Hirsch et al. (1987), '“Dirty Hands” Versus “Clean Models”'.

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The substantive definition of ‘economy’ Polanyi’s approach draws deeply on sociological classics and argues, in contrast to much of the scholarship within the NES, that what is really required is a complete rethinking of what actually constitutes the economy. As neoclassical economics began to be adopted by some anthropologists in the 1930s it was claimed that that the tools of economics, based on the core concepts of rational action and economising in conditions of scarcity, could be applied to any situation. Yet, there was also a wealth of ethnographic research available by then that demonstrated that ‘primitive’ societies operate according to fundamentally different principles from those of modern capitalist societies. The evidence accumulated during the heyday of economic anthropology by researchers such as Thurnwald, Malinowski, Mauss, and Radcliffe-Brown clearly demonstrated that in ‘primitive’ societies economic activity is ‘submerged’ in broader social relationships and practices; that homo oeconomicus is not the ‘natural’ state of humanity — not universal or eternal. In thinking about this clash between economic theory and empirical findings, Polanyi observed that nineteenth century thinkers had noted a discrepancy between the two different root meanings of the word ‘economic’, “that have nothing in common”:93 one of which relates to substantive content, the elemental human need to rely on the physical environment and one another to survive; and the other restricted to commodity exchange.94 Gareth Dales recent research using Polanyi’s unpublished papers reveals that the scholars who most influenced Polanyi were Ferdinand Tonnies and Max Weber.95 From Weber, Dale contends, Polanyi drew a frame on which to structure his analysis, and the important concepts of substantivism and formalism. Polanyi wrote that no sub-discipline is “more relevant than the sociological approach” for economic anthropology, along “the lines of Max Weber and institutional analysis”. To analyse the changing place of the economy in society, Polanyi wrote, Weber

needed terms which would distinguish between the elements of rationality in the economy and its natural elements, such as human wants and needs, which are, by definition, irrational, The distinction between formal and substantive root meanings offered such a conceptual tool.96

For Weber, substantive rationality is that which is related to political, moral or religious values, whereas formal rationality is based on means-end reasoning. However, Polanyi was critical of Weber for: 1) failing to extend his analysis of formal and substantive

93 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 19. 94 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 108. 95 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 109. 96 Polanyi, unpublished, 'Fragments', cited in Dale (2010), p. 109.

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rationality to the meanings of ‘economic’, and 2) instead accepting a “trite selfishness theory of economic motives” and 3) tending to conflate the economic with markets.97 Through an adaptation of Menger’s analysis, Polanyi adopted Webers terms of formal and substantive to distinguish between the two meanings of ‘economic’. 98 In Polanyi’s usage the formal meaning springs from the “logical character of the means-ends relationship, as in economizing or economical.” The substantive meaning, on the other hand, points to the elemental human need to rely on the physical environment for livelihood.99 “The two meanings could not be further apart; semantically they lie in opposite directions of the compass.”100 Polanyi argued that the formal meaning of economics “derives from the logical character of the means-ends relationship” and that it specifically refers “to a situation of choice that arises out of an insufficiency of the means. This is the so-called scarcity postulate.”101 Only in the liberal economy of the nineteenth century, where a self-regulating system of markets pertained, could these conditions be said to apply. For it was only under those conditions, notably through the introduction of ‘fictitious commodities’ of land, labour and money,102 that the necessary conditions of scarcity and the incentives of hunger and gain, “or more precisely, fear of going without the necessities of life, and expectation of profit” came to dominate life, and so the two meanings of economics ran parallel.103

Intrinsically, hunger and gain are no more ‘economic’ than love or hate, pride or prejudice. No human motive is per se economic. There is no such thing as a sui generis economic experience in the sense in which man may have a religious, aesthetic or sexual experience… With man, the political animal, everything is given not by natural, but by social circumstances. What made the 19th century think of hunger and gain as “economic” was simply the organization of production under a market economy.104

Under the particular social conditions of a market system where all goods and services are available for purchase, everything has a price. Through prices, “both the conditions of choice and its results are quantifiable”, price becomes the “economic fact par excellence” and the formal method “offers a total description of the economy as

97 Polanyi, unpublished, 'Origins of Institutions' and 'Fragments' cited in Dale (2010), p. 109. 98 See Polanyi (1971), 'Carl Menger's Two Meanings of "Economic"'. 99 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 19. 100 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 163. 101 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 162, p. 165. 102 An insight taken from Tönnies in Dale (2008), 'Karl Polanyi's the Great Transformation', p. 505. 103 Polanyi (1947), 'Our Obsolete Market Mentality', p. 111. 104 Polanyi (1947), 'Our Obsolete Market Mentality', p. 111

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determined by choices induced by insufficiency of means”.105 However, the formal definition of economy denotes a situation in which all economic activity is a series of such choices, where each choice impacts the next. This is what Polanyi means by a system of price-making markets. Polanyi admits that the tools of analysis developed for formal economics are appropriate for such a situation, but only for such a situation, and that such a situation is incredibly rare in human experience. “Outside of the institutional system of price making markets economic analysis loses most of its relevance as a method of inquiry into the working of a definite economy.”106 Contrary to the attempts to apply modern economic methods to the analysis of economies in quite different societies, Polanyi contends that while modern economics could proceed with the formalist definition, anthropologists, sociologists and historians conducting empirical research were confronted with a “great variety of institutions other than markets in which man’s livelihood was embedded”.107 It is to conduct analysis of these non-market institutions, Polanyi argues, that researchers require quite different tools, and these flow from the substantive definition of the economy.108

In seeking to understand what an economy is, and how economies work, and the place of economies within societies, Polanyi undertook a vast comparative analysis of every type of known economy, both historical and contemporary. In order to do so, he needed to develop a definition of what constitutes an economy, which was not limited to markets. He found such a definition in Aristotle:

Not choice but livelihood or provisioning is the vision underlying the substantivist definition of the economic system. The vision is expressed in Aristotle’s ‘concept of the economy [as] an institutionalized process through which sustenance is secured’.109

The substantive economy is constituted on two inseparable levels: the process of interaction between humans and their environment, and the institutionalisation of that process.110 Process denotes movement: the movement of materials either in relation to other things, which he terms locational movement and includes production and transportation, or between persons who need them or dispose of them, which he terms

105 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 166. 106 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 166. 107 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', p. 245. 108 This sparked a lengthy and vituperative, though not very fruitful, academic battle between the ‘formalists’ and ‘substantivists’ within economic anthropology. This could perhaps be said to have reached its zenith in the late 1970s with the publication of Scott’s (1976) The Moral Economy of the Peasant, and Popkin’s (1979) formalist response, The Rational Peasant. 109 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 30. 110 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 31.

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appropriational movement.111 Institution effectively denotes culture, though Polanyi does not use that term. The definition of institutions is actually a problem with Polanyi’s work, and one which I explore later in this chapter. Provisionally, we can say that institutions refer to patterned, culturally structured, social interaction. This definition of the economy as an instituted process alters the scope of economic analysis from the formal definition of commodity trade, to any activity that is concerned with provisioning or livelihood:

Activities, insofar as they form part of the process may be called economic; institutions are so called to the extent that they contain a concentration of such activities; any component of the process may be regarded as economic element.112

This is important in the present study of the economies within POW camps, as much of the means by which the men secured a livelihood was not through the trading of commodities in price-making markets, but through other means. To strictly apply the formal definition of the economy would therefore exclude the bulk of the relevant material from the analysis. I have used this substantive definition of the economy to delimit the research, to decide what is relevant to the analysis and what is not.

Polanyi’s typology Polanyi’s starting point, the economy as an instituted process, leads to the methodology of institutional analysis. Using this method to study a vast range of human economies, both past and present, Polanyi identified just three core institutional patterns for the organisation of economic activities in society — redistribution, reciprocity, and exchange — each of which rested on a particular social structure. These patterns are represented in the schematic map shown in Figure 1 and are explained in greater detail below. It is through the recurrence and interdependence of these patterns that an economy is integrated, “ensuring its stability and unity”.113

111 Polanyi (1960), 'On the Comparative Treatment of Economic Institutions in Antiquity', p. 329. 112 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 166. 113 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', pp. 167-8.

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114 Figure 1. Schematic map of the forms of integration.

Reciprocity Reciprocity involves movements between correlative points of symmetrical groups, and therefore assumes a background of symmetrically arranged groupings. Such ‘symmetrically arranged groups’ include relationships such as friendship, kinship, and chieftainship, and the movements typically involve the transfer of resources of equivalent value between correlative points. Reciprocity is not an individual action, but refers specifically to social groups, as Polanyi explains:

A group which deliberately undertook to organise its economic relationships on a reciprocal footing would, to effect its purpose, have to split up into sub-groups, the corresponding members of which could identify one another as such. Members of Group A would then be able to establish relationships of reciprocity with their counterparts in Group B and vice versa.115

While it is most obvious in a system of direct mutuality between two groups, two households for instance, a system of reciprocity can be much more complex and involve more than two groups symmetrically aligned along more than two axes. Furthermore, the members of the group may not mutually reciprocate directly with one another, but instead with members of a third group. Polanyi gives the example of a number of families living in huts that form a circle (as illustrated in Figure 1). Each group might assist their right-hand neighbour, and in turn be assisted not by that neighbour, but by their left-hand neighbour, and so there is a chain of reciprocity, but with no direct mutuality among them.116

114 Adapted from Schaniel and Neale (2000), 'Karl Polanyi's Forms of Integration as Ways of Mapping', p. 90. 115 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 171. 116 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 39.

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Polanyi illustrated this mode of economic activity by drawing on the empirical work of anthropologists Richard Thurnwald and Bronislaw Malinowski. Thurnwald’s study of the marriage system of the Banaro in New Guinea demonstrated what Polanyi described as “the factual connection between reciprocal behaviour on the interpersonal level, on the one hand, and given symmetrical groupings on the other”.117 The value-orientation related to reciprocity is illustrated by Margaret Mead’s example of the Arapesh in New Guinea, where she claims, if there is meat cooking on a man’s fire,

it is either meat which was killed by another, a brother, a brother-in-law, a sister’s son, etc. — and has been given to him, in which case he and his family may eat it, or it is meat which he himself killed and which he is smoking to give away to someone else, for to eat one’s own kill, even though it be only a small bird, is a crime to which only the morally deficient would stoop.118

Such structural arrangements may be temporary or permanent, and the dispositions they generate may be deep or shallow. The structural and cultural context is essential to understanding “an empirical connection between personal attitudes of reciprocity and independently given presence of symmetrical institutions”.119

It may be said that the closer the members of the encompassing community feel drawn to one another, the more general will be the tendency among them to develop reciprocative attitudes in regard to specific relationships limited in space, time or otherwise. Kinship, neighbourhood, or totem belong to the more permanent and comprehensive groupings within their compass voluntary and semi-voluntary associations of a military, vocational, religious or social character would create situations in which at least transitorily or in regard to a given locality, or a typical situation there would form symmetrical groupings the members of which practice some sort of mutuality.120 Here Polanyi also, in passing, acknowledges the emotional as well as attitudinal basis for action, though both are structurally determined.

Redistribution The second mode of activity identified by Polanyi is redistribution. The process of redistribution occurs where the allocation of goods takes place through the centralised collection and distribution by ‘one hand’ by virtue of custom, law or ad hoc central decision. It refers to “economic co-ordination through appropriational movements toward and away from a centre (chief or state), organised through custom, law, or ad hoc central decision”.121 In place of ‘redistribution’, Polanyi sometimes used the term ‘storage-cum-redistribution’, which makes clearer his real meaning. He adapted the

117 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', p. 252. 118 Mead, cited in Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, p. 87, emphasis added. 119 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 38. 120 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 171. 121 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 116.

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term from Thurnwald’s use of ‘distribution’, which he had used as a synonym of Verwaltungswirtschaft, meaning ‘administered economy’,122 and which better captures the structural and power elements of redistributive processes. In his comparative analysis, Polanyi notes that processes of redistribution occur for many reasons “on all civilizational levels, from the primitive hunting tribe to the vast storage systems of ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Babylonia or Peru.”123 He cited the hunt as a simple case of redistribution that requires a division of labour: the game is acquired, collected in a central place, and then distributed for consumption. In social terms, the labour is reunited and the community is established. “But redistribution proper begins with storage, and the presence of a central individual or group that takes charge of the collection and reallocation of goods.”124

Methods of collection in a redistributive system may differ widely, ranging from the simple pooling of a fishing catch to elaborate systems of fiscal activity in modern states. The specific functional reasons for redistribution that Polanyi lists include factors such as differences in climate and soil in large countries; temporal discrepancies between harvesting and consumption; the redistribution of purchasing power for the sake of social values such as in the modern welfare state; and in cases such as hunting, because any other form of distribution would lead to social disintegration, as it relies on a division of labour. The process of redistribution is impossible without a pre-existing institutional basis, as redistribution cannot take place unless there is a recognised centre, and channels through which movement toward the centre and the subsequent movement away from it can happen. “The principle always remains the same – collecting into, and redistributing from, a centre.”125 As Sahlins put the point, “redistribution is chieftainship said in economics”.126

To illustrate the point, Polanyi drew on the example of the Trobriands again. The Trobriand chief is uniquely permitted to be polygamous and can have as many as forty wives. According to the norms of reciprocity explained earlier, the chief therefore receives goods from all of his wives’ brothers. This wealth is stored by him and then redistributed at ceremonial occasions.127 This use of the Trobriand example for both

122 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 116. 123 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 172. 124 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 117. 125 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 172. 126 Sahlins quoted in Dale (2010), p. 117. 127 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 40.

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reciprocity and redistribution demonstrates that more than one institutional process may be present in a given society, and in fact Polanyi claims that all three usually occur together.

Exchange The third process which Polanyi identifies in his typology is exchange. Exchange, which entails a two-way movement of material between two individual entities, is the sole object of formal economics, but in Polanyi’s schema it is generally less important. This is not because Polanyi claims that exchange is unusual, indeed quite the reverse. He claims that exchange of some sort is almost universal. However, his argument is that with the exception of modern capitalist economies, exchange is generally a far less important economic activity in any other known society. Almost all known cultures, he argues, limited the extent of exchange in society:

The limiting factors arise from all points of the sociological compass: custom and law, religion and magic equally contribute to the result, which is to restrict acts of exchange in respect to persons and objects, times and occasion.128

To fully appreciate why this is, it is important to appreciate Polanyi’s definition of markets, and how this differs from the common usage. Polanyi differentiated between three types of exchange: operational exchange, which is merely locational movement; decisional exchange, which is exchange at a set rate; and, integrative exchange, which is exchange that takes place at a bargained rate.129 Only the last form of exchange, integrative exchange, conforms to the formalist expectation that the production and distribution of resources is self-regulated through the supply-demand mechanism of the price system. Polanyi argued that while local markets where people might go daily to shop are common they are of little consequence, because they are not essentially competitive. They are institutions that largely function without, rather than within, a substantive economy. There is an important distinction here: bargaining that may appear to be price-making, can actually be a customary performance around a transaction, and may really be part of redistribution.

As a rule, he who barters merely enters into a ready-made type of transaction in which both the objects and their equivalent amounts are given.130

128 Polanyi (1957), The Great Transformation, p. 61. 129 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', pp. 244-5. 130 Polanyi (1957), The Great Transformation, p. 61.

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This is quite different to true market exchange. In regards to substantive bargaining behaviour, which Polanyi termed ‘higgling-haggling’, or exchange at fluctuating prices, each party is trying to get the better of the other, so there is a distinctively antagonistic attitude, which erodes social solidarity.

Integration Having identified the three core modes of economic activity, Polanyi’s typology then moves on to the question of integration. Indeed, he termed these three processes ‘forms of integration’ and this concept is central to his method of institutional analysis. Polanyi argued that “the study of the shifting place occupied by the economy in society” is actually a study of how “the economic process is instituted at different times and places”.131 The starting point for the analyst is to identify the:

way in which the economy acquires its unity and stability, that is the interdependence and recurrence of its parts. This is achieved through a very few patterns, which may be called forms of integration.132

These three forms of integration, which Krippner usefully describes as institutional patterns that represent different ways of organising economic activities,133 are generally not found in isolation, and are in fact elements which are more or less present in all societies. However, only one of them can be said to be integrative.

Integration is present in the economic process to the extent that those movements of goods and persons…are institutionalised so as to create interdependence among the movements…Forms of integration thus designate the institutionalised movements through which elements of the economic process…are connected.134

The dominance of a particular form of integration points to the underlying structure, as less important institutional traits “tend to structurally adjust to these ‘characteristic’ ones”.135 To draw once again on the Trobrian examples given earlier, we saw that through the process of redistribution the chief would redress the imbalance caused by his polygamy in the reciprocity processes. So although that particular example is one of redistribution, it is adjusted to fit in with the broader economic system, which is integrated by reciprocity. Chris Hann explicates the link between structures of power

131 Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, p. 148. 132 Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, pp. 148-9. 133 Krippner (2002), 'The Elusive Market: Embeddedness and the Paradigm of Economic Sociology', p. 779. 134 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 35. 135 Polanyi (1960), 'On the Comparative Treatment of Economic Institutions in Antiquity', p. 332.

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and forms of integration when he comments that reciprocity is the prime mode in societies where there is no dominant central political force (such as in the Trobriand case), whereas redistribution is appropriate as a form of integration in cases where there is a strong dominant political force (such as the potlatch on the North West Coast of North America where the chiefs were much more powerful).136 Redistribution need not be a movement from the richer to poorer members of a community, as with the Trobriand case, and indeed Polanyi claimed that most redistribution actually transfers resources in the other direction.137 In the potlatch, subjects channelled resources toward the centre, to their chiefs, who “famously destroyed much of this wealth in orgies of conspicuous consumption”.138 So although redistributive processes occur in each of these examples, the underlying structure is revealed in that the essential element of symmetrical structural locations in the Trobriand case trumps the status of chiefs, and this structure is reinforced through the redistribution which conforms to the integrating factor of reciprocity whereas in the potlatch, redistribution is both a consequence of and reinforcement of elite status.

The integrating factor is less obvious in more differentiated societies with more complex economies where there is a significant amount of exchange that appears to be more important, particularly where that takes place in market places. This is where it is essential to appreciate Polanyi’s distinction between exchange which is peripheral to other integrating factors, and to integrative exchange. His extensive work on ancient empires and ports of trade is important in this regard, though there is no space to go into much detail here.139 Suffice to say that his general finding is that although there was a lot of trade, institutionalised trade, in the pre-modern world, including complex international trade between vast empires, thorough and detailed examination of these exchanges reveals that the economies were not integrated by trade, and that what appears to be market exchange is actually exchange integrated by redistribution.

Trade for Polanyi is defined broadly as “a method of acquiring goods which are not available on the spot”. Unlike piracy or plunder, what distinguishes it is its two-sidedness, and this is linked to its peaceful character…In archaic trade…the market and gift forms are marginal; it is predominately ‘administered’ by states, or by semi-political bodies such as chartered companies. Prices and other

136 Hann (2006), 'The Gift and Reciprocity: Perspectives from Economic Anthropology'. 137 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, pp. 116-7. 138 Hann (2006), 'The Gift and Reciprocity: Perspectives from Economic Anthropology', p. 211. 139 His research in this field is primarily published in Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (1957), Dahomey and the Slave Trade (1966), and The Livelihood of Man (1977).

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terms (including provisions for the safety of trade routes) are negotiated, in a process that involves “diplomatic higgling-haggling”, but once the treaty is signed all bargaining ceases.140

Although the archaeological record may reveal evidence of busy market places, this is not in itself evidence of a market mechanism, which Polanyi argued is “beyond the most nimble spade”. It is easy to locate an open space where people in the past met and exchanged goods,

it is much less easy to determine whether, as a result of their behaviour, exchange rates were fluctuating, and if so, whether the supply of goods offered was changing in response to the … movement of those rates.141

He found that that the trade in these ‘market places’ lacked the crucial criterion of price-making and the supply-demand mechanism that defines a market. Although there was complex division of labour, international trading networks, money dealing, banking and arbitrage, markets and trade were institutionalised separately from each other and did not form a market system.142 For example, Polanyi coined the term ‘port of trade’ for a specific form of international trade that took place in non-market economies. This is trade in administered economies, between different cultures and different economic systems, but operational methods and principles are quite different from the supply- demand-price mechanism of contemporary international trade. This trade tended to be in luxury goods not obtainable at home, and this administered archaic trade was less influenced by cost differentials than is international trade in the competitive world economy today. The luxury goods that were being traded were for a small elite, so fluctuations in their prices did not flow through and affect the rest of the economy anyway. Other goods traded included items such as corn, slaves, and precious metals, which lend themselves to administrative control.143 These were fundamentally agrarian societies, the bulk of the population were self-sufficient peasants whose livelihood was not market reliant at all. They could offload their surplus at local markets but this is a very different matter from producing for the market. Except where prices were regulated by custom or decree, peasants were likely to accept any price for their wares, as there was no advantage in keeping the surplus at home. They weren’t producing for the market, so a supply-demand mechanism could not be said to be in

140 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 143. 141 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 26. 142 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, pp. 17-18. 143 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, pp. 43-4.

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action.144 Thus, although there is evidence of widespread trade occurring, these are not economies integrated by exchange, because these do not link up to form a self- regulating system. What seems to be a market society is actually integrated by redistribution. For a more familiar example, Polanyi points to the Christmas trade in Western cultures. The Christmas trade is organised along lines of reciprocity, even though it is conducted through market exchange, and takes place in a market- dominated society.145 The existence of an institutionalised reciprocal economic activity does not mean that the broader economy is integrated by reciprocity. The dominant mechanism is that “to which the integration of the factors of production, land and labour is primarily due.”146

The instituting of the economic process vests that process with unity and stability; it produces a structure with a definite function in society; it shifts the place of the process in society, thus adding significance to its history; it centres on values, motives and policy. Unity and stability, structure and function, history and policy spell out operationally the content of our assertion that the human economy is an instituted process.147 This leads on to the key concept of embeddedness.

Embeddedness and Disembeddedness Polanyi’s concept of embeddedness, and how it differs from that of the NES, can only really be appreciated in the context of his broader conceptual framework, his substantive definition of the economy and the forms of integration. It is odd that contemporary economic sociology has taken up Granovetter’s version of embeddedness rather than Polanyi’s, which has a much longer sociological lineage and engages with key themes from sociological classics.148

Max Weber was the first among modern economic historians to protest against the brushing aside of primitive economies as irrelevant to the question of motives and mechanisms of civilised societies. The subsequent work of social anthropology proved him emphatically right…The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships.149

144 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 145. 145 Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, p. 309. 146 Polanyi (1953) (unpublished), 'Semantics of General Economic History', p. 7, cited in Dale (2010), p. 117. 147 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', pp. 249-50. 148 Indeed, Chajewski argues convincingly that the NES is quite incompatible with Polanyi, but that Polanyi’s thesis “can be rejected only if one is willing to deny the core thesis of the classic tradition in economic sociology. At present, there is a troubling disconnect between modern economic sociology and the sociological tradition.” Chajewski (2000), 'Forms of Social Determination of Economic Behavior', p. 15. 149 Polanyi (1957), The Great Transformation, pp. 45-6.

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Although he only used the word ‘embeddedness’ twice in his major work, The Great Transformation, the concept is “shorthand for the method of analysis developed throughout his body of work”, and is most clearly explicated in ‘The Economy as an Instituted Process’.150 Humans rely on their interaction with nature for their livelihoods, but they do this in a social context, so their livelihoods depend also on their interactions with other people. Institutedness refers to this dimension of human life — its essential sociality. These patterns of human interaction, the socially embedded context in which material goods are moved about, are the institutionalisation of the processes. Whereas the formalist position limits economic analysis to market transactions, the substantivist position extends it to include everything related to the process of provisioning, including the non-economic. This is really the key point of Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness. It is the fact that, contrary to the assumptions of rational action and the assertion that economy and society are separate entities, the economy is actually embedded in, and indeed subject to, society.

The human economy, then, is embedded and enmeshed in institutions, economic and noneconomic. The inclusion of the noneconomic is vital. For religion or government may be as important for the structure and functioning of the economy as monetary institutions or the availability of tools and machines themselves that lighten the toil of labour.151

So Polanyi points to the need to examine the institutional context in which human action is ‘embedded and enmeshed’, explicitly including non-economic institutions, in order to understand economic activity. “Implicit in the concept is a fluid mixing of what more conventional social science accounts would distinguish as ‘economic’ and ‘social’ factors.”152 Here the embeddedness concept directly contradicts the formalist assumptions of atomised individuals maximising their utility and seeks instead to understand the socially embedded motivations for human action. From this flows a methodology that is inductive rather than the deductive, as Stanfield argues:

For economic analysis of the economistic ilk, there is no call to delve into the concrete aspirations, powers, foibles of the lives of given people. Economic analysis knows a priori what it needs to know about their lives; it knows in advance what constitutes their economic problem. In effect, economic analysis need not know the people whose economic activities it is bent on studying…It virtually guarantees that the actual needs, wants, motives, and interests of any given people will not be ferreted out, described, and analysed – unless, of course, the concrete human situation happens to match those postulated by the formalist perspective.153

150 Krippner (2002), 'The Elusive Market', pp. 779. 151 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', pp. 250. 152 Krippner (2002), 'The Elusive Market', pp. 779. 153 Stanfield (1986), The Economic Thought of Karl Polanyi, p. 44.

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Instead, the embeddedness approach seeks to understand those needs through institutional analysis. Each of these patterns of integration assumes definite institutional supports. They are not merely aggregates of individual behaviour at a personal level, as these do not produce structures.154 To map the flows of material in the processes is not enough. As Polanyi argues, while one can construct diagrams representing the movements of goods and persons in the economy, as I have done earlier in this chapter, such diagrams can serve no more than a formal purpose, as they cannot explain how the movements they represent can occur, nor how these movements bring about integrative effects. “To have such effect, and indeed to come about at all, such movements require the presence of definite structures in society.”155 It is not the individual psychology of actors that is meaningful, but rather the cultural context that influences the way that they act.

In the absence of any indication of societal conditions from which the motives of the individuals spring, there would be little, if anything, to sustain the interdependence of the movements and their recurrence on which the unity and stability of the process depends. The interacting elements of nature and humanity would form no coherent unit, in effect, no structural entity that could be said to have a function in society or to possess a history.156

What Polanyi calls motives and motivations (which is what Webers calls ‘ethics’, and Bourdieu calls ‘dispositions’) is a normative system, a part of culture. Stanfield summarises Polanyi’s position, and elaborates the importance of cultural aspects of social processes of securing a livelihood, particularly the importance of understanding social norms in institutional analysis:

In other words, the economy involves two sets of interaction. Nature imposes on mankind the necessity of interacting with his natural environment in order to sustain his livelihood. For one man, the isolated Robinson Crusoe, the economy would be reduced to this level... In a true social economy, however, [it] is also necessary that the individual have a working knowledge of other participants in the social economy. As Adolph Lowe observes, it is essentially a system of communication and sanction. The individual needs to be informed of what is expected of him in certain situations, and what he can expect of others. He also needs to know what sanctions exist and will be applied to ensure expected behaviour. This system of communication and sanction, spanning the spectrum from personal moral responsibility to social accountability, is the institutedness of the substantive economy. The economic system, or the economic function of social activity, is therefore a more or less systematic and orderly pattern of social behaviour which functions to provision the material wherewithal necessary to support social and individual life.157

154 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', p. 251. 155 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 36. 156 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', p. 249. 157 Stanfield (1986), The Economic Thought of Karl Polanyi, pp. 37-8, italics original.

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It is a normative system, a cultural system. Indeed, Polanyi’s protégé Marshall Sahlins argues that the substantivist conception of the economy sees it “as a component of culture rather than a kind of human action, the material life process of society rather than a need-satisfying process of individual behaviour.”158

There is controversy around the embeddedness concept and the way that it is deployed in The Great Transformation. Very briefly, Polanyi’s argument in The Great Transformation is that in the nineteenth century, for the first time in history, a society existed which actually resembled the liberal economists’ vision of society. Prior to that time, economic activity was so deeply embedded that it was rendered invisible, there was no separate economic sphere. However, through the commodification of land, labour and money, the fear of starvation and pursuit of gain became the motivation for economic action and an ‘economic sphere’ that was delimitated from other institutions came into existence. The economy was, therefore, disembedded. As humans cannot survive without a “functioning productive apparatus” society had to adjust, and the self- regulating “market mechanism became determinative for the life of the body social”.159 In other words, the society and culture had to adjust and became subject to the market economy. However, so grievous was the experience of social erosion that followed that there was a ‘double movement,’ a spontaneous reaction, which sought to reassert social protection, in the form of decommodification and the social policies of welfare states that protected society from the full force of a true self-regulating market system.

The idea that there could be such a thing as disembeddedness has caused quite a bit of debate and confusion. Polanyi is often cited positively by contemporary economic sociologists for the concept of the ‘always embedded economy’, but this seems to be contradicted by his work in The Great Transformation when he acknowledges an empirically separate, and therefore disembedded, economy. Scholars such Kurtulus Gemici argues that these two uses of embeddedness are contradictory and irreconcilable. Gemici argues that Polanyi employed embeddedness in a dual manner: 1) as a methodological principle akin to methodological holism that contradicts the neoclassical assertion of a distinctive and separate economic sphere, and instead asserts the always socially embedded economy; and 2) in The Great Transformation, as a theoretical proposition on the changing place of economy in society, from embedded to disembedded. Gemici asserts that these two formulations are

158 Sahlins (1972), Stone Age Economics, 186n, italics original. 159 Polanyi (1947), 'Our Obsolete Market Mentality', p. 111.

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contradictory and that only the former is acceptable, but that even then it falls short of providing a theoretical alternative to neoclassical economics.160 Such critiques seem rather to have missed the point. The NES approach often takes the market for granted, equating embeddedness with social interaction, and rejects the idea of disembeddedness altogether. In other words, market activity is a form of economic action, and economic action is a form of social interaction, a form of social relation, and the actors are not atomised as posited by neoclassical economic theory. I shall return to this shortly after first addressing the other of Gemici’s critique of Polanyian embeddedness, that it is an inadequate critique of neoclassical economics. This is really to conflate Polanyi’s use of embeddedness and the quite narrow, indeed antithetical, construction of embeddedness current in much of the NES that equates embeddedness with location within a social network. As Krippner argues, Polanyi’s critique of neoclassical economics and homo oeconomicus was based on a quite different strategy. “Polanyi did not so much reject as attempt to historicise the self- interested, maximising agent.” His critique was not that neoclassical economics was flawed because it decontextualised economic behaviour, but rather that economists falsely generalised from conditions that were approximately and uniquely true in the nineteenth century to situations in which they patently do not apply.161 That is to say, Polanyi’s focus on the structural motivations for action highlighted that the motives claimed by neoclassical economics as universal and eternal162 — fear of hunger and pursuit of gain — are neither universal nor eternal, but historically and culturally specific.

The institutional structure of the economy need not compel, as with the market system, economizing actions.163 If an individual is hungry, there is nothing definite for him to do…With man, the political animal, everything is given not by natural, but by social circumstance. What made the 19th century think of hunger and gain as ‘economic’ was simply the organisation of production under a market economy.164

160 Gemici (2008), 'Karl Polanyi and the Antinomies of Embeddedness'. 161 Krippner and Alvarez (2007), 'Embeddedness and the Intellectual Projects of Economic Sociology', p. 227. 162 Stanfield use of the term ‘ethnocentrism’ appropriately emphasises the cultural relativity that actually applies, Stanfield (1980), 'The Institutional Economics of Karl Polanyi'; Stanfield (1986), The Economic Thought of Karl Polanyi. 163 Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, pp. 117-8. 164 Polanyi (1947), 'Our Obsolete Market Mentality', p. 111.

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Adopting the impoverished notion of embeddedness used by the NES is also a logical reason to reject the idea of disembeddedness. However, Polanyian embeddedness means a lot more than social interaction, and the disembeddedness process charted in The Great Transformation does not refer to the removal of social or cultural context. As Ingham argues, “the circulation of goods by means of the market price mechanism has its own particular normative basis” to the same extent as the more obvious cases of reciprocal or redistributive normative systems.165 Gareth Dale, who has recently studied Polanyi’s unpublished papers, claims that Polanyi studied Tönnies more closely than any other author.166 Dale argues that uncertainty at the methodological level over whether embedded (or disembedded) economy is a descriptive empirical term or an ideal type, meaning that one could talk about degrees of ‘enmeshment’ or embeddedness, follows directly from the ambiguity of its Tönnesian predecessor. Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft can be taken as different types of societies, or as different types of relations that take place in one society.167 Gareth Dale argues persuasively that a key to understanding Polanyi’s formulation of embeddedness and substantivism is to realise the importance of the influence of Ferdinand Tönnies and his distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Polanyi equates societies based on status or Gemeinschaft with “those in which the economy is embedded in non- economic institutions. Policy in such societies is geared to satisfying socially determined needs.” The members of such societies tend to suppress egotistical behaviour in favour of their role within the collective whole. In societies based on contract, or Gesellschaft, by contrast, the sphere of economic exchange is “institutionally separate and distinct”. In Gesellschaft the economy is governed by laws of its own and ultimately motivated by the incentives of fear, hunger and hope of gain. Priority is accorded to “the chrematistic needs of personal acquisitiveness”. The “socialization pressures” encourage them “to respond solely to their own wants…In short, they are individuals who act as homo oeconomicus”.168 This link to the key concerns of classical sociology is explicitly referenced in the following quote from Polanyi:

In Maine’s famous phrase, “contractus” replaced “status”; or, as Tönnies preferred to put it, “society” superseded “community”; or, in the terms of the present article, instead of the economic

165 Ingham (1996), 'The New Economic Sociology', p. 555. 166 Dale (2008), 'Karl Polanyi's the Great Transformation: Perverse Effects, Protectionism and Gemeinschaft', p. 504. 167 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 193. 168 Watson (2005), Foundations of International Political Economy, p. 97.

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system being embedded in social relationships, these relationships were now embedded in the economic system.169

This, of course, parallels Durkheim’s notions of mechanical and organic solidarity, and his famous dictum that the basis of all contracts is non-contractual. As Matthew Watson put it, skilfully drawing out the connectedness between moral, motivational and structural aspects of the term, embeddedness:

is the social control of economic relations through institutional means, where a link can be drawn between embeddedness and the social obligation to act in a morally dutiful manner. Insofar as ‘the market’ imposes purely functional character traits on individuals, the moral dimension of economic activity is increasingly dissolved.170

Polanyi’s embeddedness framework, then, is very similar to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. In so far as he or she is endowed with a habitus, the social agent is a collective individual or a collective individuated by the fact of embodying objective structures. The individual, the subjective, is social and collective. The habitus is socialized subjectivity, a historic transcendental, whose schemes of perception and appreciation (systems of preferences, tastes etc.) are a product of collective and individual history. Reason (or rationality) is ‘bounded‘ not only, as Herbert Simon believes, because the human mind is generically bounded (there is nothing new in that idea), but because it is socially structured and determined, and, as a consequence, limited...That said, habitus is in no sense a mechanical principle of action or, more exactly, of reaction (it is not ‘reflex’). It is conditioned and limited spontaneity.171

Bourdieu is also explicitly critical of the NES. His critique is linked to both its adherence to (modified) rational actor theory, and its failure to offer a better alternative explanation for economic action.

That is precisely what is ignored by both the economic theory which records and ratifies a particular, historically situated and dated, case of the economic habitus under the name ‘rational action theory’, without any consideration of the economic and social conditions that make it possible, because it takes it for granted, and the ‘new economic sociology’ which, for lack of having a genuine theory of the economic agent, adopts ‘rational action theory’ by default and fails to historicize economic dispositions which, in the economic field, have a social genesis.172

This is the nub of what I am seeking to understand in this study: why did the POWs develop their economies as they did? Network theory cannot satisfactorily answer that question.

169 Polanyi (1947), 'Our Obsolete Market Mentality', p. 144, emphasis original. 170 Watson (2005), Foundations of International Political Economy, p. 153. 171 Bourdieu (2005), The Social Structures of the Economy, p. 211. 172 Bourdieu (2000), 'Making the Economic Habitus', p. 18.

50 Chapter 2 Theoretical Considerations: Polanyian Embeddedness

While I am drawing on the Polanyian framework, there are problems with his work, and some of the criticisms of it are pertinent to this study. Although the concept of institutions is central to his work, Polanyi rarely explicitly defined institutions, but where he did the definition shifts, as Gareth Dale’s research shows. In unpublished notes from 1944 he defines institutions as “patterns of law, custom or habit which can be associated with some purpose or function” whereby the “purpose or function is what [the institution] achieves from the point of view of the community. In other words, the service which it renders to the community”.173 This is problematic when it comes to The Great Transformation in which he was arguing that an institution can potentially destroy a society. He had already acknowledged this problem in a letter to his brother Michael in 1943 in which he reasoned that “unless an institution can, potentially, destroy a society, it’s no use arguing the self-protection of society, etc., as I do.” Instead, he informed his brother, he chose to redefine institutions “in terms of mechanisms. An institution which ‘serves’ a society could never destroy it – that is why I must eliminate the functional (or organic) definitions altogether”.174 Later he defines economic institutions as mechanisms of social unification and integration.175 Effectively, he moves between these definitions depending on what type of economy is under analysis.

For non-market societies, institutions are seen as their organs, implicitly defining the research agenda as explaining social integration, stability and unity. For liberal market society, institutions are mechanisms, and the emphasis of research is explaining disintegration, instability and disunity. Unless, like light, institutions can be defined in two manifestly different ways, Polanyi snagged himself in a definitional tangle. In both conceptualisations, domination and compulsion are noticeable by their absence.176

Institutions that form the motivation for action are vitally important to the analysis, because merely tracing the movement of material through the camp economies tells us very little about the core question of why the different national groups behaved so differently. As it will hopefully be clear from my further discussion, the empirical findings of this study point clearly to the importance of culture in shaping economic action. The prisoners entered the camps with very little beyond their culture and military organisation. They encountered similar conditions, and each national group responded quite differently. Furthermore, each national group displayed similar patterns across

173 Polanyi, unpublished, 'Notes on primitive economics', quoted in Dale (2010), p. 122, emphasis original. 174 unpublished, quoted in Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 122. 175 Polanyi (1960), 'On the Comparative Treatment of Economic Institutions in Antiquity'; Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, p. 308. 176 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 122.

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hundreds of camps. An individualist perspective cannot adequately account for these patterns because individualism ought to result either in uniformity or randomness. On the other hand, a Polanyian substantivist perspective specifically addresses the importance of understanding economy as a cultural form — economy is embedded in society. For my purposes I am adapting his 1944 definition of institutions by removing the reference to functionalism, and understanding it simply as “patterns of law, custom or habit”. In other words, a normative system.

Conclusion This study is concerned with understanding the importance of culture in shaping economic activity, and it does so through the use of a quasi-experimental empirical set of events. In searching for a theoretical framework for the analysis I found that the leading strand of contemporary economic sociology, the so-called ‘New Economic Sociology’, was not particularly useful for my purposes. However, the use of the term embeddedness led me to the work of Karl Polanyi, which was very useful in providing a framework and tools for the analysis of culture and economic activity.

The next chapter provides some context for the three empirical/analytical chapters that follow it. They in turn are followed by a concluding chapter in which I return to some of the themes mentioned here.

Chapter 3 The Context of Captivity: Background to Empirical Material

Introduction The first chapter introduced the problem and the methodology employed in the investigation, and the second outlined some theoretical considerations necessary to understand it. This chapter provides necessary background on the economic organisation of the camps, as well as some of the broader cultural and historical context. The economic activity examined in this thesis took place in the unusual conditions found in Japanese POW camps during WWII. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the reader with a basic, general understanding of the context of the imprisonment of Allied combatants by the Japanese during WWII, in order to contextualise the events described in subsequent chapters.

Japanese and Western Norms of POW Treatment The ways of warfare are an aspect of culture. An important factor to appreciate in what follows is the cultural clash between captive and captor, which derived from the vastly different Western and Japanese normative expectations of the conduct of warfare, particularly with regard to surrender and the treatment of POWs. This section will outline some of the key Western norms as they were codified in The Hague and Geneva Conventions, with reference to their historical development, and then move on to the Japanese norms at that time and their development.

The Historical Development of Western Norms The Western norms of POW camps at that time were codified in The Hague and Geneva Conventions. These documents provided a set of rules governing not only how prisoners should be humanely treated, but also covering a range of aspects of the economic organisation of prisoner of war camps. Japan had ratified The Hague Convention but not the Geneva Convention, and felt bound by neither. Nonetheless,

53 Chapter 3 The Context of Captivity: Background to the Empirical Material

the articles of the Conventions are interesting to examine because, although they were only partly adhered to177, they provide the context for the prisoners’ own expectations about the conditions of their captivity, and provide an insight into the norms of the Western military institutions upon which this part of international law is based. For contemporary readers unfamiliar with military norms, there are some surprising aspects to these documents. It is well known that the Geneva Convention seeks to protect prisoners of war from abuse and inhumane treatment. However, it is less well known that the Convention also contains a series of provisions for the economic organisation of POW camps which establish a set of norms for economic activity and organisation within the context of imprisonment.

The practice of imprisoning captured troops for extended periods of time is a modern practice, dating back only to the end of eighteenth century in Europe. Taking prisoners obviously reduces the number of active enemy combatants, but prisoners impose a significant cost on their captors. In most prehistoric societies, rather than carry the burden of looking after prisoners, captured combatants were usually killed. In ancient times they were sometimes enslaved, as was the usual Roman practice, or sometimes they might be ransomed, as the Greeks tended to do.178 In the Middle Ages, common soldiers continued to face death or enslavement, but the development of chivalric practices meant that those Europeans of higher status who were captured could ransom themselves.179 The higher a prisoner’s status, the higher the rate of ransom that could be charged. Hence, there was an incentive to treat high status prisoners well. In the seventeenth century, when it was accepted that Christians ought not enslave other Christians, the concept of ransom was expanded to include Christian prisoners of lower status. Ransom remained common practice well into the eighteenth century, and there arose alongside it the practice of prisoner exchanges. This entailed attempts to establish rates of equivalencies, with ransoms set according to rank, and exchanges were carried out on the basis of rank-for-rank. The side with a surplus of prisoners charged the ransom for the return of the remaining men.180 At the same time, the practice of giving officers parole became fairly common under the system of parole

177 Of course, the degree to which these Conventions were adhered to by the other Axis and Allied powers varied greatly. For instance, Germany generally treated her Australian POWs far better than her Russians POWs. The important point is not really the actuality of the treatment of POWs, but rather the normative expectations of how they should be treated. 178 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy and Practice from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, p. 11; Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 68. 179 Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 68. 180 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', pp.13-14.

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d’honneur. A paroled officer was returned to his own lines to await a formal exchange, having given his oath that he would not participate in the conflict until the formal exchange had taken place. This system of parole required mutual trust, but it allowed for the balancing of numbers without the burden of maintaining a prisoner until an exchange could be carried out.181 The system of parole d’honneur was not based on formal agreements between states, but rather “reflected the shared cultural values of an international order of gentlemen. The right of parole was reserved only to officers, deemed to be gentlemen.”182 As Joan Beaumont points out, the development of this system, reflects not only deep social inequality within European societies and armies, but also the culture of honour and mutual respect among officers.

For many centuries, in fact, officers of the armies of Europe had more in common with each other, sharing a common code of military honour and a sense of cultural community, than they did with their own men. For this reason, even when the officer prisoner of war lost his direct pecuniary value to his captor, as he did when ransom gave way to exchange of prisoners of war in the nineteenth century, he could still expect to receive preferential treatment. His chances of being repatriated quickly were much higher than those of other ranks, and his conditions of captivity were vastly superior.183 As we shall see, this status distinction remained a feature of Western military norms into the twentieth century.

The first case where POWs were held for extended periods was during the Napoleonic Wars (c.1799–1815), in which over 102,000 French prisoners were held in Britain, in some cases for more than a decade.184 Holding such a vast number of French185 prisoners, an unprecedented problem, meant that the British had to improvise policies to contain and maintain them. Negotiations between France and Britain over the exchange of prisoners broke down because, although Britain held many times as many French prisoners as the French did British troops, the Napoleonic regime had calculated that it was to France’s advantage not to participate in the customary exchange of prisoners..186 It is no coincidence that the system of exchange broke down, relying as it did on the vestiges of chivalric norms among noble officers, and that

181 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', p.13; Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions', pp. 635-6. 182 Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions: French Prisoners of War in Britain', pp. 635-6?. 183 Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 68 184 Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions', p. 362. 185 The prisoners were not all ethnically French, but rather came from a range of nations within the Napoleonic empire, including Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Sweden. 186 By 1814 there were around 70,000 French prisoners in Britain, compared to only 16,000 British prisoners being held in France: Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions', p. 363.

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the first POW camps as we think of them today were established to hold prisoners from post-revolutionary France. Gavin Daly187 argues convincingly that the new French attitudes and practices should be understood as a consequence of the French Revolution. Many of the military practices of the past were abandoned and new conceptions of war emerged. Officer status was no longer restricted to the nobility and large numbers of commoners entered the officer corps. Traditional aristocratic values had given way to an emphasis on citizenship and republican virtue. It is against this background of the partial demise of the ancien régime norms guiding warfare that new modern practices were developed during the Napoleonic Wars.

Because the French refused to play by the rules of the ancien régime the surprised British had to find ways to deal with the large and growing numbers of prisoners that were to remain in their custody for unknown periods of time.188 There was insufficient space to hold such large numbers of prisoners in existing prisons and on prison hulks, which led to the construction of the first purpose-built POW camp at Norman Cross in Cambridgeshire, and later to the construction of prisons such as those at Dartmoor and Perth.189 In improvising ways to deal with this new situation, there are interesting parallels between the actions of the British in their treatment of the French POWs during the Napoleonic Wars and the Japanese treatment of their POWs during the Second World War. Just as the Japanese were overwhelmed by the sheer number of prisoners, and unable to provide sufficient guards, so too were the British. Faced with frequent escapes, the British instituted a system of severe punishments, which included transportation for local civilians who aided escaped POWs. On the hulks, prisoners were held responsible for their comrades: if one member of a squad or mess escaped, all the other members were punished. The French enacted similar laws, called travaux forcés.190 During WWII, the Japanese acted according to the same principle, though much more severely, executing civilians who aided POWs and executing nine prisoners for each one who attempted to escape. Similarly, these French prisoners of the British also encountered chronic scarcity, though nowhere near the level of that suffered by the prisoners of the Japanese. Nonetheless, rations were meagre and the POWs engaged in a variety of economic activities to improve their lot, ranging from officially approved and facilitated manufacturing to currency forgery.

187 Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions', pp. 369-371. 188 Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions', p. 373 189 For more detail see Walker (1913), The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross Huntingdonshire, 1796 to 1816. and Griffiths (1899), 'Old War Prisons in England and France'. 190 Griffiths (1899), 'Old War Prisons in England and France', p. 171.

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Skilled craftsmen were able to sell their wares at special markets held at each of the prisons, and through traders who were permitted onto the hulks. Some prisoners made fortunes through these trades, leaving captivity with one or two thousand pounds saved. Others found themselves in situations of prolonged and dire poverty, having gambled away all their possessions, including their bedding and clothing, and were also starving due to having sold or gambled their future meals, living on scrounged bits of food such as onion skins and fish heads.191 There was social stratification within the prisons. At the bottom were the destitute gamblers; next were those who were not quite destitute, but were unable to improve their lot and were living off the rations alone. Above them were the labourers and craftsmen who were able to improve their condition either by selling their manufactured goods to civilians, or by selling their labour to the state or to civilians, working in construction and so forth. Above these were the ‘lords’, who were able to access capital and use it to open shops within the prisons, selling supplies such as coffee and soap to their comrades.192 The similarities between some of these outcomes and those of the Japanese camps explored in subsequent chapters are striking. The large number of prisoners also created problems for the British in terms of employing sufficient staff to run the prisons. As was the case in the Japanese camps, the prisoners themselves conducted much of the internal camp administration and organisation. These first modern prisoners of war achieved social order through self-government in a remarkably democratic fashion. There was elected representation in each of the prisons from each of the ‘classes’ described above, there were formal constitutions, and even they had their own internal law enforcement and courts, and punishments that sometimes included execution for prisoners who stole from others.193

French officers were treated very differently from other ranks. While the traditional system of exchange and parole had broken down, and the other ranks were held in wretched conditions in prisons, under the improvised policies that were enacted, officers were granted a new form of parole, which allowed them to live in one of fifty designated parole towns, under the supervision of a parole agent. By 1814 there were around 4,000 French officers on parole in Britain.194

191 Griffiths (1899), 'Old War Prisons in England and France', p. 169. 192 Griffiths (1899), 'Old War Prisons in England and France', pp. 170-1. 193 Griffiths (1899), 'Old War Prisons in England and France', pp. 170-1. 194 Daly (2004), 'Napoleon's Lost Legions', p. 365.

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This first incidence of mass incarceration of prisoners of war was an important event in establishing the new rules of warfare that would be developed in modernity. Against the background of the end of the ancien régime, new norms were developed for the treatment of POWs. Vestiges of the old system remained, particularly the differential treatment of officers and other ranks, but there was also novelty in what would become an important set of precedents for practices in the twentieth century.

The next war in which prisoners were held for extended periods, and another war that was to have lasting impact on the treatment of POWs, and also involved a post- revolutionary culture. This was the American Civil War (1861–1865). The American Civil War was not only the next war in which large numbers of prisoners were held for long periods, but it was also important in the development of new norms and rules that would be adopted by European powers and become established in international law. The long duration of the war was unexpected, as was the vast number of POWs. The scale of the POW population was significantly greater even than it had been during than the Napoleonic Wars. Attempts at systems of parole and exchange collapsed, which resulted in large numbers of prisoners being held for long periods of time in improvised concentration camps with little shelter, inadequate supplies and little medical assistance. By the end of this war, over 674,000 prisoners had been taken, of whom more than 400,000 were still incarcerated. Significantly, 56,000 died in captivity, which was a much greater mortality rate than that faced on the battlefield.195

The most notorious of these camps was Andersonville in Georgia. The events that took place there are illustrative of the broader problems of the Civil War POW camps, and these conditions were important in the development of later policy. Of the approximately 45,000 POWs at Andersonville, 12,912 (32%) died in confinement. There was not only a lack of food, but also a lack of basic shelter and clothing. Some of the social conditions at Andersonville would be echoed in the American dominated Japanese camps during WWII. Unlike the democratic organisation in the Napoleonic POW camps, the prisoners at Andersonville resorted to desperate measures to survive. Gangs preyed upon their fellow captives, robbing them of valuables that could be traded with guards, stealing their clothing, blankets and food.196 Such conditions and such a high mortality rate was not unique to Andersonville. The North had more resources and a greater capacity to house and feed Confederate prisoners, yet the

195 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', pp. 104-5. 196 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', pp. 125-7.

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overall mortality rate in the Union prison camps was virtually identical to that of the Confederate camps.197 Officers were given preferential treatment but, rather than being paroled, they were kept in camps for the first time. They were, however, kept in separate camps from the other ranks and this established the precedent for the separation of prisoners according to status. While the other ranks were suffering appalling conditions, and literally starving to death, most of the complaints made by officer prisoners were to do with the boredom of camp life.198

It was to avoid the kinds of conditions that resulted in such high mortality rates with this novel practice of large-scale long-term imprisonment of captured combatants that new rules for the treatment of POWs were developed. While few of the prisoners of the Japanese are likely to have been aware of it, it was against this background of historical events of the Napoleonic and American Civil Wars, that the new Western norms of warfare that were current at the time of their incarceration had been developed and codified in a series of international agreements. The First World War, in which somewhere between seven and eight and a half million combatants were held prisoners of war,199 is obviously significant, but does not add much of importance for our purposes. The laws governing the treatment of POWs were developed in response to the Napoleonic and American Civil Wars. They were further refined following the First World War, but were not significantly changed by the time of the Second World War.

International Law on the Treatment of POWs The template for the agreements that were extant in international law at the time of the Second World War was the American Lieber Code. On 24 April 1863, the United States War Department issued the most important and detailed provisions for the treatment of POWs in American history: General Orders No. 100 (also known as the Lieber Code). Francis Lieber, a professor of history and political economy at Colombia who had previously advised on international law regarding guerrilla warfare, was asked to propose changes to the Rules of Articles of War. Of the 157 articles he proposed, 38 are devoted to the capture, maintenance, and release of POWs.200 As Richard Hardigan argued, “Never before had a government set down in clear, explicit, formal

197 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', p. 131. 198 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', pp. 125-36. 199 Davis (1977), 'Prisoners of War in Twentieth-Century War Economies', p.623. 200 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', pp. 121-2.

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terms not only the rights and obligations of its own army, but of its enemy’s army and civil population as well.”201 The Lieber Code established that the fate of prisoners was no longer to be at the whim of their captors. The Code specified that captured combatants were in the custody of the capturing government, and not the unit or individuals who captured them. Prisoners could not be ill-treated, nor killed nor enslaved. The Lieber Code also established the principle of reciprocity. No unit had the right to declare that it would give no quarter, and if they did give no quarter in practice, they could expect the same treatment in return. All prisoners were to be treated equally, according to rank. Prisoners could be confined but they must be treated with respect, provided with adequate nourishment and provided with medical care.202 The Lieber Code was adopted unchanged by the British, French and Prussian governments in the decade following the American Civil War, and it also formed the basis for subsequent international attempts to codify the laws of war (notably the Brussels Conference of 1874 and The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907).203 These in turn became the basis of the Geneva Conventions, which were in force during the Second World War.

The Hague and Geneva Conventions The treaties governing the treatment of POWs during WWII were Chapter II of the 1907 Hague Convention on the Laws of War (Hague IV) and the 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The chapter on POWs of The Hague Convention is quite brief, while the Geneva Convention is much more detailed and specific in setting out the rules. The rest of this section examines some of the key aspects of these documents as they relate to the economic conditions in POW camps. In essence, the economy envisioned in the Geneva Convention is one in which the basic needs of the prisoners, such as adequate food, shelter and medical care, are met directly by the detaining power, as they would be provided by that power to its own forces in a depot situation. Beyond that though, there are provisions for further economic activity, including a cash economy. This section provides an overview of some of these Western norms for the economic organisation of POW camps as codified within the Conventions.

201 Hartigan (1983), Lieber's Code and the Law of War, p. 2. 202 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', p. 123. 203 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', p. 124.

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Work, Pay and Canteens Because the requirement that prisoners be well treated imposed a cost on the detaining government, the Lieber Code established that detaining governments could require prisoners to labour for them in return, according to their rank and condition.204 This last point was further elaborated in the Brussels Declaration of 1874, which stated that prisoners could be employed on public works, but only provided that these had no immediate connection with the operations of war, and that they were not “humiliating” to their military rank, or “social position”.205 The Hague and Geneva Conventions expanded the range of work allowed to include any employer, or even self- employment, provided that such work did not contribute to the war effort. Dangerous and unhealthy work was also forbidden, as was the use of work for punishment. Both Conventions assert that POWs will not be paid for work done in connection with the administration or maintenance of camps themselves, and that POWs should be paid at rates analogous to those that would be paid either in the detaining power’s military or in the local labour market. The Conventions make it clear that the Western norm is that there should be a cash economy within the camps. Article 12 of the Geneva Convention not only allows for the establishment of canteens, but actually stipulates that all camps shall have canteens selling commodities at local market prices and run as a co-operative, with the profits utilised for the further material benefit of the prisoners. Bearing in mind that the basics are supposed to be provided by the detaining government, the purpose of the canteens can only be for the provision of extra luxury items. Obviously during war time shortages are likely to be experienced, and this is partly overcome by the packages sent either by family or by the Red Cross.

Status Differentiation Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of the Conventions for the uninitiated is the degree to which they enforce stratification between the ranks of prisoners. This distinction between officers and other ranks permeates almost every aspect of the conventions, and if it were to be fully implemented, it would produce a highly stratified prison camp economy. We saw earlier that although the practice of parole for officers was abandoned during the American Civil War, officers were given preferential treatment, and this was formalised in the Lieber Code. As time went on, the series of documents produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to codify the norms of the treatment of POWs confirmed this principle and further elaborated it. As Beaumont

204 Springer (2006), 'American Prisoner of War Policy', p. 123. 205 Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 69.

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argues, it is ironic that although the increasing democratisation eroded the older ideas of the ancien régime, the status differentiation accorded to officer POWs actually went against the tide of modernity.

Against such a background of instinctive social differentiation, it is not surprising that when the process of codifying international law on the treatment of prisoners war gathered momentum in the nineteenth century, the right of officers to receive preferential treatment was unquestioningly accepted and gradually formalized. This was not, however, a rapid process but one which ironically became more explicit as the supposedly more egalitarian twentieth century progressed.206 The idea of an international community of officers that appeared to be under threat during the Napoleonic War was, in some ways, reconfirmed in the twentieth century.

Throughout the Geneva Convention references are made to the separation of officers from other ranks. Status differentiation is also ensured through the insistence that officer prisoners be permitted to wear the external insignia of rank, and that they be accorded the customary marks of respect that are usual within their own armed forces, such as saluting. Officer prisoners are required to salute detaining officers only of their own or of higher rank than themselves. The Western military norm was for the officers to be held in separate camps where possible, and at least internally separated where this is not possible. Very senior officers are generally further separated, as was the case with captured German generals who were held in English country mansions and allowed to go shopping and attend the opera.207 The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 explicitly reaffirmed the right of officers not to work, but they also added the right of officers to receive pay whilst being held prisoner.208 Both The Hague and Geneva Conventions indicate that officers should be paid at a rate reflecting their rank (the rate paid to officers of equivalent rank in the country where they are detained) with the amount to be ultimately refunded by their own government. The Geneva Convention makes it clear that while belligerents may compel other ranks to work, they may not compel officers to work. NCOs, on the other hand, may be compelled to work, though only in a supervisory capacity, without remuneration. Unlike other ranks, who may have deductions made from their incomes to be repaid following repatriation, officers are to receive their full salary, with no deduction for their living expenses. Officers are to be able to manage their own affairs, running their own messes, procuring their own food and clothing. Furthermore, under Article 22 of the Geneva Convention, officers are to be provided with other ranked prisoners to work for them as personal servants.

206 Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 69. 207 Krammer (1990), 'American Treatment of German Generals During World War II'. 208 Beaumont (1983), 'Rank, Privilege and Prisoners of War', p. 70.

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In summary, the Western normative expectations of the treatment of POWs are that:

• all of the essentials of life will be provided by the detaining government • officers will be paid according to their rank • other ranks may earn money through paid work • there shall be a cash economy within the camps with commodities sold through co- operative canteens.

Although the Conventions were not adhered to, they are important because they explain the Western norms of POW camp organisation. They provide us with an image of the Allied prisoners’ normative expectations of camp life, for which they argued when imprisoned, and in particular, the expectations of economic life in a POW camp. The next section will look at some of the reasons for differences between the Western normative expectations of prison camp organisation and the reality of life in Japanese POW camps.

The Japanese Attitude toward Prisoners An important aspect to consider in understanding the experiences of the prisoners of the Japanese is the dominant Japanese cultural attitudes toward prisoners at that time. Having been isolated for so long, Japan had little experience in international conflict. So there was no equivalent to the long historical development of the norms of European warfare surveyed above. Indeed, in the thousand years preceding the Meiji Restoration of 1868 there had only been three large-scale military operations against a foreign enemy, the most recent of which was in the sixteenth century.209 During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when clan warfare was rife in Japan, rather than the paying of ransom for prisoners as was practiced in Europe, a tradition of prize payments for the severed heads of high-ranking enemies emerged, and the execution of all prisoners became the norm during the Tokugawa period.210 In the modern era there had been the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904– 05), the First World War and the hostilities with China. Japan had rigidly applied international law in the treatment of prisoners in the first three of these, but had committed many atrocities in China, notably in Shanghai and Nanking. These differences reflected broader differences in the attitude toward prisoners.

Japan’s militarism had seen the adoption of the bushido creed in the twentieth century. Based on a particular interpretation of samurai warrior code emphasising sacrifice and

209 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt: The Changing Nature of Japanese Military and Popular Perceptions of Prisoners of War through the Ages', pp. 254-5. 210 Strauss (2003), The Anguish of Surrender, p. 17.

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honour, the bushido creed dictated that a soldier could honour his country through valiant fighting, even where defeat was inevitable. To surrender would be to bring shame upon the Emperor as well as one’s own family, and was therefore considered unthinkable. Mass suicide was preferable. When the first American POWs surrendered in large numbers in the Philippines the Japanese were astonished to receive requests that their names be reported to the U.S. government so that their families would know they were alive. The relatives of captured Japanese servicemen were never notified, they were marked as traitors. If a family even suspected that one of their members had been taken as a POW they were obliged to show that he had brought eternal dishonour to himself and to his family. Even in the Russo-Japanese War, for which Japan received special praise for exemplary treatment of prisoners, Japanese POWs were themselves treated with hostility at home when they were returned. They were questioned by military police and treated as criminal suspects. Their families were shamed and had to leave their villages. Indeed, many Japanese chose to remain in Russia after the war rather than be repatriated, and no attempt was made by Japan to have them return.211

In the period between the Russo-Japanese War and 1929 further changes took place in the attitude toward Japanese troops being taken prisoner. Major Kuga, who was taken prisoner while unconscious in 1929 during the Shanghai hostilities, later returned to the place he was captured to commit suicide. He became a national hero. This example illustrates the strength of the social norms around the shamefulness of capture and the honour attached to death. Although it was not officially codified at that time, this norm was so deeply rooted that it did not require special indoctrination.212 In 1941 the Field Service Code was changed to reflect this norm. The relevant article reads: ‘You shall not undergo the shame of being taken alive. You shall not bequeath a sullied name’.213 Ikuhito Haka argues that this distinctive Japanese attitude toward being taken prisoner originated as a moral precept at the individual level, progressively spread through the military, and finally became a social norm that bound the whole community. This, she argues, was connected to the process whereby the special moral precepts of just one section of the old samurai class had permeated the attitudes of

211 This is well established in the literature. See, for instance, Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II: Statistical History, Personal Narratives and Memorials Concerning POWs in Camps and on Hellships, Civilian Internees, Asian Slave Labourers and Others Captured in the Pacific Theatre, p. 22 and p. 38. 212 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 262. 213 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 255.

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rural conscripts and their families, under the name bushido in Meiji Japan, and finally through the broader Japanese society in the Showa era (1926–45).214

Given their cultural backgrounds, it is understandable that for the Japanese troops to encounter so many surrendered Allied troops was quite shocking, and they viewed their prisoners with disgust. For Japanese soldiers to have to deal with such contemptible men, men who had forsaken their own masculinity as well as the honour of their nation and their families, was bad enough. It was beyond the pale when these men who, drawing on their own very different normative expectations, demanded that they be treated with respect, rather than expressing the shame of cowards that the Japanese expected as proper behaviour. Men who should have been dead could have no rights.

Japan’s Position on the Conventions In 1929 the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was signed by 47 governments, including Japan. However, reflecting the changes that had taken place in Japanese politics and society, Japan failed to ratify the Geneva Convention, due to internal opposition from the Army, Navy and Privy Council.215 The emphasis on the Geneva Convention tends to neglect the importance of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Convention which, as Chan and Baker point out, contains many of the same obligations, and which Japan had ratified.216 When war broke out the Hague Conventions were in force. As previously mentioned, modern Japan had a history of exemplary treatment of POWs during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 and in the First World War,217 however the cost of doing so had been unexpectedly large, and had been heavily criticised.218 There is also evidence to suggest that the good treatment of POWs had been a political strategy designed to enhance Japan’s international standing. Once it had been established that this strategy had failed, and Japan’s standing had not improved, the political importance of treating POWs well had dissipated. For instance, Lt. Gen. Uemura Mikio, the first director of the POW

214 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 261. 215 See Utsumi (2000), 'The Japanese Army and Its Prisoners: Relevant Documents and Bureaucratic Institutions'. 216 Chan and Baker (2003), 'Victor's Justice and Japan's Amnesia: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Reconsidered', p. 44. 217 Kinvig (2000), 'Allied POWs and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 87; Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, pp. 96-7. This in stark contrast to the treatment of prisoners at Andersonville during the American Civil War or at the hands of the British during the Boer War, for instance, or indeed to the United State’s treatment of prisoners at Guantamo Bay much more recently. 218 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 257.

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Information Bureau, argued that Japan had treated her prisoners well in the Russo- Japanese war in order to be recognised as a civilised country, “Today such need no longer applies”.219

Although the Allies were unaware of this change in policy, Japanese conduct in more recent conflicts, such as the notorious Nanking Massacre and similar incidents in Shanghai, gave the Allies cause for concern. On the 27th of December 1940, the United States government issued a statement expressing the hope that the Hague and Geneva conventions would be mutually applied. Similar statements from Great Britain and Australia followed. In 1942, following internal debates, the Japanese government issued an official reply stating that as Japan had not ratified the Geneva Convention Japan was in no way bound by the Convention, but that it was “Japan’s intention to correspondingly apply the principles of this convention” to prisoners of war “mutatis mutandis”220. From marginal notes and other documents, Utsumi Aiko concludes that it is clear that the Army interpreted the terms ‘mutatis mutandis’ and ‘correspondingly apply’ to mean that revisions to the principles could be made to meet the demands of the immediate situation, and domestic policy.221 As Gavan Daws argues, the Japanese read the Geneva Convention as providing more comforts and luxury to enemy prisoners than would be afforded to the Japanese fighting man in the field, which they saw as absurd anyway, and furthermore the Japanese code ordered their men to die rather than surrender, so as no Japanese combatant was ever to be taken alive there would be no reciprocation — “There was nothing in it for them”.222

The Field Service Code had been issued by Prime Minister Tojo, who was also Minister for the Army and had always taken a hard line against prisoners. His first director at the POW Information Bureau, Lt. Gen. Uemura Mikio, took the opportunity at conferences of camp commanders and similar fora throughout 1942 to make clear the policies on how POWs should be treated. He had two clear precepts: the enemy POWs must be treated severely, and they must be used to expand production. He also made it clear that the harsh treatment of POWs abroad would be a way to make indigenous people in occupied territories aware of Japanese racial superiority.223 Ikuhito Hata argues that these precepts and the deeply entrenched norms, are more important than

219 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 266. 220 Kinvig (2000), 'Allied POWs and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 89. 221 Utsumi (2000), 'The Japanese Army and Its Prisoners'. 222 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 97. 223 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 266.

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the codified regulations as, although there were rules and regulations regarding the humane treatment of prisoners, they were ignored. She points out that while being taken prisoner was never added to the frequently updated criminal codes of each armed service, it was still considered to be morally reprehensible, and much worse than officially proscribed conduct such as rape. This, she argues, is at the heart of the treatment of the enemy prisoners. The belief that captured Japanese should forfeit all human rights, and really life itself, was an attitude applied to her prisoners.224

Individual Variation While the previous section provided a broad overview, it cannot be assumed that the actual conditions within the many camps were uniform. There was in fact a large degree of variation in the actual conditions experienced within the camps. An important aspect to consider is the degree of autonomy held by individual camp administrators and even individual guards225. Gavan Daws explains it succinctly in the following passage:

[A]rea commanders and local commanders had the say over what happened to prisoners. And in the camps, day to day, it was the commandant who decided what life was going to be like. Anything in the regulations was the commandant’s to interpret. Anything not in the regulations was his to allow or disallow…He could have blankets issued, then take them away again. He could make sure that food got into camp in quantity, or make sure that it did not. He could have the water turned on, then turned off. He could withhold medicine. He could make whistling a crime. He could keep his guards on something of a tight reign, or let them loose with their boots and rifle butts. The commandants and the guards had the prisoners in their hands; they had the power of life and death.226

For the prisoners this meant there was a large degree of uncertainty, not just as they moved from camp to camp, but on an everyday basis, as the rules and expectations were unclear and changeable.

Beyond the general contempt for the prisoners, the bushido creed also had other impacts on the experiences of the POWs. Something that the Western POWs found inscrutable was the level of violence perpetrated by their guards, not just on the prisoners, but also on their own comrades. Part of the bushido culture within the

224 Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 267 225 It should be pointed out that this is not unique to the Japanese camps. Walter A. Lunden, who was a sociologist and regional commander of prisons for the British Army during the war, found that the conditions of both Allied and Axis POW camps in Europe varied greatly, even within the same region. “To a very large degree the treatment of prisoners of war depends on the camp commander. One may operate a stockade humanely while another in the same country may not.”: Lunden (1949), 'Captivity Psychoses among Prisoners of War', p. 723. 226 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 99.

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Japanese military was unquestioning obedience to one’s superiors, and violent punishment for even trivial misdemeanours. As Waterford put it:

In their own armed services and even to some extent in civilian life, the Japanese practiced the active brutality of which POWs were so often the victim. The non-commissioned officer, himself struck by his superiors, passed on the blows to the private on any occasion of displeasure, and the humble private slapped or clubbed the POW. Among the POWs the consensus of opinion seemed to be that the Japanese were brutal, rather than sadistic, and largely unaware of their own brutality, which found its target in an animal as readily as a helpless POW.227

Violent punishments were issued to prisoners routinely. They might include torture or even summary execution, but even the more common slapping, kicking and beating proved fatal for thousands of prisoners already weakened by disease and malnourishment.

It is also helpful to understand something of the characters, background and circumstances of the men who held such power. Although there were some competent and conscientious men to be found among those running the camps, the odds against it were great. Guarding POWs was not a staffing priority for an aggressive imperial aspirant in the midst of total war.228 The characters that the POWs got to know the best were often the interpreters. They included some gentle intellectuals, often Christians or graduates of Western universities, who quietly apologised for the treatment the prisoners were receiving and sometimes tried to offer amelioration where they could. But the structural conditions prevented their being able to bring much material comfort: everyone was under surveillance, and everyone was subject to violent discipline. On the other hand, there were also other Western-educated interpreters who revelled in taking revenge for the racism they had encountered at American and British universities. The structural conditions allowed them free rein for their violent outbursts and cruelties. It could be said that the violence and cruelty were passed down through the descending levels of the hierarchy, becoming more extreme and more common the lower they went, and the prisoners were at the very bottom of the pyramid.

The POWs had thought that they could not imagine anything worse than a Japanese guard, until the Koreans arrived. Koreans, who had been conscripted into forced labour

227 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p.39. Indeed there are a great many accounts of guards, in groups and individually, torturing animals for fun. 228 Equally, Allied POW camps were not staffed by the best and brightest. In the United States, for instance, 47,000 personnel were required to guard the almost half a million prisoners. The personnel were drawn from the ranks of those deemed unqualified or incapable for anything else, and overseen by officers deemed ‘unsatisfactory’. Krammer (1976), 'German Prisoners of War in the United States', p. 69.

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under the Japanese military rule for some time, in industrial and sex work, were brought in to free the Japanese personnel for combat. Tens of thousands of Koreans were drafted into the army, three or four thousand of whom ended up as prison guards. The Koreans were themselves treated very poorly, and violently, by their Japanese overlords. One Korean who had learnt a bit of English in the camps used to say on the quiet, Japan no pucking good. The prisoners christened him George Pucking and he preferred that name over the Japanese name he hated. But he could not bite back the Japanese; no Korean could. One said to an Englishman, Inggeris-Korean samo [English and Koreans are the same], all prisoner Nippon. Another said to an Australian: You-me samo. But for every one miserable Korean who saw life in the camps that way there were all the others…taking out their rage against the Japanese on the prisoners.229

These factors often made dealing with the guards in occupied territories much worse than those in Japan itself. Additionally, there was greater degree of routine organisation and stability in Japan than was the case abroad.

When it comes to the treatment of prisoners, there is a range of factors that affected the conditions experienced by the Allied POWs. Japan had extended beyond her reach. Even if there had been any intention to treat her prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention, the logistical efforts required to adequately look after such a large number of prisoners were really beyond her abilities. Japan was then a relatively undeveloped country, suffering from a lack of resources, and compounded by a poor and ineffective bureaucracy. Nonetheless, irrespective of the attitudes that fuelled the inhumane treatment of prisoners, the gross inefficiency with which this labour force was utilised was baffling even to the prisoners themselves.

Prelude to War Japan’s entry into the war was driven by a political culture that turned toward fascism, drawing on a mythology of divine right, a national identity constructed around notions of racial superiority, and an ambition for territorial expansion.230 During Japan’s centuries of isolation prior to the arrival of U.S. Commodore Perry in 1852, the Yamato tribe had united Japan through the perpetuation of a belief in Japanese racial and cultural superiority. Throughout the nineteenth century there was growing militarism and a drive for imperial domination which continued to grow in the twentieth century. Japan defeated Russia in the war of 1904–05, and this success was used by the ruling elite to

229 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 104. 230 For a summary of the topics covered in this section see Chapter 1 of Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II.

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seek to transform Japan into a modern country under the slogan ‘rich country, strong army’. The political regime was dominated by the military, and through state-controlled schooling and media the commonly held notion of Japanese uniqueness, superiority and destiny to rule were perpetuated. This was coupled with a sense that Western powers had not only disrespected Japan, but had actively humiliated her in international affairs, and humiliated Japanese expatriates through racist policies, particularly in the United States where ethnic Japanese had been singled out and subjected to specific racist policies, such as exclusion from San Francisco schools in 1907.

There were also severe domestic economic problems in Japan that had arisen from opening up to the world. Japan was suffering from a lack of land and resources and a large population, which was further exacerbated by Western policies which prevented both the migration of Japanese people and the export of goods. This meant that Japan was simply unable to feed its population. By 1940 Japan’s rice production was short 65 million bushels per year. To import the required rice Japan was reliant on the export of manufactured goods, but these were increasingly denied by Western trade barriers. To solve these critical economic problems, Japan looked toward the conquest of other territories. In 1940 the United States placed trade embargoes on critical commodities, further exacerbating the perceived need to expand. After defeat in China, Japan turned toward South-East Asia, and on a course that would lead to confrontation with the existing colonial powers in the region: the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and their allies.

In 1940, on the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of Japan according to tradition, Japan’s audacious policy of usurping Western power in the region was announced. Under the motto of ‘Asia for the Asians’, Japan asserted her intention to build a new order in East Asia, a new empire in effect, to be called the Greater East Asia Co- Prosperity Sphere, encompassing China and South-East Asia, and to extend from Burma and the eastern part of India, all the way to Australia and New Zealand. In September 1940, Japan began to pressure the French Vichy regime to allow Japanese troops to be stationed in French Indochina. The French eventually conceded and Japanese troops began to pour into the area. It became clear to Western powers that Japan was serious about establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in July of 1941, when Japanese troops occupied Da Nang and Saigon in French Indochina (present day Vietnam). The United States announced a complete oil embargo of Japan, and Britain and the Netherlands quickly followed with embargoes.

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This was a serious problem for Japan, which was already critically short of energy. Rather than continue to be economically strangled, Japan decided to strike immediately, despite the obvious economic and military odds against success.

Japan Attacks Japan commenced hostilities with twin strikes at British and American regional strongholds. On the 7th of December 1941, Japan launched surprise air strikes on America’s Hawaiian base at Pearl Harbour. At the same time Japanese forces invaded the British territory of Hong Kong. The next day the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) attacked Wake Island, an American strategic possession in the Pacific. After two weeks the American commander surrendered. Ten days after Pearl Harbour, the IJA swept through Siam (present day Thailand) and Malaya (present day Malaysia) and attacked Singapore, Britain’s so-called ‘Gibraltar of the East’. Within three weeks Britain surrendered. Japan advanced on the Dutch East Indies (present day Indonesia) and three weeks after the fall of Singapore, Java fell and the Dutch also surrendered. On March 8, Burma and the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal fell. Through March and April Japan conquered the Admiralty Islands, New Britain, New Ireland, and the Solomon Islands. Meanwhile war raged in the Philippines. Five months of fighting in the Philippines ended with the surrender of the United States on May 6th, 1942.

It was a stunning victory for Japan, and a shocking defeat for her enemies. In less than six months Japan, a numerically, technologically, and economically inferior power, held the entire region — more than 3 million square miles of South-East Asia and almost all of the Western Pacific. A vast amount of territory that the European colonial powers had taken more than 300 years to acquire. With this military success came about 350 million new civilian subjects for the Emperor. More unexpectedly, there also came a lot of Western prisoners. The rest of this chapter provides more detail about the capture of the Australian, British and Americans POWs. It also outlines the scale of that imprisonment, before going on to look at some of the conditions of captivity.

Allied Defeat in Singapore, Malaya and Dutch East Indies On the 7th of December 1941, an hour before Japan more famously attacked Pearl Harbour, Japan launched an attack on the British territory of Malaya. Assault boats were landed at Kota Bharu, quickly overcame the British defences and captured the airfield, establishing air superiority. Meanwhile, Japan’s 5th Division began advancing from southern Thailand, first meeting resistance from 20,000 British and Indian troops at Jitra in Malaya on December 11, which was quickly overcome. The IJA continued

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their advance toward the British stronghold of Singapore. The British had expected an enemy to attack Singapore by sea and all the defences were based on that assumption. Instead, the IJA came overland via the Malay Peninsula with astonishing speed. Lt. Gen. Arthur Percival commanded an army of 100,00 men, comprised of one British, one Australian and three Indian divisions. During the campaign they were joined by a further 30,000 British and 7,000 Indian troops. Against him was the strongest invasion force that Japan had ever sent to war, composed of three Japanese divisions with a front-line strength of 60,000 men including most of the army’s tank forces and their best artillery, mortar and machine gun units, jungle commandos and bridge and railway engineers231. By the 31st of January 1942, the IJA had conquered the whole of the Malay Peninsula. On the 15th of February Lt. Gen. Percival surrendered all Allied forces on Singapore. On the 8th of March the Royal Netherlands East India Army surrendered in Java, followed on the 12th of March by the formal surrender of the Australian, British and American commanders in Java.

Americans in the Philippines This section provides an overview of the events that led to the capture of the Americans in the Philippines. They had quite a different beginning to that of the British and Australians. The Americans endured a longer fight, in very difficult conditions, and for some of them capture began with a Death March.

Background The Unites States had maintained a military presence in the Philippines since taking control in 1898 as a result of victory in the war with Spain. In 1935 the United States granted the Philippines commonwealth status, with independence scheduled for 1945. Responsibility for defence was then transferred to the Philippines in 1935, and a large reserve force was established to supplement the existing, though very small Philippine Regular Army. In 1941 the US President authorised the formation of a combined Philippine and American force, known as the U.S. Armed Forces, Far East (USAFFE). While USAFFE was much larger than the previous American garrison, which had become heavily depleted in anticipation of withdrawal, the reality was that this was still an under-resourced group of reserves, most of whom received no training. Despite a year and half of re-arming, the United States was not prepared for war. By December 7th, 1941 the Army numbered some 1,644,000 men, made up of thirty-seven divisions.

231 For a brief overview of the campaign see Chapter 1 of MacArthur (2005), Surviving the Sword.

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Three of those divisions were overseas: two in Hawaii and one in the Philippines.232 Pearl Harbour in Hawaii was the base of the naval fleet, and Clark Field on Luzon Island in the Philippines was the base of the air fleet.

Attack, Invasion and Surrender A Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet anchored at Pearl Harbour had not been anticipated, but as the strategic base in the region, an attack on the Philippines was expected. General MacArthur, who had retired after establishing the reserve force, was recalled to the Philippines to organise a stronger defence. There was really no hope of repelling an invasion. The US had decided that a Japanese attack was likely, but that given such an attack would probably mean war with Germany as well, the strategy would be to focus on Germany and sacrifice the Philippines. The plan was to withdraw from the Bataan Peninsula of the main island Luzon, and from there to the island of Corregidor.233

On the 7th of December 1941, Japan launched a devastating attack on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour. Nine hours later, on December 8th local time, the Philippines was attacked with bombing raids on Clark Field. The airstrip at Clark Field housed an impressive collection of over 140 aircraft. While attack had been anticipated, the timing and ferocity of the attack was a surprise, as the US had expected Japan to first concentrate on securing the poorly defended British and Dutch possessions in the Far East. It was probably unwise to concentrate all of the aircraft at one site, but worse still, when the attack on Pearl Harbour came, no order was issued to move them. In a single attack, any hope of defending the Philippines had been demolished.234 The Japanese invaded the Philippines main island of Luzon on the 22nd of December, easily overcoming resistance, and four days later General MacArthur implemented the plan and ordered the retreat to Bataan and Corregidor.

The Fall of Bataan Around 65,000 troops and 25,000 civilians retreated to the Bataan Peninsula, where the Japanese held them under siege. USAFFE had not prepared for a long stay, and the stockpile of supplies was inadequate, forcing them to subsist on inadequate

232 Matloff (1989), 'World War Ii: The Defensive Phase', p. 435. 233 Baker (2004), American Soldiers Overseas, p. 112. 234 Baker (2004), American Soldiers Overseas, p. 112.

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rations, and leading to widespread diseases for which they could not be treated.235 Gene Boyt claimed that poor planning and panic on the part of the American leadership meant that thousands of bushels of grain were left in warehouses as hundreds of empty trucks were driven into Bataan.236 Whatever the cause, the result was that the USAFFE forces in Bataan were in poor shape, and fighting on empty stomachs. Half rations were implemented as early as the 2nd of January.237 By the end of the siege they were on quarter rations and surviving on whatever supplementary food they could find or kill. Boyt claimed that General MacArthur imposed “idiotic restrictions” on what animals could be killed. MacArthur banned the killing of the very plentiful carabao238, one of which was sufficient to feed a whole company, because they were important beasts for Filipino farming, and he feared that there would later be resentment.239 Boyt comments that it was amazing that this order was actually obeyed through the winter, as troops desperately searched for something to eat. The population of lizards and birds was quickly depleted, and it was not until the last days of the siege that ravenous Americans began shooting carabao.240 The situation was untenable. Finally, on the 9th of April, four months after the first attack, General King surrendered the 78,000 USAFFE troops under his command, 12,000 of whom were American. Some of the Americans managed to get away and joined the fight in Corregidor or joined guerrilla units, but for most the surrender meant captivity, and for those unfortunate enough to be captured in Bataan, captivity began with the notorious Bataan Death March, which is detailed in Chapter 5.

With the surrender of Bataan the Japanese still faced a problem of subduing the 15,000-man American garrison on Corregidor Island, just two miles away in Manilla Bay, before they could claim complete victory in the Philippines. Victory would come in four weeks’ time. But in order to get on and win that battle the Japanese first had to deal with the enormous number of surrendered troops and get them out of the way. Anticipating this problem, a plan had been agreed in late March to evacuate prisoners

235 Baker (2004), American Soldiers Overseas, p. 113. 236 Boyt (2004), Bataan: A Survivor's Story, p. 76. 237 Knox (1981), Death March: The Survivors of Bataan, p.53. 238 Carabao is a species of domesticated water buffalo that are used extensively in Filipino agriculture. So much so that it is the unofficial animal emblem of the Philippines. 239 Macarthur may have been right about this. It is estimated that the Japanese, who did not understand the importance of carabao to local farming methods, slaughtered 70% of the country’s carabao stock for meat, and this prevented farmers from being able produce sufficient rice for the population, which in turn is seen as one of the many reasons for the continued resistance to Japanese occupation, see Schmidt, LS. (1982). American Involvement in the Filipino Resistance on Mindanao During the Japanese Occupation, 1942-1945. M.S. Thesis. U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, p. 56. 240 Boyt (2004), Bataan: A Survivor's Story, p. 77.

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on foot some 60 miles to San Fernando and from there another twenty miles by train and finally another ten mile march to Camp O’Donnell, in central Luzon.

The Fall of Corregidor The focus of the attack now concentrated on the island of Corregidor, which with its network of tunnels, fortifications and artillery across Manilla Bay, was the remaining obstacle to Japanese victory. Just five and a half kilometres by two and a half kilometres, the island of Corregidor was the site of a formidable arsenal. The network of tunnels, known as the Malinta Tunnel, consisted of a main passage with twenty-five lateral passages. Another network of tunnels with twelve laterals housed a hospital with space for 1,000 beds. The Navy had another tunnel system, connected to the main tunnel. Ariel bombardments had begun on the 29th of December, 1941, damaging parts of the island’s infrastructure, including the hospital, the officers’ club and the Navy fuel depot. At the fall of Bataan, the Corregidor garrison received a group of reinforcements from among those able to get away from Bataan. They consisted of 72 officers and 1,173 enlisted men, from more than fifty different units. They were integrated into the 4th Marines Regiment, though they were mostly not trained nor equipped for ground combat. An indication of the level of integration is that by the 30th of April the 4th Marines numbered nearly 4,000 men, of whom only 1,500 were actually marines. As of the 15th of April the combined strength of the garrison was 14,728, including civilians.241

The bombing and the siege continued for four months, with Japanese aircraft flying 614 missions and dropping around 365 tons of explosive on the island, leaving the USAFFE forces short of food and water, and making distribution difficult. Though sometimes kitchens were lost in bombing, the food supply was safe within the Malinta Tunnel. But the rations were tight. MacArthur had ordered that a store be maintained sufficient to feed twice as many men as were on the island until June. Therefore the men on Corregidor were fed just twice daily, with a breakfast of just toast before dawn and some sort of supper made from canned goods after dark. (The Navy maintained separate stores in the tunnels and fed its men a better ration). While their situation was significantly better than in Bataan, those on Corregidor thought that they had it tough, and there was a lot of suspicion among the ranks on Corregidor that those closest to the tunnel, and therefore closest to those with power, were eating much better. However, to put the position of those in the sieges of Bataan and Corregidor into perspective, when General Wainwright arrived from Bataan in March he found the food

241 Morton (1953), The Fall of the Philippines, p. 529.

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so much more plentiful that he sent some of the food back to the emaciated troops of Bataan.242 Nonetheless, the 2,000 from Bataan who had managed to evade capture by escaping to Corregidor may have been starting to question how lucky they had been as the island came under constant bombardment and shelling for the next four weeks. As the tempo of attacks increased, more and more of them were crowded into the Malinta Tunnel, the only refuge from assault, where the heat and stench of the wounded, combined with widespread malnutrition, malaria and dysentery, led to a nervous disorder they called ‘tunnelitis’.243 On May the 4th alone, the penultimate day of battle, 16,000 shells fell on the small island, and six hundred of the two thousand Japanese troops who attempted it, managed to land on the island. The next day more and more Japanese managed to land and defeat was inevitable. With the defences of the island in tatters, and tanks proceeding toward the mouth of the tunnel, General Wainwright accepted that his only option to avoid slaughter was to surrender. He met with the Japanese commander, General Homma, who made the total surrender of the Philippines a condition of the surrender of Corregidor. The Japanese maintained a steady bombardment of the island until finally, on the 6th of May, General Wainwright surrendered, and in accordance with Japanese demands, in doing so surrendered all Allied troops throughout the Philippines. MacArthur sent countermanding orders from Australia to the troops under General Sharp on Mindanao, but the fighting only continued for two more days until one of Wainwright’s staff officers was flown in to insist on a ceasefire. The battle of Corregidor cost more than 800 American and Filipino lives and nearly three times as many Japanese lives, and led to the total surrender of the Allied forces, with the exception of a few who fought on as guerrillas.244

The Scale of Captivity There are no reliably exact statistics of the number of prisoners taken, nor on the exact number of camps that existed. If ever there were accurate records kept, they were since lost.245 Published statistics vary, and rarely tally.246 Historians and veterans

242 Morton (1953), The Fall of the Philippines, pp. 533-6. 243 Costello (1981), The Pacific War, p. 264. 244 Costello (1981), The Pacific War, pp. 264-6. 245 A report to the US Congress concluded that it is “virtually impossible” to make an “authoritative determination on the precise number” of POWs and civilian internees held by Japan because of the difficulties of record keeping in war time, and also because of confusion over the definition of a POW, and the categorisation of individuals: Reynolds (2002), 'Us Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured and Interned by Japan in World War II: The Issue of Compensation by Japan'. Ikuhito Hata demonstrates that the statistics reported to Tokyo, on both the number of prisoners and the number of fatalities, were wildly inaccurate. For instance, the total number of prisoners registered by December 1943 76 Chapter 3 The Context of Captivity: Background to the Empirical Material

continue to draw up lists and discover new evidence. The figures used here are therefore open to question, although they are drawn from authoritative publications. However, the exact numbers are not so important for our purpose, which is merely to appreciate the scale of the enterprise and its effects.

In a period of just six months, around 320, 000 prisoners were taken by Japan.247 The Japanese originally captured and interned about 192,600 Allied POWs.248 This number included American, Australian, British, Dutch and New Zealander POWs. It also includes what were termed ‘native’, indigenous combatants such as Philippine Scouts249 (around 12,000) and Filipino troops (around 30,000)250 and Indian troops (around 40,000).251 There were also a larger number of ‘native’ prisoners who were released, partly to ease the logistical problems of keeping them, and partly as a propaganda move on the part of the Japanese to portray themselves as the racial liberators of Asia.252 Others, such as the majority of the Indians, were convinced to change sides and fight for the Japanese, although many thousands were killed during forced marches on the way to captivity. In addition to the POWs, there were a further 131, 000 Western civilian internees.253 There are a further unknown number of romusha (Asian labourers).254 These are the least documented and most poorly treated. They were local people from Japan’s various occupied territories who were either conscripted or coerced into forced labour, often working alongside the POWs,

was just 110,000 of whom only 4,000 were reported to have died. Hata (1996), 'From Consideration to Contempt', p. 267. 246 For more on this point see Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese: p. 28. 247 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 96. Waterford puts the figure at 350,000 European and Americans. Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 31. 248 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 178. 249 The Philippine Scouts were composed of Filipino's enlisted as members of the regular United States Army. The units were generally officered by Americans. At the beginning of the war in the Philippines there were approximately 10,000 Philippine Scouts in service. 250 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 142. 251 Stanley (2002), '"Great in Adversity": Indian Prisoners of War in New Guinea'. 252 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 96. 253 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 182. 254 The romusha were local people recruited from Japanese occupied territories and sent to other territories as labourers. There were treated even more terribly than the POWs, and few survived. Whether they were volunteers who were deceived, or were forced into labour is unclear and probably varies from case to case.

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and dying in even greater numbers. This thesis though, is restricted only to the British, American, and Australian POWs, who numbered in total around 93,000.255

In addition to the number of POWs, another important aspect to consider is the duration of captivity. The average length of imprisonment for prisoners of the Japanese was over three years, compared to less than one year for POWs in Europe.256 For most of the Allied prisoners of the Japanese captivity lasted from early 1942 until, and sometimes after, the end of the War. For the British and Australian POWs captivity generally began with the fall of Malaya in January 1942, the surrender of Singapore in February 1942 or the surrender in the Dutch East Indies less than a month later. For most Americans, on the other hand, captivity began with surrenders in the Philippines in April and May of 1942.

Throughout the period and the regions there were an unknown number of camps. Certainly hundreds, and possibly well over one thousand. Some were very large, housing tens of thousands of men, and remained in place throughout the war. Others were smaller, sometimes only occupied for short periods of time, such as many of the work camps set up along the Burma-Thai Railway route. Allied POWs were transported around the Asia-Pacific to be used as labour in support of Japan’s war effort in fields such as mining and munitions, shipbuilding and the general plundering of resources from occupied territories. They were also used in building the new Japanese empire, the ‘Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, notably with the construction of the Burma-Thai Railway, but also a range of other infrastructure projects including other railways and many airfields. By the end of the war, POWs were located in camps all the way from Papua New Guinea in the south to Manchuria in the north, with nearly half of the surviving prisoners being held in Japan itself by the end of the war. The dispersal of Australian POWs is illustrative. Over 22,000 Australians became prisoners of war of the Japanese in South-East Asia. The largest group was captured in Singapore, but Australian troops were also captured on Java, Timor, Ambon and New Britain. By September 1945 Australian prisoners of war were scattered widely across South-East Asia. The largest group was congregated on Singapore Island and Johor,

255 Beaumont (2001), Australian Defence: Sources and Statistics, p. 344. 256 Most accounts simply claim that captivity lasted for over three years compared to less than one year in Europe. Waterford is more precise and puts the averages at 1,148 days in the Pacific theatre, and 347 days in Europe: Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 178. Obviously averages may conceal wide ranges. Some Allied prisoners were held for the whole of the war in Europe, while others may have been POWs for very short periods of time. This is generally not the case for the prisoners of the Japanese who were held from the time of mass surrender to the end of the war, and sometimes even subsequent to that.

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Malaya (5,549), but 4,830 were distributed in several camps and in a number of working parties in Thailand and remote areas of Burma. In addition, 265 were in French Indo-China; about 750 were distributed throughout the islands of the Netherlands East Indies, with 385 in Java and 243 in Sumatra; about 100 were on Ambon; two were at Macassar; seven on Bali; another 150 were at Kuching in British North Borneo. About 2,700 were distributed between Japan, Korea and Manchuria, while about 200 remained on Hainan Island.257

The movement of prisoners held its own dangers. Being shipped around the Co- Prosperity Sphere on board the evocatively titled ‘hell ships’ was often one of the most dangerous aspects of the POW experience. Conditions on board were usually horrendous, and often fatal. Prisoners were crammed into a ship’s hold in very large numbers for a voyage that may take weeks, with inadequate space to sit, without light or fresh air, without much fresh water and little food, and with no provision for sanitation. The extremes of heat and cold in the holds of the ships were severe. Shoved into darkness with hundreds of men with no toilet, many of whom were suffering from chronic diarrhoea, was not only unpleasant but also dangerous. So poor were the conditions that orders came from Tokyo that men being transported should arrive alive and fit for work. But these orders were ignored. Although many POWs died as a result of the conditions on board the ships, an even greater threat to survival was the chance of being torpedoed by Allied submarines. Inexplicably, the Japanese neither notified the Allies of the movements of POWs nor did they mark the ships as POWs transports — both of which they should have done — with the result that many of the ships were sunk and the POWs were killed by their own countrymen or allies. The hell ships were the second biggest killers after the Burma-Thai Railway. The statistical estimates of the fatality rates are stark. Over 62,000 POWs were transported on 56 ships. Somewhere between one in five and one in three lost their lives on these voyages.258

This poorly documented movement of prisoners is one of the key reasons for the inaccuracy of statistics. Prisoners were selected for transportation to labour camps

257 Australian War Memorial online encyclopaedia, http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/pow/general_info.asp 258 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 151 (17%). See Holmes (2001), Unjust Enrichment, p. 33, and Michno (2001), Death on the Hellships, pp. 309-317. As always with the prisoners of the Japanese statistical estimates vary quite widely. Holmes puts the total number of prisoners transported at 55,259, of whom she claims 10,853 (20%) died, whereas Michno claims there were a total of 126,064 POWs transported of whom 21,039 died.

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based on different criteria, usually fitness but sometimes skills, and moved from one camp to another. Many died (or were killed) in transit, their bodies left on the roadside where they fell or thrown overboard, and their deaths were unrecorded. This movement of POWs is an important aspect to appreciate in reading the following chapters, as it is both the result of the economic imperative of the Japanese captors (to use the prisoners as forced labour, but to do so in a manner that was not only inhumane and often inefficient and irrational, but also poorly administered) and it is also the reason that the camps were unstable communities. This added considerably to the unpredictability of camp life, which is reflected in the internal organisation of the camp economies.

Overview of the Camp and Conditions Changi The initial period of captivity was chaotic in this region. It seemed that there were no plans in place for dealing with such a large number of prisoners. The most famous and certainly the biggest camp in this region was Changi Camp in Singapore. Although it was unusual in terms of its size and facilities, as a transit camp through which prisoners passed it was experienced by so many of the Australian and British POWs that it warrants some basic description here to help contextualise the activities explored in the next chapter.

On the 17th of February, two days after the surrender, Allied troops in Singapore were ordered to gather all the food and clothing they could carry and march to the Changi area on the north-eastern tip of the island. It is estimated that 41,500 men arrived that day, and a further 10,700 arrived the following day.259 They were later to be joined by others from places around the region, such as the Dutch East Indies and Malaya, as Changi became the main transit camp in the region. The number of men at Changi ebbed and flowed in proportion to Japanese demands for labour. Initially, large numbers were employed on working parties in Singapore town, bringing the total number of POWs in Changi and surrounding work camps to around 100,000.

Changi had been occupied by the peacetime British garrison and occupied around approximately 25 square kilometres. Having been the British Army’s principal base, the site boasted an extensive and well-constructed infrastructure including three major

259 Michno (2001), Death on the Hellships, p. 19.

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barracks and several smaller groups of buildings260. Each of the barrack buildings was three stories high, with each story built to house a company of the regiment. In addition there were a large number of bungalows for officers, married officers and administrative staff. There were large parade grounds and playing fields, but also churches, canteens, theatres and cinemas, tennis and squash courts, swimming pools, bathing beaches and even yacht clubs.261

Also located in the Changi area was Singapore’s forbidding civilian prison, Changi Gaol, which had been modelled on New York’s Sing Sing prison. This prison, which was designed to hold 600 prisoners, was initially used by the Japanese to house some three and a half thousand civilian internees. Two years later, as the POW population declined to about 12,000, the internees were moved to a nearby camp at Sime Road, and the remaining POWs were moved into the Changi Gaol where they were crammed into the gaol cells, as well as into atap huts that they built in the prison grounds. As several men were housed in a cell designed for one, with a single concrete bed in the centre, and with airflow severely restricted, to be located in a hut outside was far preferable.

Prior to this move the prisoners were housed in the many buildings of the base and in tents and shelters that they built on the grounds. While the area had been substantially damaged in the fighting when the prisoners first arrived, the large number of existing buildings provided accommodation far superior to that which prisoners experienced elsewhere; even though there was overcrowding. In Indonesia, for example, there were instances where prisoners were initially held at the point of machine guns in old cinemas or theatres without toilet or washing facilities and inadequate space to move. In other instances they were crowded into government buildings such as schools, not equipped to house large numbers of people. At Changi, though there was crowding, the conditions were far better. For instance, one British junior officer described his accommodation in March:

We are housed in No. 3 of M Block, a row of former married quarters. They consist each of one large downstairs room with a little loggia or veranda and two similar ones upstairs, and a smaller one and a pantry. There are the 'usual offices' upstairs, but the water system no longer functions, and water for all purposes has to be carried by hand, a source of much sweat and discord. A short

260 Australian War Memorial, 'Changi', in Australian War Memorial (ed.), Australian War Memorial Encyclopaedia, Canberra: Australian War Memorial. 261 Many of the newly arrived troops who had almost immediately been taken prisoner were astonished to see the almost palatial buildings of the Changi garrison and resented the amount of money that had clearly been spent on these facilities rather than on defences. See for example, Havers (2000), 'The Changi POW Camp and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p.22.

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covered way leads to the cookhouse behind and to two small rooms occupied in the pleasant days of peace by the Chinese 'boys'; they now house the five of our British troops who do the cooking and help with the fatigues, while the 20 officers of the regiment are distributed between the four main rooms.262

Conditions for other ranks were less salubrious, but by the standards of other camps they were tolerably good. Within a month the electricity and running water were reconnected by the engineers, and prisoners had drinking water on tap, which was a benefit as the wells had been sabotaged, and many buildings even had electric light.

Within months most of the POWs were moved to work as labourers in various parts of the new Japanese empire. Most travelled through Singapore, and from there on to Burma and Thailand, but some were sent to other destinations, including Japan. The most important destinations were Thailand and Burma. By the end of August 1942, Changi’s population had dropped from 100,000 to just under 19,000,263 and by June of 1943 just 5,359 remained, as most had been shipped off to the Railway. That was the lowest population for the whole war.264 On completion of the Railway some of the survivors returned permanently, while others were transported to work in other destinations. By the end of 1942 the population had risen to 26, 374.265 But this population was very transient. In December alone over 10,000 prisoners came in from Java, while over 11,000 were transferred out. By March of 1943, when things had settled down somewhat, the population was 22, 235.266 The population continued to contract as those deemed fit enough, according to declining standards of fitness, were sent to work elsewhere. Prisoners who never left Changi to work elsewhere were seen as very lucky by others. Camp censuses in February and March of 1945 recorded just over 9,000 prisoners.267

The Burma – Thailand Railway Soon after the fall of Singapore, Southern Area Headquarters of the Japanese Army proposed that the construction of a 415 km railway line between Burma and Thailand would help supply their troops in Burma. The route would have to go through dense virgin jungle, up and down steep slopes and across ravines and rivers. The British, as

262 Milford. Diary of Lt. Milford. Imperial War Museum 67/182/1, p. 72. 263 Nelson (1974), The Story of Changi, Singapore, p. 39. 264 Havers (2000), 'The Changi POW Camp and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 20. 265 Nelson (1974), The Story of Changi, Singapore, p. 70. 266 Nelson (1974), The Story of Changi, Singapore, p. 83. 267 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 158.

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colonial masters in Burma, had investigated the idea of building such a railway. Even with the world’s leading railway engineering technology and expertise, they had concluded that it was impossible. Japan, with greatly inferior engineering experience, but with thousands of forced labourers to exploit, decided to go ahead. Orders to proceed were issued by Imperial Headquarters in Tokyo in June, with instructions that the workforce would comprise Asian labourers as well as POWs. The Minister of War, General Tojo, pointed out that it was not only an opportunity to make use of the unexpected large number of prisoners, but also that the use of white labour would help banish the sense of racial inferiority of people in the occupied territories and build trust with Japan.268

The camps along the Railway varied considerably, perhaps representing more variance from the norm than in any other region. Given that the reason for the construction of the Railway was to overcome difficulties in getting supplies to troops in the area, the addition of tens of thousands of POWs to feed, was clearly a problem. The availability of supplies varied from time to time, and place to place, depending on what supplies had come through to base camps, and then from there what could be transported to working groups further up the line whether by boat or carried overland along jungle tracks.

The railway workers were divided up into groups and branches by the Japanese. Branches ranged in size from 2,000 prisoners to 12,000. Groups 3 and 5 were based at Thanbyuzayat on the Burma side of the Railway, and Groups 1,2 and 4 plus a further 10,000 prisoners under the Malayan POW administration, worked forward from Bampong on the Thailand side. The command of the POWs fell between two Japanese authorities. There were seven regional commandants in charge of POW Administration, and under these worked the guards. But there were also two Railway Regiments, who were responsible for the technical aspects of the complex engineering task of constructing the Railway. These two were often at loggerheads. The young engineers of the Railway Regiments were motivated professionals attempting to achieve an engineering feat, under the further pressure of an ever-decreasing amount

268 Flower (1996), 'Captors and Captives on the Burma-Thailand Railway', pp. 227-52.

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of time. The POW Administration contained the usual collection of Japanese and Koreans assigned by the IJA to guarding POWs.269

One of the reasons for the great variety in camp conditions is that there were relatively few guards, particularly highly ranked guards, and they were responsible for a widely dispersed group of prisoners. For example, Sibylla Flower showed that on the Burma- Thai Railway there were initially more than 50,000 POWs. The POW Administration’s total manpower consisted of 40 officers, 85 NCOs and 1,280 Korean guards. POW Group 3 consisted of a labour force of 10,000 POWs, which was distributed over a minimum of ten camps over a 100-kilometre stretch. To guard them there was a total of only 8 officers, 20 NCOs and 325 Korean guards.270 For this reason a lot of authority was devolved down to quite lowly ranked guards. This is illustrated by the case of Lee Hak-rae, a Korean guard who was sentenced to death by an Australian ribunal. He was charged at the age of twenty for war crimes immediately following the War. The charges related to his actions as ‘camp commander’ at Hintok Mountain camp. Although he was in charge of that camp, Lee was neither a commander, nor even a soldier. Lee, who took a job as a civilian contractor to avoid military conscription and received no training, was just fifteen when he went to South-East Asia. As a civilian he was actually lower down the chain of command than any Japanese private soldier. The prisoners thought of him as the Japanese soldier in charge of the camp, where he often clashed with the Australian commander, Lt. Col. Dunlop. Though not a soldier, this teenager did exercise the power of life and death over his captives, as it was he who decided which of the sick prisoners would be sent to work despite the protests of their senior medical officer and commanding officer.271

A total of approximately 64,000272 Allied POWs worked on the Burma-Thailand Railway, of whom more than half were British, the others being Australia, Dutch, and a small number of Americans. Most of the prisoners who worked on the construction of the Railway were transported from Changi, though some were transported directly from

269 The Japanese perspective on the Railway, and the organisational aspects of it are under-researched. Two exceptions are Flower (1996), 'Captors and Captives on the Burma-Thailand Railway' and Flower (2004), 'British Policymakers and the Prisoner-of-War Issue: Perceptions and Responses'. 270 Flower (1996), 'Captors and Captives on the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 242. These numbers are quite different to those provided by Tilak Raj Sareen, who claims the initial Japanese force for the Railway was comprised of 12,000 Japanese troops and 3,200 Korean and Japanese civilian guards. The difference may be that Sareen was looking at the total Japanese assignment to both the POWs and the two million civilian labourers: Sareen (2005), Building the Siam-Burma Railway During World War II, p. 7. 271 Hyeong-yum n.d., 'Convicted of War Crimes During WWII, 80-Year Old Korean Tells His Story'. 272 Estimates vary because proper records were not kept by the Japanese. The prisoners tried to keep them, but they were always haphazard.

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camps in the Dutch East Indies. It is odd that the Japanese sent so few POWs to work on the Railway, which was their number one priority, when they had tens of thousands more POWs in South-East Asia. One reason offered is that the Japanese argued that the prisoners from Singapore had entered captivity through surrender rather than capture, and this placed them outside the terms of the Hague and Geneva Conventions.273

The Railway was completed on the 16th of October 1943. It was the biggest killer of the POWs. The statistics available on how many were sent to the Railway and how many survived differ significantly. A summary of the totals from the official report based on the War Graves Commission is presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Mortality totals on the Burma-Thai Railway

Nationality Total Employed Died Mortality Rate % British 30,000 6,540 21.8 Australian 13,000 2,710 20.8 Dutch 18,000 2,830 15.7 U.S. 700 131 18.7 Total* 62,700 12,624 20.0 *Totals not obtained by adding figures in a column. This is an artefact of problems with the different sources of original data.274 Source: Sareen, 2005, p. 19. A different, though equally respectable, assessment is documented in Table 2. Although each of these assessments reaches broadly similar conclusions of the overall mortality rate of roughly 20%, the differences in the mortality rates apportioned to each national group are quite different, and illustrate the dangers in attempting to be certain in drawing conclusions from such data.

Table 2. Workforce and mortality rates calculated by Leffelarr & Van Witsen

Nationality Total Employed Died Mortality Rate % British 23,321 6904 29.6 Australian 8458 ± 1800 21.3 Dutch 17922 3098 17.3 F & H Forces 10620 4250 40 U.S. & Indian 578 131 22.7 Total* 60926 11923 19.6 Derived from Leffelaar & Van Witson (1982, p.203) reproduced in Kratoska 2006 p.14. *Totals not obtained by adding figures in a column.

273 Sareen (2005), Building the Siam-Burma Railway During World War II, p. 8. 274 To see different assessments of the death toll of the Railway, and the source documents on which they are based, see Kratoska (2006) The Thailand-Burma Railway, 1942-1946, Documents and Selected Writings, particularly pp. 14-18.

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In any case, about one in five of the POWs sent to the Railway died there. Those who survived usually returned to Changi, and from there were shipped off to work in other locations, notably in Japan itself. The experiences of the Australian and British POWs in this region, particularly in Changi and the camps along the Railway, are examined in the next chapter. Their rather different experiences in the camps in Japan itself are covered in Chapter 6.

Prominent Camps in the Philippines There were around 29 camps located on various islands in the Philippines. Their populations ranged from around 100 prisoners to tens of thousands.275 Larger camps were more or less permanent bases, whereas smaller camps might be established for the prisoners to perform some particular labour, and therefore may be more temporary or more permanent, depending on their individual purpose. There is no space here to provide anything other than a brief description of the main, largest camps, which is done to provide some context for the action described in the sections that follow. The main camps are Bilibid, Cabanatuan, Davao and O’Donnell, and a brief description of each is provided below in order to give some understanding of the context of the location of events described later in the chapter. Each of these camps was different from each other, particularly with regard to the location and social geography, and this variability of conditions made for some differences with regards to economic possibilities. However, I would argue that for our purposes these differences are not really of much significance, so the empirical and analytical material for the Americans in the Philippines is grouped thematically rather than by location in Chapter 5.

Camp O’Donnell Located near the town of Capas in central Luzon, Camp O’Donnell had been a Philippine Army training facility before the war. Camp O’Donnell was the destination for those on the Death March. The camp was only in operation for about two months, housing the survivors of the Death March while the fight continued in Corregidor and the rest of the Philippines. The camp population was enormous at almost 60,000 prisoners (9,300 Americans and 50,000 Filipinos), about half of whom died.

Bilibid Prison Bilibid Prison, in the centre of Manilla, had been built by the Spanish in 1805. It had been declared unfit for criminal prisoners and closed down until the Japanese re-

275 See Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, pp. 250-257.

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opened it. Despite having been condemned pre-war, and being heavily overcrowded, Bilibid compared well to other camps in the Philippines. Being a city jail, Bilibid had clean running water from the city supply for drinking and showers, and even a crude flush toilet system.276 Like Changi in Singapore, the central Manilla location of this camp made it relatively easy to smuggle goods into the prison, and to maintain contacts with civilians outside the wall, who sent in money. The lower compound was set-aside as a prison hospital, and it became the main hospital for captured Americans on Luzon.277 Bilibid was also used as a clearinghouse for POWs being moved from camp to camp or sent overseas, which made it impossible to track movements and numbers properly. At its peak, it is thought to have housed around 12,000 POWs, 8,700 of whom were American.278

Cabanatuan There were actually three camps separated by several miles on the arid plain at Cabanatuan, a city located about a hundred miles north of Manila. Formerly the site of the United States agricultural experiment station, three camps had been built to house the 91st Philippine Army Division at the time of mobilisation. Each camp was designed to hold a battalion. Each had a parade ground and several large wooden barracks buildings, as well as other smaller buildings. Each barrack building, designed to house forty Filipino soldiers was used to house 120 prisoners. They were joined by hard- packed dirt roads. The Japanese surrounded the whole area with barbed wire and guard towers. Camp Number 1 was located 9 miles (15 km) from the city centre, and initially housed most of the officers captured at Corregidor. Four miles (6km) away from Number 1, Cabanatuan Number 2 housed mostly naval personnel. Camp Number 3 was originally used to house the sick and wounded left behind at Bataan, then later, men from Corregidor; reaching a population of around 6,000. Later around 6,000 men arrived from O’Donnell and another thousand from Bilibid; 5,000 were shipped out to Japan and another 1,000 to Davao. Eventually, after these thousands had been moved on, Number 1 and Number 2 were closed, which left Cabanatuan Number 3 as the largest camp in the Philippines, housing about 6,000 prisoners, one-third of whom were too sick to work. The discrepancy in the number of arrivals and departures is an indication of the mortality rate. By the end of 1942 two thousand had died at Number 1

276 Kerr (1985), Surrender and Survival, p. 76. 277 Feuer (1987). Bilibid Diary: The Secret Notebooks of Commander Thomas Hayes, p. xvi. 278 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 251.

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alone. Those who worked mostly worked on the prison farm, and in related activities such as digging canals and wallows for carabao.279

Davao Penal Colony The only major camp not located on the main island of Luzon, was the Davao Penal Colony, which had been a federal prison located in a jungle clearing about twenty miles north of the city of Davao on the island of Mindanao. Here the prisoners worked on a farm of 1,000 hectares growing food, particularly rice, for the Japanese garrisons spread throughout the islands. Attached were a rice mill, a sawmill, a hemp rope factory and warehouses. The barracks were made of timber half-walls and corrugated iron roofs. The first group that arrived here were one thousand Americans who had surrendered locally in October, 1942. They worked alongside some of the remaining civilian convicts already there. This group was joined in November by a thousand prisoners from Cabanatuan.

The economic conditions of captivity

The camp economies were places of extreme deprivation. The prisoners were starved throughout the duration of captivity, denied basic medical care, and worked quite literally to death. While the Japanese did not feel themselves bound by the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and did not follow most of the precepts they contain, they did implement some of them. Interestingly, the Japanese did pay POW officers at differential rates according to their rank, and they did pay POW workers a flat daily rate, although not at anything like a ‘market rate’ that was envisaged in the Conventions. They used their POWs, including sometimes the officers, as forced labour to directly aid the war effort. Sometimes there was a canteen in the camp, and sometimes the profits could be used for the benefit of prisoners, but often this was not the case. Sometimes there was adequate accommodation, but often there was not. Occasionally there was an issue of clothing in some locations, but usually there was not. There was almost always some sort of ration supplied, but it was rarely adequate for survival. They did not separate the officers from the other ranks. Contrary to the rather gentlemanly camps described in the Geneva Convention, in which POWs although deprived of their liberty would experience camp life much like being stationed at a comfortable base camp in their own military, the Japanese camps were places of economic scarcity.

279 Sources for the Cabanatuan section are Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 198-9, and Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II p. 252.

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It is difficult to generalise about more specific details of camp conditions and administration as there was variation, not only between different camps, but also throughout the period within the same camp. Some camps were located in existing buildings, which might be overcrowded, but did provide adequate shelter, and even electricity and running water in some cases. In other cases there was no shelter at all, and prisoners had to build what shelter they could with whatever they could find, generally atap huts,280 sometimes with only a roof, no walls, and a mud floor. Sometimes, in some places, prisoners were able to wash in rivers or the ocean, sometimes they were unable to wash for long periods of time. Only very occasionally was any clothing issued, and then it was often an inadequate supply of a single item, such as Japanese boots that were too small for the Western POWs. So for the most part what little clothing the prisoners had was improvised, such as g-strings they called ‘jap happies’ and single-strapped homemade sandals they called ‘go aheads’ because they would fall off with a backward step.

In more remote locations, the food supply sometimes failed completely and the men had only what little food they could find or catch, such as snakes or monkeys. Or a guard might throw a grenade into a stream to get some fish. Usually, though, there was a food ration, and this was always inadequate. The ration mostly consisted of just rice, sometimes supplemented with tiny amounts of meat, fish, or vegetables. It was of poor quality, and often inedible. The little meat that was supplied was often rotten, as was the rice, which was almost always infested. In 1941 the Australian Army ration was 4220 calories per day, and it was calculated that a man could survive and do some light work on 3000 calories. In Changi, which was a relatively affluent camp, the official ration scale was just over 2000 per day, and it was less on the Railway.281 To put this into perspective, the Americans had a different ration scale for those engaged in active combat, which was higher than the peacetime ration and allowed for the greater expenditure of energy needed in combat. The Japanese ration equated to just 40% of the American peacetime ration, and the prisoners were working harder, expending more calories, than an average combat soldier.282 And those are the official rations. What was actually delivered was often even less than that. Additionally, the Japanese attitude was that men who were not working did not require so much food, so that the sick were given only half of the already inadequate ration. The calorie intake at

280 Atap is a Malay term meaning thatched with palm fronds. 281 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War, p. 51. 282 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 111.

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Japanese camps is less comparable with other POW camps,283 and more like that of the NAZI concentration camps. At Auschwitz, for instance, prisoners received between 1,300 calories per day, for those doing light work, and 1,700 calories for those doing heavy work284. The prisoners of the Japanese were doing heavy work on a comparable and lower calorie intake.

Beyond the calorie count, another serious problem was that because the ration was basically just rice there was virtually nothing other than carbohydrate. This is reflected in the very high rates of morbidity associated with vitamin and mineral deficiencies. Vitamin deficiencies constituted a very serious problem, and led to a plethora of medical problems, which are indicators of malnutrition. There were the obvious problems such as scurvy, pellagra and beriberi. Pellagra caused skin rashes, diarrhoea, dementia and eventually death. Beriberi came in two varieties: wet and dry. In the case of wet beriberi the body would accumulate fluid and the patient would become distended. A common comment that indicates the level of swelling is that a man’s testicles could swell to a size larger than a soccer ball. In dry beriberi there was no deformation but a man would suddenly die, even in mid-sentence, from a cardiac arrest.

There was also a wider range of debilitating conditions that stemmed from vitamin deficiency, many of which were surprising to the medical teams, who had never encountered these conditions before, and in some cases never even heard of them. These conditions though were so common that they became core aspects of daily camp life. Some of the most common of these included what would later be termed nutritional melalgia, but which was then known within the camps as ‘happy feet’, ‘burning feet’ and ‘electric feet’, which caused the men to appear to dance as they shifted their weight from one burning and aching foot to the other as the nerve endings sent a painful sensation like an electric shock.285 Some men went temporarily blind from simple vitamin deficiency, and a common condition was night blindness, which

283 By 1945 when food shortages were at their worst, Allied POWs in Japan received just 600 calories per day, less than half of what they received in Germany where food was also scarce. Conversely, German POWs held at Lethbridge in Canada received roughly 3,000 calories per day, and gained on average 100 pounds, or more than 45 kilograms, in the first ten months of captivity. Vance (2000), Encyclopaedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, p. 237. 284 These number are based on post-war calculations of the food actually received. The official ration scale at Auschwitz was 1,700 calories for light work and 2,150 for heavy work, Gutman (1998), 'Auschwitz - an Overview', p. 24. 285 The primary association between malnutrition and this condition is deficiency of vitamin B, see Glusman (1947), 'The Syndrome of “Burning Feet” (Nutritional Melalgia) as a Manifestation of Nutritional Deficiency'.

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was particularly dangerous for sufferers who were working on bridge construction during the nights. (A few learnt from the Eurasian Dutch about edible plants available in the jungle, which almost miraculously restored sight by providing vitamins). Tropical ulcers too were a constant problem. Any scratch or splinter could easily lead to an infection, which acted like gangrene, and for which there was no real treatment. If it became severe the only known option was amputation, without anaesthetic and with low odds of survival. There was an extreme kind of tinea known locally in different camps by a variety of names such as ‘Changi balls’, ‘Java balls’ or ‘Bandoeng balls’. It was extremely painful and led to cracked skin that was constantly weeping. Men would line up to yelp as their testicles were painted with iodine if the medical officers had any, or else line up with their testicles on a fence, hoping the sun would dry out the wounds. Without adequate medical supplies, the attention turned to nutritional supplements. Constant pleas to the Japanese for vitamin B were generally ignored, or occasionally supplied in inadequate quantities. If only the husks of the rice had been kept, much of this could have been avoided. Even on these meagre rations, there was sufficient vitamin B within the rice husks. But the Japanese refused to issue brown rice.286 In a community composed overwhelmingly of young men it was a clear sign of malnutrition that they had all become impotent quite quickly. This had significant psychological impacts, and there was a great deal of concern among the medicos as well as the men themselves that if they survived, and if they were not permanently impotent, then they would certainly be infertile.287 Tom Uren points to some of the key statistics which showed the prevalence of some of these conditions: of the Australian prisoners of the Japanese 35% had hookworm, 61% leg ulcers, 49% had ‘happy feet’, and over 7% had cholera.288

One aspect of the Geneva Convention that was followed by the Japanese, at least to some extent, was the payment of prisoners. Officers were paid on a scale related to their rank, and without being required to work. Contrary to the Convention though, substantial deductions were made for their living expenses. This made officers dependent on rations rather than running their own mess. Further deductions were made to be placed in a fictitious bank account to be refunded after the war. Other ranks were paid a daily rate for work. If they were too sick to work, not only were they not paid, but they were also not given a ration or given only half rations. In contempt of the

286 I have been unable to find a reason for this. Perhaps it is just because white rice was easier to obtain. 287 The erroneous medical advice to survivors, even on return home, was that they were certainly infertile, which led to a lot of unplanned pregnancies. 288 Uren (1993), 'Journeys in Captivity', p. 56.

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Conventions, the work they did was heavy and dangerous work, and it was always to support Japan’s war effort.

Japan’s failure to provide even basic necessities for her prisoners had devastating effects, reflected in both mortality and morbidity. The statistics are incomplete and unreliable, but the broad patterns are clear. Conservative estimates put the Allied death rate at 27%, compared to less than 3% in European Axis camps. The ethnic spread of fatalities is represented in the Table 3.

Table 3. POW mortality rates in all Japanese camps

Nationality Prisoners Total Deaths Mortality Rate % Australia 21,726 7,412 34 Canada 1,691 273 16 UK 50,016 12,433 25 NZ 121 31 26 USA 21,580 7,107 33 Dutch (white) 37,000 8,500 23 Total 132,134 35,756 27 Source: Beaumont (2001) Australian Defence: Sources and Statistics, p. 344.

These rates only capture the deaths that took place in Japanese custody. Former prisoners of the Japanese continued to die at disproportional rates in the years following the war. Beyond the stark fatality rates, the prisoners also experienced a range of debilitating conditions stemming from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies. As stark as the fatality rates are, perhaps it is less surprising that so many died than it is that so many survived such extreme deprivation. The impact on the bodies of survivors was significant though, and in the fourteen years following the war former POWs continued to die at four times the rate of other veterans who had served in the same theatre of war.289

The failure to provide adequate rations, medicine or cash, meant that the only way for prisoners to survive was to engage in other economic activity. At some times in some camps there was an official canteen from which prisoners could buy whatever was available that they could afford. Sometimes the canteens were run as a co-operative to benefit themselves, as per the Geneva Convention, but more often the guards took a substantial cut of the profits. Sometimes local traders were permitted to set up concessions inside the camps. Sometimes prisoners were permitted to make

289 Uren (1993), 'Journeys in Captivity', p. 56.

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purchases from local traders when they were outside the camp on work details, other times they were not. It depended on the whim of the guard escorting them.

Basic POW Camp Organisational Structure The Japanese did not really run the camps, as such, but rather set conditions and parameters, within which the prisoners were left to organise themselves. As detailed in the previous chapters, this was necessitated by the sheer ratio of the numbers of prisoners to guards.290 As unlikely as it seems, the extent of this is evidenced by the fact that for the first six months, when the Japanese viewed their prisoners as ‘captives’ rather than ‘prisoners of war’, the prisoners barely even saw any Japanese personnel, unless they were among the prisoners being escorted by Japanese guards outside of the camp on work details.291 Indeed, the 3,000 Australians captured in Java were allowed to roam free most of the time for about a month before being placed in a real camp, and although no rations were provided, they were able to eat at cafes, buy food and cook for themselves.292

As previously mentioned, one of the key aspects of the Japanese approach was that they did not separate the officers from other ranks, and in fact relied upon the officers to administer the camps. So long as there was a senior officer in overall command through whom the Japanese could issue orders, how the prisoners organised themselves was generally up to them. For prisoners of war to administer their own camps is extraordinary, and it is this factor that provides such a unique basis for the analysis of the camps as case studies of social organisation and economic action.

The immediate tasks were usually to establish the basic infrastructure of the camp. Camps in more isolated parts of Thailand and Burma often began with nothing at all, and the prisoners would first have to build huts for their guards and then for themselves. At Kanyu Camp, for example, the Japanese sent POWs into the virgin jungle during the monsoon season, without medical supplies or cooking equipment, with just two axes, two billhooks, one pick and a broken shovel, to build a camp to

290 Additionally, in the early days when the prisoners were under the guard of regular IJA soldiers rather than the POW administration, it seems there was a general lack of interest on the part of the Japanese in dealing with the prisoners. They kept contact to a minimum, which allowed these structures to emerge before the POW administration arrived. For an example of this see the account of Bukit Timah camp in Summers (2005), The Colonel of Tamarkan. 291 Wigmore (1957), The Japanese Thrust. 292 Wigmore (1957), The Japanese Thrust, p. 532.

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house a thousand men.293 In larger camps, such as Changi in Singapore or Bicycle Camp in Java, the sites were former military bases, so there were a lot of existing buildings and services such as water and electricity, although these had often been damaged in the fighting. The prisoners would first have to allot accommodation and set about making repairs. The camps were invariably overcrowded so additions would have to be made to existing buildings, and latrines and anti-mosquito trenches dug. Hospitals would be established, along with cookhouses, storage facilities, office facilities for the administration of the camp, and often an internal prison established for the punishment of prisoners by their own officers. Working parties, known either as corvées or fatigues, had to be organised to carry out the general maintenance of the camp, including tasks such as carrying and sterilising water, collecting firewood, and generally cleaning the area.

Conclusion The main purpose of this chapter was to outline the basic context of captivity, in order to better understand the action in subsequent chapters. It provided background information on the basic history of the war to that point, and to the capture of the POWs and conditions of their imprisonment. It showed too the cultural relativity of normative approaches to the treatment of prisoners of war, and how normative expectations of each side clashed.

Chapters 4, 5 and 6 explore the ways that the prisoners coped in the context of these camps. Chapter 4 looks at the camps in the regions of Singapore, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, which were occupied by Australian and British POWs. Chapter 5 turns to the experiences of the American prisoners in the Philippines, and Chapter 6 explores the experiences of all three national groups who were held in Japan. They show that the conditions of the camps varied in different localities and under different regimes. They also show that within these various contexts, under similar or identical structural conditions, the norms of economic action varied too, with strong patterns emerging according to the nationalities of the prisoners.

293 Gale diary, IWM, cited in Flower (1996), 'Captors and Captives on the Burma-Thailand Railway'.

Chapter 4 Symmetry and Centricity: Australian and British Camps

Introduction The first chapter introduced the premise of the study, that the economic activity of the POWs examined in this thesis differed significantly according to nationality. The second chapter introduced the work of Karl Polanyi as a theoretical and methodological framework with which to analyse this phenomenon. The third chapter provided background material necessary to understand the context in which these events took place. This chapter looks at the economic activity of the Australian and British prisoners in South-East Asia using Polanyi’s tools of institutional analysis to understand the structural motivations for embedded economic activity. The findings suggest that the economies of each of these national groups was primarily integrated by a different one of the processes that Polanyi identified, and that this in turn suggests different structural conditions motivated the economic activity of each of these two national groups.

The Australian and British prisoners held in this region were captured following the surrender of the Allies in Singapore, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. Their defeat and surrender was swift, as outlined in the previous chapter. Many of the prisoners began their time as POWs before they had the opportunity to fire a shot. It was quite a shock to find themselves in captivity almost immediately, but the fact that few of them had seen much combat meant that they generally began prison life in good physical condition. They were also usually held with Dutch troops. Among them were also a few hundred American sailors and marines from the S.S. Houston, which had been sunk off the coast of Java. The chapter does not look at either of these groups, though it does draw on their testimony to assess the British and Australian cases. The comparison with American POWs follows in later chapters.

The prisoners in this region were mostly employed in large-scale infrastructure projects, such as constructing railways and aerodromes, and they were also used in

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the looting of local areas to carry looted goods and load them onto ships. The camps in this region included some of the best known, such as Changi in Singapore, Bicycle Camp in Java, and the camps along the Burma-Thai Railway. There were also many less well-known camps in this region. This chapter looks mainly at two of the key sets of camps: those along the Railway, and the core base camp of Changi in Singapore. Changi is important, not only because of its size and the fact that so many of the Australians and British were kept there for at least some time, but also because its very size led to a unique feature, which was the large degree of control over the institution exercised by the prisoners themselves. The conditions at Changi were relatively good for most of its existence. The Railway camps, on the other hand, were among the worst that prisoners of the Japanese experienced. This is not only because the work on the Railway was extremely dangerous in itself, but the locations in which they worked were much more dangerous than the camps in more populated areas. They were often in deep jungle areas with poor communications links, making food and medicine even more difficult to obtain. The camps in this region were also frequently infested with life- threatening diseases such as cholera and typhoid, and the slightest scratch was prone to infection. Some of the camps were very large, and some very small. Some were controlled by the Australians, others by the British. The data is presented not in chronological or geographical order, but thematically. It is restricted as much as possible to the core economic matters, but does also explore other key factors necessary to fully understand the embedded economies.

Organisation and Leadership Both the British and Australian POWs were very highly organised, although, as I will discuss further, they were organised in different ways. Because they had surrendered en masse, the unit structures were more or less intact. Overall command of the camp would usually fall to the most senior officer of the national group with the largest proportion of the camp population. In smaller camps the British and Australians usually chose to operate as one combined group, further subdivided by nationality where the numbers were sufficient. In practice this usually meant the preservation of the Malaya Command structure, with the British superior to the Australians. As Havers notes, this start to captivity was an important factor, and by devolving so many responsibilities to the POWs themselves, the Japanese were inadvertently creating and fostering an

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independent spirit that would become more and more apparent as the years of captivity passed.294

In cases where officers were of the same rank other factors were used to determine seniority: a regular officer outranked a volunteer or Territorial of the same temporary rank; an older or more experienced officer of the same rank was more senior and so on. The most senior officers would usually form a committee with the responsibility for various aspects of camp administration divided up between them, or in the case of larger camps, the responsibilities would be shared between a number of specialised committees. Changi in particular was notable for its intensely hierarchical and bureaucratic style of management, with committees for everything, and written orders and memos being sent back and forth between senior officers.

Upon arrival in a new camp, the immediate tasks were usually to establish basic infrastructure and facilities. Camps in more isolated parts of Thailand and Burma often began with nothing at all, and the prisoners would build everything from scratch.

Generally, the camps of this region were populated by at least one thousand prisoners, sometimes tens of thousands, from at least two, usually three national groups: the British, the Australians and the Dutch. The prisoners tended to divide themselves up by nationality and preserve their pre-capture command structure as much as possible. This was reflected in the way they used the physical space: there would usually be a Dutch area of the camp, and Australian area and a British area. For example, just a few days after capitulation, on the 21st of February, the huge Changi complex had been subdivided into six administrative sections, with an area commander appointed for each. There was also a lot of animosity, and little contact, between the Dutch and the others.295 The prisoners, or more accurately the officers, would usually choose to enforce further internal divisions, by separating the officers from the men as much as possible. The officers would usually have separate sleeping quarters and eat different food in a separate mess.

Some degree of centralisation was imposed by the Japanese. The rations, for instance, were usually issued twice weekly in one bulk lot, which mean that the prisoners had to

294 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience: The Changi POW Camp, Singapore, 1942-5, p. 29. 295 This is possibly partly attributable to language difficulties, but is also probably partly due to ethno- cultural prejudices, particularly as many of the Dutch were actually Indonesian-born Eurasians.

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organise the storage, collection, redistribution and preparation of the food themselves. How the prisoners organised themselves was basically up to them, so long as there was a senior officer in overall command. The Japanese further imposed centralisation by making demands of the whole camp, particularly for labour. For instance, the Japanese commandant might issue an order to the POW commanding officer that 500 men were required to go out on a work detail. The POW commanding officer might issue orders to the senior Australian officer that he was to provide 200 Australian troops, and that the senior British officer was to provide 200 and the senior Dutch officer as to provide 100, and so on.

Changi Because of its scale, Changi afforded the prisoners a much greater degree of freedom of movement than they were to have anywhere else. In the early days there was considerable freedom of movement, both within Changi and out of the area. As Havers points out, this “freedom extended to their movements, and crucially, to the manner in which they organised themselves to face the undoubted challenges of captivity.”296 Many commented that prisoners could go for weeks or even months inside Changi without seeing a Japanese guard. Initially the only physical barrier to movement outside the camp was the ocean around the peninsula. The extraordinary degree of self-organisation is demonstrated by the fact that eventually the prisoners were required to construct a barbed wire fence around the perimeter of the camp, and then later to construct fences between the different sections of the camp.297 It may have been bizarre that the prisoners were erecting their own fences, but more bizarre still is that they were obliged to source their own wire as well. Each area command reported monthly to the Malaya Command on the results of an inspection of the serviceability of the wire in their area, who in turn reported to the Japanese. The sheer scale of the Changi POW camp, both in size and the number of prisoners, particularly the ratio of prisoners to guards, made it an unusual institution.

Daily life at Changi was almost immediately tightly regulated, but it was the POWs who were creating and imposing this structure upon themselves. The British leadership decided early on that the most important thing was to preserve strict military discipline. One of the first things that the British did at Changi was to build a punishment cell, a

296 Havers (2000), 'The Changi POW Camp and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p.19. 297 The perimeter fence was a double-apron of barbed wire, with a triple concertina fence in between them, commenced on the 7th of March, (1942). One week later the internal divisions were erected. See Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 56.

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prison within a prison. There was also a strong emphasis on keeping the troops occupied, with lots of drills and made up jobs around the camp. The adherence to military procedures became farcical. One British prisoner who began prison life in Java commented on the differences that he noticed in moving to Changi:

There is in Changi a great deal more freedom and comfort than I ever experienced in Java. The only oppression comes from our own officers who, because of the order given by the Japanese that the camp must be run as a British military unit, have instituted their own reign of terror. Courts martial are held. Men are given detention sentences for trivial offences. Saluting is, of course, the order of the day and has become an obsession…And all this in a Prisoner of War camp! One outcome of all this saluting is Changi now resembles nothing more than a Tic Tac Man298 on a days outing to his local race course. Everyone salutes everyone. It is much safer this way. We have great fun. The officers do not approve. The Australians do not salute anyone. No doubt their officers would be surprised if they did. This has led to many amusing incidents and increased blood pressure in our more choleric Colonels when, after reprimanding an Australian for failing to salute, they are most impolitely told to ‘Get knotted’.

Culturally, the emphasis on hierarchy and status on the part of the British officers was remarkable even to the British, but even more so for the other nationals. A Dutch medical officer reflected on how the privations of prison of war life had failed to break down the class barriers between the British:

As a result of the common sharing of hardship and suffering, the usual military distinctions between the different ranks amongst the allied POWs gradually faded into feelings of solidarity, bordering on fraternisation. This disappearance of stratification in military ranks did not extend to the British, who in line with their conservative spirit, preferred to maintain, even in prisonership [sic], a strict distinction in status and ranks of field officers, regular officers, non-commissioned officers and the soldiers with their corporals…The British officers for example, kept displaying their badges [insignia or rank], even when clad in a "tjawat" [loincloth] only.299

If the British in South-East Asia found the attitude of the officers at Changi objectionable, the culture clash for the Australians who encountered this strict divide between officers and other ranks was jarring. When Braddon’s party arrived they were addressed by a duty officer on the importance of maintaining discipline:

He then lost interest in us and said: “All right, gentlemen, break off”. So we broke off. Howls of rage. “Gentlemen”, it appeared, meant only officers, of whom there were only two in our midst: the remainder of us were emphatically not, he gave us to understand, gentlemen. The man beside me, who in [Kuala Lumpur], by virtue of his ability to lead…and who now – by virtue of his two pips – was one of those entitled to break off, stood his ground and said loudly: “Christ Almighty”.300 This example demonstrates that the disregard for the class distinctions of rank were shared not only by the Australian other ranks, but also by (at least some of) their

298 Tic Tac Men are the men who communicate the changing odds to bookmakers at racetracks using hand signals. 299 Dumoulin. Diary. Imperial War Museum IWM 97/6/1, p. 20. 300 Braddon (1975) [1952], The Naked Island, p. 153.

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officers. There was much less social distance between the Australian officers and other ranks than was the case with the British, as indicated by the British assumption that officers, and only officers, are ‘gentlemen’ and the Australian assumption that it is an inclusive term. The Australian commander Weary Dunlop, for instance, routinely addressed the troops as “gentlemen”.301 In the British case this assumption was largely correct in that officers were officers because of their civilian class position. Even though the Australians were under the umbrella of the Malaya Command, which was ultimately a British command, the Australians maintained some independence and important differences emerged almost immediately in the emphasis placed on different priorities.302

The Railway Things were different on the Railway. The conditions were such that they could not have exercised such a high degree of formality if they have wanted to, but there were also demographic differences between the officers on the Railway and those at Changi. When the Japanese began demanding large numbers of troops to be go to work on the Railway, the British decided to try and maintain a potential fighting force in Singapore as long as possible, so they held the Regular officers back and sent Territorial officers (reservists) as much as possible. The fact that so few of the officers on the Railway were Regulars revealed differences in attitudes and norms between the Regulars and Territorials that were not apparent at Changi, which was run by Regular field officers, and was more reflective of Regular norms. The Territorial officers, who were more likely to be in command on the Railway, were often less strictly adherent to regulations and traditions even in these extraordinary circumstances. Officers of local volunteer forces were more likely to be practical men of experience, having been colonial civil servants, planters, engineers or other professionals in civilian life. They were also more likely to have experience of living in the tropics. Flower argues that although there were notorious examples of selfishness on the part of officers, this was much less common among Territorials than it was among Regulars, because of the strong paternalistic tradition of the former. Flower argues that when examining the events on the Railway, it is unsafe to employ the popular national stereotypes that are often seen in writing about the British in the POW camps because they were an unusually diverse lot. The British officers sent to the Railway were drawn from a range of both Regular and Territorial units, from English, Scottish and local colonial volunteer

301 See for instance Ebury (1994), Weary: The Life of Sir Edward Dunlop, p. 430. 302 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience: p. 28.

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regiments. The largest contingent was from the 18th Division of the East Anglian Territorial Army, with significant numbers from the Northumberland Fusiliers and the Sherwood Foresters. There were members of some Regular Army units, such as the Manchester Regiment, the Gordon Highlanders, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and the Loyal Regiment, who had been stationed in the Far East for some years.303 There were also a large number of British officers who had gone into captivity without their troops. The Indian troops of more than thirty units of the Indian Army, and the Hong Kong and Singapore Royal Artillery had all been immediately separated by the Japanese. The Chinese and Malay troops of the Volunteer forces had been disbanded before surrender. This meant that while the Australians on the Railway maintained their existing unit structures, the British did not.

The largest contingents of Australians that left Changi for Thailand were two infantry brigades left more or less intact, so the Australians left as established cohesive groups, under the leadership of the officers they knew. The British on the other hand, with such a surplus of officers, divided up their units from a diverse set of sources. The troops that were sent with these officers were also drawn from a mixed bag of Territorials rather than sending Regular Army units. Flower gives the example of ‘B Battalion’, which was sent from Changi in November of 1942. Comprising 549 POWs, the battalion was made up of a collection of troops from more than six different regiments of the 18th Division. The breaking up of established units may be significant, but the differences between the attitudes of Regular and Territorial officers that Flower claims does not appear to have had a significant effect, perhaps it is better characterised as a matter of degrees along a continuum. For example, a British medical officer in Thailand observed the differences in the morale that came from less status differentiation and more group solidarity among the Australians compared to the British:

The AIF are going strong…Yes – there is a totally different, and to me, much more pleasant, spirit about their mess – (amongst officers, amongst men and between officers and men). Their C.O. is friendly – they will all chat together and play the fool – yet he is undoubtedly their C.O. and if the time calls for it they jump to it (I have seen it time and time again) while in our Mess there is a bloody barrier almost everywhere you turn. There is hardly any general conversation – just in little groups. (We get secret letters sent round the mess telling us how we should behave to [other ranks] – Ye Gods – such piffle at times like these and when after all, we all P.O.W.s – No; we are so frightfully frightfully British, don't you know, while they (the Aussies) are bloody good fellows.304

303 Flower (1996), 'Captors and Captives on the Burma-Thailand Railway', pp. 240-7. 304 Vardy. Personal Papers. Imperial War Museum IWM 67/166/1, Volume II, p. 199.

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Similarly, a British Sergeant Major veteran of Changi and the Railway explained how the other ranks had very little contact with their officers during their time in captivity, and how those rifts persisted in civilian life:

You probably realise that the officers are not particularly well thought of. Their attitude was that they were still officers. They weren’t going to work, and in many cases they never did work…They saw they were alright. And some of the officers, I mean your own officers, you never saw. They just kept themselves to themselves. Up country [on the Railway] some of the officers did come with us, and remained with us. But…they had their own cookhouse and whatever was going extra they got...My own platoon officer, I suppose I saw him the first month we were prisoners and I never saw him again. Nice enough chap, but he never came near us. They lived together and kept together…The officers never lived with the men. They had their own cookhouse. Their own doctors. They looked after themselves.

When asked to compare the British relationship between officers and other ranks with that of the Australians, that same British veteran replied that they were “totally different” because these relationships stemmed from the British class system, which he thought did not exist in Australia:

The Australian officers and the Australian troops, here again, there isn’t the demarcation. The officers in that Norfolk Battalion were nearly all local gentry. Or they were solicitors or qualified accountants. They were the upper structure [sic], the officers. The others were the farmer boys. Well there’s no-one [in Australia] with a long background of aristocracy. It just doesn’t exist in Australia as it does here.305

The Australian officers looked after their men. Australian prisoner Dr Kevin Fagan, found that in comparing the British and Australian POWs there was a greater sense of care and responsibility on the part of the Australian officers toward their men:

There was this terrible class thing in the British mind. It’s horrible. I’ve seen British officers at the end of a long day’s march as soon as they arrived at the camp just flop down on the ground. Someone would say, ‘What about the men?’ ‘OH, so-and-so the men. I can’t do any more.’ Whereas a fellow like [senior Australian officer] Newton would be scrounging around trying to buy a few eggs for the sick, trying to organise the men to be together, finding out where everyone was, and whether anyone needed a doctor – all this before he even thought of eating or sitting down.306

When the men were required to work outside the camps, the Australian officers, who were not required to work, chose to accompany their men, in order to try and stand between them and their abusive guards. Australian officers were sometimes known to swap clothes with a sick other rank and to go out to work in his place in order to give him a day off. The British never did that. The only officer who accompanied the British out to work was actually Polish. Because the British officers remained in camp while

305 Wilkins, interview with author 306 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 67.

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their men were out working, they appear to have had little understanding of how hard their men were labouring outside. In order to maintain discipline and morale, it was decided that they needed to march drills when they returned to camp each evening. So starving exhausted men were made to pointlessly expend energy marching around, which of course led to even greater resentment of the officers. It is very unlikely that the Australians would have obeyed such orders had been issued, and just as unlikely that such orders would have been given. The Australian officers had been out with their men all day and knew what they were experiencing. As Joan Beaumont argues, The successful [Australian] officers were not those who…maintained social distance between themselves and their men, resorting to formal sanctions when their authority was challenged. Instead it was those officers who remained personally approachable and maintained the face of egalitarianism even when the reality of the army hierarchy and camp life contradicted this who emerged as the figures of respect.307

Beaumont hits the nail on the head with her reference to ‘social distance’. The social distance between the British officers and other ranks was so great that it was almost as if the British officers and other ranks were different nationalities. A rare exception is the short introduction to John Coates’ memoir published in 1946. Coates devoted one of the six paragraphs to apologising to the other ranks, whom he acknowledged “had a much worse time than the Officers”. Coates wrote that while he was always sympathetic to and aware of the “more wretched” position of the other ranks, he was not in a position to describe it. He expressed hope that some other ranks would write a history from their point of view.308 One of the most startling things about reading the diaries of British officers is how rarely they mention the other ranks. Whereas the British insisted on blind obedience from their social inferiors, the Australian officers had to gain co-operation from their social equals. And there was also a level of concern for their men on the part of the officers that was unknown among the British. The fundamental difference was that the Australian officers and other ranks did not view each other as being different groups, but rather as being part of the same group. This had significant implications for the economic organisation of the Australians, which is explored in the later sections of this chapter.

Centralised Redistribution — Rations and Stores The Japanese rice ration was issued twice weekly. This meant that the prisoners needed to collect, store and redistribute the rice, which imposed some central

307 Beaumont (1988), Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity 1941-1945, p. 215. 308 Coast (1946), Railroad of Death, p. 8.

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organisation on the prisoners’ internal systems of food distribution. Centralised rations were redistributed to individual units, who were responsible for their own cooking in messes. However, this centralisation and redistribution of food actually occurred before rations were issued. It was a while before any rations were received, and the prisoners relied on any food supplies that they had brought in with them. The Japanese had initially ordered the Allies to take their belongings into Changi with them. The quartermasters arranged for transports to be loaded up with rations to be taken into camp. But, according to the memoir of Lt. Col. Knights, the commanding officer of the Royal Norfolks 4th Battalion, British HQ sent orders to dump rations outside the perimeter because assurances had been made to the Japanese that only a limited number of vehicles would be brought into the camp area, and that number had been reached.309 According to Knights, the battalion officers generally disagreed with this order and thought it should be ignored, but the degree to which it was actually obeyed varied. Most obeyed it strictly. In Knights’ own case, he decided to pay lip service to the order by returning a small portion of supplies while retaining the majority for issue. This, he noted, led to resentment when it was later discovered that his battalion was living in comparative plenty, when others were subsisting on inadequate rations.

A difference between the British and Australian approaches to adjusting to life in captivity arose immediately. The records of the AIF remain considerably intact, and show that from the very beginning in Singapore there was a desire to maintain order and discipline, even before the conditions of Changi were understood. The AIF units were ordered to send all essential equipment and reserve rations and clothing to Changi. However, as British historian R.P.W. Havers notes, the Australians, unlike the British, prohibited the transportation of officers’ kits. The orders allowed that officers’ kits may be collected later as a last priority, but that officers were to pack only what they could carry. There was to be no use of staff cars, and only the highest ranking officers, at the level of Brigadier and above, were permitted to ride in the trucks carrying stores.310 So we see here a difference between the two nationalities immediately. The British officers often began captivity in Changi with a large number of personal possessions, carried in trunks by their troops and by vehicle. Their other ranks had nothing more than their packs, and by prioritising the use of vehicles for transporting private property, the group were deprived of the food that had to be

309 Knights Singapore and the Thailand-Burma Railway. IWM 97/32/1, p. 2/28. 310 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 27-8.

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dumped as a result. 311 The Australians had limited officer privilege which, intentionally or not, effectively boosted the collective welfare of the Australian prisoners as they were able to bring in more necessities for themselves.

As the prisoners had begun camp life with unequal resources, the order soon came for the prisoners to surrender all their supplies to be centralised and issued as equalised camp-wide rations. This was greeted with much resentment by those who had food, and there was widespread suspicion among those who had carried in their own food that it had now been embezzled — mostly because they saw so little come back to them. It was to be some time before any Japanese rations were to be issued, so prisoners were initially dependent on what stores they had, or could purchase. In the early days at Changi the perimeter of the camp was quite porous. Shopping parties were able to go out and make collective purchases using regimental funds, and then could redistribute the food via the kitchens. It was generally quite a chaotic set of arrangements and the prisoners were soon hungry. This was to become much worse once the Japanese secured the perimeters of the camps, and the men became more reliant on the rations issued by the IJA.

The basic part of the economy, the staple of the diet, was the rice ration provided by the Japanese. The British and Australians were only familiar with rice as milky pudding. It took the cooks months to learn how to cook it. The rations were cooked into what they termed a ‘pap’, a wet soupy concoction of boiled rice and water with whatever meat and vegetables had been added. Although the proportion of meat, when it was available, would be so tiny that there was no substance to it, the most that could be hoped was that it would add some flavour and some nutrients to the rice. Occasionally they were supplemented by food from Red Cross packages, although when these were distributed they had often been looted by the Japanese, and they were only ever distributed in small quantities. So that packages intended for one man would be first depleted by guards and then shared between a number of prisoners, it might be one between seven prisoners or even one between eleven.312

311 A great many diaries contain extensive lists of possessions, as well as details about the trunks and who carried them. 312 According to Jonathon Vance, despite ongoing negotiations the Allies were only able to persuade Japan to accept about 225,000 Red Cross parcels, of those only a fraction actually reached prisoners, Vance (2000), Encyclopaedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, p. 239. Given that each parcel was designed to provide food for one week for one man, this is the equivalent of just over one week’s food per prisoner. A secret relief fund was established by the Allies to provide funds for the Japanese to disburse prisoners on the Burma-Thai Railway in place of Red Cross parcels. The total of 98.5 million Swiss francs 105 Chapter 4 Symmetry and Centricity: Australian and British Camps

Distribution of Rations The process of distribution was basically as follows and as shown in Figure 2. The Japanese issued the ration to the central POW command, who in turn redistributed it each of the regimental units. The regiments stored, and further redistributed the ration to kitchens and officers’ messes, where it was cooked and served. If extra food was purchased with regimental funds, it could be added as well. If the members of the officers’ mess had clubbed together to buy extra food, that could be added in their kitchen to their meal. With absolute quantities so low, every hungry man was keen to ensure that the redistribution was fair. Different systems were developed at each location to scrutinise the serving of meals and ensure that the distribution was fair. From the exact measuring of raw ingredients to be distributed to the different messes, to the use of uniform ladles and systems for checking that the ladle was not packed more densely for one prisoner than another. This might sound easier to achieve than it actually was, as the men were not using standard utensils. Some had a dixie and cutlery, but many were using improvised items such as hub caps to eat with. It was imperative that a man had some sort of reliable vessel to collect the mostly liquid food at meal times. In some smaller messes where uniform utensils were present, the bowls would be filled and placed on a table to be collected at random to prevent favouritism, or corruption. Further systems were developed for the fair distribution of left-overs, what they termed leggis, a corruption of the Malay lagi meaning more or again. Once everyone had had a serve there might be one or two left in the pot. These were distributed in systems locally developed, usually some sort of roster, and carefully scrutinised by everyone. Australian POW Russell Braddon wrote:

The distribution by turn of “leftover seconds” was an institution that remained with us through all the days that were to follow until the end in 1945. They are a striking example of a civilised man’s ability to resist even the animal gnawings of starvation in the interest of communal effort.313

(equivalent to around US$197 million in 2002) was deposited. Some was spent on armaments, a tiny portion on prisoners, and the bulk remained in Japan gathering interest. Some of the money was returned in 1955, see Reynolds (2002), 'Us Prisoners of War and Civilian American Citizens Captured and Interned by Japan in World War II, p. 16. 313 Vance (2000), Encyclopaedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, p. 55.

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Figure 2. Flow of basic rations.

The officers, especially the British officers, were often suspected of taking a larger share of the rations than the other ranks received. This suspicion was fuelled by the practice of eating separately, where the men couldn’t see what the officers were eating. In general, both cooks and officers appeared to be healthier and fatter and survived better. A kitchen posting was a plum job. It carried none of the dangers of heavy labour outside the camp, and risk of being beaten up guards when out on a work party, and the cooks could get away with eating. The cooks were always distrusted and almost everyone at almost every camp seems to have been certain that the cooks took more than their fair share. The cooks were noticeably fatter, and they died in lower numbers.

As the ration was the core part of the prisoners’ livelihood, it is clear that one of the core economic processes that secured that livelihood was redistribution. Polanyi defines redistribution as the process by which goods are collected by a recognised central authority, and then, at least notionally, ‘handed’ out again.

Redistribution obtains within a group to the extent to which the allocation of goods is collected in one hand and takes place by virtue of custom, law, or ad hoc central decisions…The principle remains always the same – collecting into, and redistributing from, a centre.314

As discussed in Chapter 2, such redistributive processes always rest on a pre-existing structure of a recognised central power. While the hierarchy at Changi was annoying to some people and in many ways much of what was done by some of the officers seems

314 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', pp. 171-2.

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laughable in retrospect, it also meant that there was a recognised authoritative ‘centre’ through which goods could be redistributed, and then further redistributed through the links of the chain of command — from the central authority, via the national and regimental levels, down to the local messes. However, there were many other processes of redistribution that took place at Changi.

In many camps there were significant contributions to prisoner welfare made by civilian supporters. In the Dutch East Indies, where the Dutch women were not interned, or where there were westerners with a neutral or Axis nationality, they could help by giving money and food directly to the prisoners. In Singapore there were supporters who gave food and money directly to prisoners they encountered, especially Chinese traders, who following events in China such as the Rape of Nanking, had good reason to fear a Japanese victory.

Along the Railway, some of the camp leaders were able to make contact with an important figure in the resistance ‘V Organisation’, a Thai merchant named Boon Pong with a contract to supply the Japanese. Boon Pong was a very important figure in helping many prisoners to survive. He helped to supply the prisoners with money, food and drugs by loaning them money for repayment by the British Government at the end of the war. In this way the prisoners could supplement the heavily diminished regimental funds. All of this was redistribution. At the most basic level, there was the redistribution of rations. There was also centralised collective production, which was redistributed, and the redistribution of income. We shall examine these next.

Collective Production Shortly after arrival at Changi the Japanese made the surprising announcement that there were only supplies for two months. After that, the prisoners would be supplied with rice, but were expected to be otherwise self-sufficient. This was to become a significant problem. It seemed that the Japanese had little knowledge of the local economy and assumed that Singapore was self-sufficient in food. In fact, with a civilian downtown population approaching a million, pre-occupation Singapore had been dependent on imports for the greater part of their food supply.315

315 Nelson (1974), The Story of Changi, Singapore, p. 1. Nelson had long been a senior civil servant in Singapore, so his knowledge of the food supply can be expected to be sound.

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The Australians forces recognised early the need not just to purchase but also to grow additional food.316 The AIF put 800 men to work on establishing a garden, which they dug out of some of the expansive lawns of Changi. This Australian initiative was so successful that it was eventually subsumed by a camp-wide scheme, which in typical Changi style was overseen by a committee. Close to 300 acres of gardens were originally planted, but as the camp contracted over time it finished at 115 acres. The garden produced an average of 50 tons of root and green vegetables a month. An indication both of the scale of the gardening and inadequacy of rations is that by July it was recorded that the garden was supplying three-quarters of lunches.317 A pig farm was also established in the 18th Division (Australian) area to supply the hospital with meat.318 There was also some private food production, particularly among officers, who kept pigs and chickens. There were other smaller gardens too. British officer John Coast recorded both a battalion and an officers’ garden in his section of Changi,319 and Australian Weary Dunlop’s diaries mention communal gardens at Bandoeng (in Java) from the very early months of imprisonment.320 This practice seems to have been continued where possible, with Knights recording a 5-acre garden being cultivated, despite Japanese objections, at Tarsao camp in Thailand.321

Although food was the most pressing concern, there were chronic shortages of other essential items, such as medicines, clothing, cooking equipment, utensils, tools, and boots. A number of programs produced a wide range of goods to meet their needs, not just in the primary production but also in manufacturing. For instance, before the end of 1942, the Australians at Selarang Barracks found their stock of brooms and brushes were wearing out. This led to the establishment of a broom factory, with a permanent staff of six led by a Brigadier. Found objects such as door handles, as well as palm leaves and coconut fibres were used to produce all manner of brushes and brooms, including brass brooms for heavy outdoor work and soft aloe shaving brushes. Although the authorities — the POW management committees senior officers who ran Changi — demanded more and more brushes, they were unwilling to provide men and materials for their construction. So the broom factory resorted to barter with the Detention Barracks, which provided labour in return for brooms. Various sidelines were

316 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 44. 317 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 45. 318 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p.48 319 Coast (1946), Railroad of Death, p. 16. 320 Dunlop (1986), The War Diaries of Weary Dunlop, p. 98 (entry dated 6 Oct 1942). 321 Knights Singapore and the Thailand-Burma Railway. Imperial War Museum IWM 97/32/1, pp. 4/6.

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developed including the manufacturing of chalk, glue and darning needles.322 There was an artificial limb factory established to help the large number of amputees, a bookbinding factory, a rubber factory that made the improvised sandals, there was a cobbler to repair boots, a factory making soap and toothpowder, a general workshop making all sorts of things from old filling cabinets, and a battery of twenty electric sewing machines for repairing clothes. At the behest of the medical officers, a ‘factory’ was established to extract a foul tasting green liquid from grass, which was a rich source of vitamins. Similarly, a yeast factory was established. These products were issued on prescription to the sick, as were ground rice husks, ‘rice grindings,’ which were sometimes available, though the quantities available were never adequate to be issued to everyone as a preventative measure.323

Another notable redistributive enterprise, which was a not-for-profit business operated to raise money for hospital funds, was the ‘Flying Dutchman’ café, sometimes also referred to as ‘Smokey Joe’s’ in reference to the lighting provided by burning palm oil. Australian Captain Rogers described the Flying Dutchman in his diary entry of 24 October 1942: Now this will rock you – there is, in this half starved, desolate, under-fed joint a restaurant is running …The building was divided into two, on one side being a large bar arrangement patronised by the other ranks and another smaller portion with a few tables and forms separated from the larger part by a partition of palm leaves, reserved for officers. It was a cross between a cheap bar and a coffee lounge and the customers were Dutch, British, Americans and Australians, and I might add a very rare mixture of each.324

Dutch memoirist, Loet Velmans, claimed to have started the Flying Dutchman restaurant. Aged just nineteen, Velmans claimed to have come up with the idea of opening a restaurant as a way to raise money for the sick and he received permission from the senior British officers on the relevant committees (entertainment and drug supplies) to go ahead: A site was selected. We furnished it with long benches and a few small tables under a large bamboo overhang. Half a dozen cooks working under a Dutch Eurasian chef cooked over open fires. Supplies were limited: bananas, rice, coconuts, sugar, salt, oil, a few eggs. Consequently the menu was limited as well; our most popular item was ongol-ongol, a jellied and slippery pudding made of coconut milk, coconut rind, and sugar. Our regular camp kitchen hardly ever provided sweets; we all craved sugar. It came as no surprise, therefore, that every evening a long line would form in front of our café’s cashier, who used an old cigar box as his cash register. We had to impose a limit of two ongol-ongols per person. The rest of the menu, which might feature a

322 Wigmore (1957), The Japanese Thrust. 323 Hart (nd). Private Papers. Imperial War Museum, IWM 01/24/1, pp. 3, 9. 324 Passage from diary held at the Australian War Memorial, cited in Havers (2000), 'The Changi POW Camp and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 28.

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minuscule portion of banana fritters or saucer-sized mini-omelette’s with a pinch of salt, was dependent not only on what ingredients were available but also on the whim of the chef, a young man of great talent with a dazzling smile.325

His attachment to the restaurant exempted him from being sent to the Railway with the rest of his original Java party, which is an example of how the Allied administration was making decisions about the utilisation of prisoner labour. By the end of 1942 and beginning of 1943 the increasing number of deportations had caused both a lack of customers and a lack of staff for the Flying Dutchmen restaurant. The restaurant was closed in May of 1943 and the remaining staff, including Velmans, were transported to the Railway on one of the last trains out.326

These goods and money were collected by the centre and then redistributed, not necessarily equitably, perhaps according to need, perhaps status. For instance, when the Australians arrived at Changi, Braddon noted that compulsory redistribution had a significant impact on increasing economic inequality: It meant that [other ranks] were compulsorily stripped of clothing which (at their own discretion and on their own backs) they had carried from Singapore seventeen miles out to Changi, so that these garments might be distributed to officers who – though they did not work – must, it was deemed, at all times be well dressed. It meant that officers, far from waiting till their men ate and then eating the same food themselves [as they had done in Malaya], ate – under orders – in a separate mess and usually before the men. It meant the officers were allowed to keep poultry, [other ranks] were not. It meant that there was fuel for an officers’ club to cook light snacks, for the [other ranks] there was not. All of which casts no reflections upon the officers concerned any more than it did upon the men. They were under orders.327

While this redistribution upwards, from the poorer to the richer, or from persons of lower status to those of higher status and power, was clearly offensive to this Australian’s egalitarian sensibility, it would not contradict Polanyi’s expectations of a redistributive economy. While it might be assumed that redistribution always occurs to redistribute from richer to poorer members of the community, Polanyi deemed that most redistribution actually transfers resources in the other direction.328 As noted in Chapter 2 such practices are common where political power is concentrated in the hands of a legitimate authority, as in the case of potlatch in which subjects channel their resources toward rulers who destroy them.

325 Velmans (2003) Long Way Back to the River Kwai, p.107. 326 Velmans (2003) Long Way Back to the River Kwai, p. 109. Although, an anonymous Australian officer wrote in his diary that he attended the final night of the restaurant on Saturday, the 24th of April, 1943, cited in Havers (2000), 'The Changi POW Camp and the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 29. 327 Braddon (1975) [1952], The Naked Island, p. 154. 328 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, pp. 116-7.

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Wages and Welfare — the Distribution of Money The Japanese followed part of the Geneva Convention by paying the prisoners according to their rank. This caused a very unequal distribution of cash in the prison economies. Officers received salaries that were vastly greater than what any other rank could earn. Other ranks were paid just ten cents per day, but only for the days on which they worked. NCOs received up to twenty-five cents a day. So that was a maximum potential monthly income of $3 for privates and $7.50 for NCOs. By contrast, the rates paid to commissioned officers ranged from $85 per month for a lieutenant to $220 for a lieutenant colonel. Additionally, officers were paid regardless of their health status. The ratio of officers mattered. A larger number of officers meant a greater degree of cash in the camp economy.

The only way to overcome the huge divide between the incomes of officers and other ranks was to implement some form of taxation and redistribution. Officers could use the regimental funds, when they existed, to purchase food and drugs to be redistributed among the men; particularly the men in hospital who were most in need, and who had their suffering exacerbated by having lost income and their rations halved. Where there were no more regimental funds, the officers also had the opportunity to redistribute their own incomes. The particular details of the welfare scheme in operation were decided by the senior officers in each camp, often changing in response to changing conditions, but always through the cultural schema of each group. Important factors might include the availability of goods to be bought outside the camp, the health of the men at a particular camp at a particular time, and so on. As Figure 3 shows, the centricity of the command structure was important in both the initial distribution, and the subsequent redistribution of pay.

In some camps there were transfer payments to the hospital, in some there is broader subsidisation for all troops. In some camps officers were taxed a uniform amount of money, in others a percentage of their income. For instance, when they first received payment at Changi, on the advice of the senior medical officer, the Australian officers were ordered to donate 90% of their income to a pool to be used by all ranks, while the British officers donated only 10%.329 At Bandoeng in Java the officers of all ranks had their incomes equalised and were allowed to retain just two gilders a month, with the rest being collectivised for the general welfare of all. At Tamarkan the officers paid 30% tax on their income. In March 1943, Colonel Knights recorded that at Tarsao

329 Adam-Smith (1992), Prisoners of War from Gallipoli to Korea, pp. 260-1.

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camp on the Railway, the officers were all being paid the same rate, regardless of rank. There was a shortage of medical supplies and those in hospital were receiving reduced rations. The officers met and agreed to the senior medical officer’s recommendation that they donate one third of their pay to the hospital fund.

Figure 3. The distribution of pay This diagram represents the pattern of distribution and redistribution typical of the British and Australian groups. The solid lines represent money paid through each stage of administration of wages, and the dotted lines represent voluntary contributions.

Often there was an agreed scale, with officers paying greater amounts according to their rank. The burden of these arrangements tended to fall most heavily on the more junior officers. Like many junior British officers, John Coats complained in his memoir about the little money available to lieutenants after the deductions were taken out. He complained that at Chungkai, from his $30 monthly salary, there were deductions of $10 for hospital messing, $5 to his own mess, 50 cents to contribute to paying the mess orderlies, and $1.50 to pay for a part share in the services of a batman to wash their clothes. As the batmen were categorised as ‘light-sick’ they received no pay from the Japanese, so he regarded employing batman as the “social thing to do”. This left officers of his rank with $13 a month to spend. So, he complained, one could easily run out money half way through the month.330 However, even at the bottom of the officer scale, his net income was still almost double the gross income of a working NCO at the top of the scale on 25 cents per day ($7.50 month) and more than four times the

330 Coast (1946), Railroad of Death, p. 173.

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income of a private on just 10 cents per day ($3 per month). The regressive taxation system that Coats was complaining about left him paying 56% tax, though it would be much lower for more senior officers. But compared to the flat rate of 90% that the Australians were paying, it’s easy to see how the inequality and stratification remained much greater for the British.

The differences between the Australians and the British in this matter of transfer payments highlights the cultural differences between the two groups. While there was some variability in the precise amounts redistributed in different locations, the broad patterns are very clear to see. In the case of the British there is a sense in which these transfer payments are rather niggardly charitable donations, a form of noblesse oblige, that both confirms and reinforces the status differentiation that marks the structures in which these processes take place. The Australians, on the other hand, seek to eradicate the status differentiation by equalising their incomes, which seems to be an attempt to modify the military hierarchy, which is imposed by the situation, and instead reassert an underlying symmetrical structure, more suited to reciprocal than redistributive processes. This becomes more pronounced as we turn to look at the other economic activities that contributed to the livelihood of the prisoners in the following sections.

Exchange The rations provided by the Japanese, although supplemented through collective production, were still inadequate and the prisoners were still hungry most of the time. They took every opportunity to plunder whatever resources they could. Like most POW camp sites, the Changi area was quite quickly depleted of natural food resources — both plant and animal food sources were quickly wiped out. Fruit bearing trees, notably coconuts, were quickly stripped of their fruit. The area which had been populated by a large number of birds, cats, dogs and rodents, was soon one in which animals were rarely seen. One of the important ways to survive was to engage in exchange. There was extensive trade in commodities and services, and these sprang up almost immediately. As historian Hank Nelson, notes:

All of the camps had economies…All camps were places where people bought, sold and exchanged. They were places where people produced goods for sale, made loans, gambled, and hired themselves out as labourers. Within days of the prisoners entering Changi a brisk market was operating…One of the most frequent entries in prison diaries is a list of current prices.331

331 Nelson (1989), ''a Bowl of Rice for Seven Camels': The Dynamics of Prisoner-of-War Camps', p. 33.

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Men who had surplus goods, and were therefore likely to be officers, could barter or sell them. Before the perimeters were secured, men could quite easily get out of camp, travel into town, and buy goods that they could resell at a significant mark-up. After security improved, this became a much more dangerous and difficult process, but the practice continued and the added difficulties were reflected in much greater mark-ups and profits for the traders. Those who left the camp to go out on working parties were able to obtain goods, either through scrounging (stealing them from the enemy) or by buying them from local markets outside the camp. These goods could then be sold inside the camp for a significant profit. A British Sergeant Major in the Malay Volunteers described in his diary some of the trading that took place in the early days on Singapore: As we were playing bridge yesterday I watched the private cooking people at work. It was like an English fair, with everybody shouting their wares and customers moving from fire to fire, inspecting what was on offer, to an accompaniment which went something like this: ‘Date and banana fritters, never known to fail, two for 10 cents, two for ten.’ ‘Who says a fish cake, freshly cooked, two for ten?’ So it goes on from seven in the evening, in disregard of the Nip [Japanese] order that lights must be out by 8.30 because the brown out. In the huts we get much the same thing. ‘Who says eggs, fresh or boiled, every one a big ‘un’. ‘What about a nice fish sandwich? (a roll cut in half with some tinned herring in between). ‘Half a loaf, ten cents.’ ‘Buy some Marmite, the best drink of the lot, five cents a cup.’ ‘Hot coffee, with milk and sugar, five cents.’ Thus it goes on for most of the afternoon and evening, with an amusing contrast provided by the little man who must have been a salesman in civvy street, who asks ‘Does anybody require eggs today? Can I interest anybody in rock salt? I have some nice tins of jam’.332

These traders dealt mainly in any sort of foodstuffs that prisoners could use for private cooking or to add to rations, the most popular being anything that would add flavour to the rice, whether it be sweet jams, salt or sambal333. They could provide virtually anything that was available outside the wire if there was a customer willing to pay for it. Apart from food, the next most common items were probably the drugs that were needed, such as those for malaria, but were not provided by the Japanese. Some of the most successful traders in Changi even operated ‘shops’. Others would walk around hawking their goods. Still others went into value-adding. Examples include selling cooked foods such as ‘doovers’334 or making tailor-made cigarettes. Some sold their services, for example setting up as a barber to provide shaves and haircuts, which were needed as there were few scissors and razors available. One group made

332 Romney. In the Land of the Free: Life, and Death, on the River Kwai. Imperial War Museum, IWM 81/7/1, pp. 71-2. 333 Sambal is a chilli paste popular in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. 334 The term ‘doover’ derives from the English joke phrase ‘horses doovers’ meaning hors d’oeuvre. They were usually some sort of small fried rice cake with a flavouring of some sort.

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cigarette cases from scrap metal and engraved regimental coats of arms and names on them.

Bearing in mind that their pay was only 10 cents per day, it seems that there was quite a bit of money in circulation. This is borne out by the camp records of the official canteens. Large discrepancies had sometimes to be explained to the Japanese, and so become an event worth recording in diaries. For instance, Fletcher recorded that at one camp in Thailand, on a total income of $140,000 per month, the outgoings from the canteen were no less than $240,000; while at another camp, on a monthly income of some $10,000, no less than $120,000 was spent.335

The really big money was in wholesaling, brokerage and currency speculation. The key venture was as a middleman in a deal, buying cheap and selling dear and maybe taking a commission as well. The cash transfers from the Japanese were not adequate. To raise funds for market activity, prisoners began selling their belongings, especially items such as jewellery or textiles. They would either be purchased (illegally) by guards, or by ‘natives’ and Chinese outside the wire. In either case the seller needed to be connected to make the deal. Middlemen had established links with buyers and could take a commission off the top. There was no way for the seller to know how much the item really sold for, so the middleman could buy low and sell high, and still take a commission. Currency speculation was high risk and could be high return. The basis of the trade was the highly volatile values of the various currencies that were circulating, and very rapid inflation. One reason for this was the value of currencies changed as the outside traders placed less and less store in the official Japanese currency, in the Singapore dollar, or in the pound. Another was that as prisoners were moved from one country to another they needed to obtain local currency. They knew that they would likely be ripped off by the ‘official’ Japanese exchange rates as the guards took the opportunity to rob the prisoners. People could go to dealers to exchange currency on the road or at the new destination, or they could speculate and exchange before going. Diaries record how a rumour of imminent movements could cause a flurry of speculation, and the suspicion that a clever money market dealer could manipulate the market through mendacious rumour mongering. Officers were often still in possession of their cheque books. A dealer could offer to cash an undated cheque at an extremely inflated exchange rate. There was a great deal of risk involved. Would the paper cheque survive? Would both parties to the

335 Fletcher (1996) Woe to the Captive, p. 223.

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transaction survive? In some cases they did and the cheques cleared after the war. When, after the war, restrictions were placed on currency movements, there are stories of traders going to great lengths to have their debts repaid over international boundaries. There were also more immediate risks related to the uncertainty of POW life and the powerlessness of the prisoners. There are stories of big racketeers who became noticeable when they moved ‘up country’ to join the Railway, because they paid others to carry their trunks full of cash and cheques. This too carried a great risk. They could be robbed by the guards, or the guards could simply refuse to let them take their trunks with them. Both of these things are recorded as having occurred.

In one case a British officer was among the biggest racketeers. He was a regular officer in the Artillery, and adjutant at a camp in Singapore. During the fighting in Kuala Lumpur his men had blown open the strong room of a bank and taken a truckload of Malay dollars. He gave his men a choice: they could give him the money and he would look after them, or they could refuse and he would have them charged. Either way they lose, so of course they gave him the money. He used that money to cash cheques. He would cash a cheque at the rate of a dollar per pound from his trunk. Then, along with a Japanese sergeant, he would take the cheques into town to be cashed at their real value.336 People were willing to take usurious exchange rates because in order to buy these goods and services from other prisoners, one required cash. The officers had their salaries and the men their wages. But these were often not enough. One way to get money was to sell textiles, which were in short supply outside the camps, so there was always a market for such items. Men could trade their clothing and blankets with locals to fulfil immediate needs such as food or drugs. The selling of clothing and textiles was a significant problem as they were a finite resource. The Japanese did not issue new clothing or blankets, so that the stocks that were held at capture were all that they had. These stocks were unevenly distributed. Given the hard work and rough conditions in tropical humidity, much of the remaining clothing was shredded or rotted away and many men were reduced to wearing nothing but a G-string or lap-lap, also known as a ‘Jap happy’. In some camps one in three men had not even a pair of shorts.337 When they moved from the tropical heat of Singapore to the more temperate mountain conditions along the Railway, or even worse to the frigid northern parts of China and Japan, the lack of warm clothing and blankets was a problem. The Allied authorities were aware of this problem and banned the selling of textiles. But when

336 Interview with Alex Wilkins. 337 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 112.

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facing the problem of an immediate need to buy food just to survive another day or two, even those aware of the longer-term dangers made a simple calculation to risk trading.

Status and Stratification As previously mentioned the POW camps were highly stratified. Rank mattered. Some of that stratification was imposed by the Japanese, and some of it was self-imposed. By not forcing the officers to work, the Japanese were allowing the officers the time to engage in extra economic activity, such as growing private food, and engaging in trade. On the other hand, by remaining in camp rather than going out on work parties, the officers had less opportunity to scrounge or to trade with locals outside the camp. However, by not working the officers were expending far fewer precious calories. The nutritional equation therefore probably benefitted the officers.

The most significant Japanese contribution to the stratification of prisoners was through the system of payments, with officers being paid far, far more than working other ranks.338 Officers could spend their money by trading on the black market and buying from the canteens, and by employing other ranks as batmen and cooks. The ratio of officers therefore has a significant impact on the quantity of money in a given camp’s economy. The combination of lower calorie expenditure, time to produce food, and the money to buy it from others definitely tipped the balance of the nutritional equation in their favour.

As mentioned earlier, one of the greatest differences between the Australian and British troops was the proportion of officers and other ranks. The Australians had a very small proportion of officers, and the British a very high ratio of officers to other ranks. When the Australian ‘D Force’ left Changi for Thailand at the end of 1942 there were just 29 officers and over 2,000 other ranks. At the same time two entire British battalions left Changi for Thailand, each with approximately 400 officers.339 There were so many British officers that the Japanese insisted that they take part in labouring, whereas Australian officers did not have to labour. Indeed, by the beginning of 1943 all British officers below field rank were working. Even though they were working, and therefore lost the advantage of lower caloric expenditure, they were being paid at much higher rates than the other ranks.

338 Bizarrely the currencies vary from place to place, but the figures remain the same. A lieutenant colonel in Singapore was paid two-hundred and twenty Malay Straits dollars a month, in Thailand two-hundred and twenty ticals, in Java two-hundred and twenty guilder and in the Philippines two-hundred and twenty pesos. 339 Flower (1996), 'Captors and Captives on the Burma-Thailand Railway', p. 242.

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On the whole, exchange probably increased, but certainly did not diminish the level of inequality. The officers obviously had more opportunity to raise cash this way, as they were wealthier to begin with, and often had the opportunity to bring more tradable goods into captivity with them. They were more likely to have jewellery, much more clothing and more of other valuable items such as gold pens, binoculars, and so forth. An officer who had been based in Singapore prior to capitulation may have a trunk and a couple of suitcases full of goods such as clothing, bedding, blankets and mosquito nets. A man who had been captured after his ship was sunk may have literally nothing at all, not even a pair of underpants. These inequalities became compounded over time. For instance, one British officer recounted in his memoir the typical possessions of British officers compared to other ranks one year into the experience:340

Average troop (though many had less): A hat, a pair of leaking boots and no socks, a lap-lap and perhaps a pair of shorts. No other garments. A water bottle with worn out cork, a rotting ground sheet, two sacks or perhaps a blanket for warmth, a pack to carry this in, and possibly a share in a mosquito net. Officer: An old valise; one blanket plus sacking or home made cushion for bedding, mess tin, knife and spoon; one good shirt, one bad; one good pair of shorts, one bad; some boots; a much darned pair of old socks.

The higher proportion of officers should have given the British an advantage over the Australians in that it greatly increased the aggregate income of the group. Yet, because this income was highly concentrated and not much of it was redistributed, the average was a long way from the median and the other ranks derived no benefit from having so many social superiors in their midst.

It seems that at every level there was a great deal of resentment directed upwards. The building that housed the most senior officers was called, by their juniors, ‘the Imperial War Museum’. On the 16th of August 1942, the ‘Imperial War Museum’ was closed. The Japanese removed all senior officers of the rank of colonel and above to special camps in Formosa and Manchuria. The way that this was viewed is summed up in a letter to Brigadier Lucas from Major Shean, both of whom were British:341

It is probably a day unappalled [sic] in Br[itish] Military history that so many senior officers have left their troops and staff and left so few regrets behind. We all naturally went and said goodbye, but it was pretty insincere on both sides. It is not so much that we do not like our commander and senior staff officers for anything they did or did not do during the operations but is due to…their complete

340 Coast (1946), Railroad of Death, p. 94. 341 Letter dated 5 May 1942, Imperial War Museum, cited in Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 62.

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lack of personal and friendly interest in their subordinates and their selfishness in ensuring that they lived at such a high standard here that they were completely blinded to the needs of all the rest of the movers…it’s very sad and never before have I seen so many senior officers so thoroughly despised.

This departure of the senior ranks left relatively junior officers with unusually high levels of responsibility but not to officer privilege. Yet, their departure did not lead to any significant change in the level of inequality and stratification among the British prisoners. One British junior officer described the class structure of the camp at Chungkai, on the Railway:

Our little community here is very much a projection on a smaller scale of the world outside, with much the same follies and vices. We are, of course, a slave state, but under the rule of the Japanese we have our own military dictatorship, with no semblance of democracy. We have an upper class, the officers, with sharply defined privileges of caste and also duties to the ‘state’…Next comes the middle class, the ‘backbone of the nation’ the working men earning a small wage from the Japanese, doing an honest job or work and suffering some small taxation of their earnings to maintain the third class, the genuinely sick in hospital or out..[M]ost of the Regular officers have lost the raison d’être and spend their time on bridge or reminiscence till the world has been made safe for them again, while more temporary officers dream also of happier but different times to come.342

Theft As might be expected in an economy marked by both extreme deprivation and inequality, theft was common. There is a reluctance among former POWs to discuss the theft that took place between prisoners. But the evidence is strong that it was widespread. Not only from diary entries and memoirs, but also from official documents, such as the papers of the Provost Marshall, which showed waves of thefts occurring in particular items, such as blankets, as victims steal from others to replace the items that they had lost.

One of the differences between Australians and British that is mentioned by former POWs is that, though the Australians were better scroungers, they did not steal from their mates, whereas the British did steal from one another. For instance, in British areas nothing could be left unattended. Washing on the line had to be watched vigilantly lest it disappeared in an instant. These items were not taken for their use value, but for their exchange value.343 Items such as textiles could be traded with guards or ‘natives’ for food.

342 Milford. Diary of Lt. Milford. IWM 67/182/1, pp. 462-3. 343 Interview with British former POW.

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It’s a terrible way to have to live, you know. To be frighted of putting anything down, because if you do it’s gone. It adds to the anxiety you already have. But when your life is at stake you get very selfish, if you’re that way inclined.344

But these generalisations about a national propensity to theft are not strictly true. Perhaps it was comparatively less prevalent among the Australians, but there was certainly some theft within the Australian lines. Exchange was generally permitted by the Allied commanders, but there were exceptions to the rule limiting the items that could be traded, and these orders represent evidence of theft taking place. Between February and September of 1943, the AIF issued five ‘Routine Orders’ forbidding the trading of irreplaceable items such as drugs, as well as detailing ‘approved’ items deemed fit to trade. The suspected extent of this trade, and the difficulties in policing it, are reflected in Routine Order No. 176 issued on the 25th of July, which stated that recent breaches and suspected breaches of orders in regard to trading items such as drugs, medical equipment and blankets made it necessary to add a new order forbidding any contact or dealing with any member of the IJA or “Asiatics” by any soldier or officer unless in the course of his duty. The onus of proof would be from then on placed on the accused to account for such contact.345 There seems to have been some organisation to this trade in stolen goods. The diary of the AIF’s Captain Rogers noted that Australians were involved in gang activity, stealing from the AIF to sell outside the camp:

It appears that the black market has been operating again and men have been caught in possession of medical stores and other saleable commodities – saleable beyond the wire, I mean, and there has been significant effort to clear this up. Some of these rotten swine have been selling drugs and clothing to the IJA and for a couple of nights there have been patrols out and there has been great rushing around of the rival gangs.346

This is a rare piece of evidence that points to Australians effectively stealing from their own. It is not directly stealing from an individual, but the reason that items are restricted from trade is that they are common goods, and their loss is detrimental to the community. I have found no evidence of direct theft between Australians at an individual level, but it was very common between the British, and seems to be correlated with the degree of inequality at a given place or time.

344 Interview with another British former POW. 345 Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 115. 346 Captain Rogers diary entry, 29 July 1943, AWM, cited in Havers (2003), Reassessing the Japanese Prisoner of War Experience, p. 115.

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At Tarsao there was a canteen run by the POWs, with profits going to the sick fund. British Colonel Knights records that on several occasions the money was stolen:

It was difficult to believe that anybody would stoop to denying their sick comrades of what small additional comfort we could give them, and it indicated the lengths to which some POWs would go for purely selfish reasons.347

His shock indicates that this was not a situation that he had encountered at the other camps, but he certainly would have known of widespread interpersonal theft. At Chungkai, prior to being appointed commanding officer, Colonel Owtram noted in his diary that theft was rife, and shows some insight into what motivated the men to steal from one another:

There was a very low moral code in existence and theft was rife. No man dared to leave blankets or clothing out to dry unguarded, or if he did, the chances were that it would be stolen, taken out by night or even day and sold to the Thais who were only too willing to trade in this black-market. Nothing was safe from an ever increasing number of thieves who fattened on the profits of their ill- gotten gains to the detriment of their fellows. You may be horrified that British soldiers could descend to such depths, but it must be borne in mind that all of us were up against it and it was a case of the survival of the fittest. No one knew how long it might be before we were released, and life is very dear…Any man of weak character was liable to be influenced by the temptation now placed before him, knowing that his only chance of life lay in more and better food and food cost money.348

The insight that Owtram shows in understanding the motivations for the British to steal may also go some way to explain why theft between Australians was rare, and why it is usually claimed never to have happened at all. Perhaps the reason that such generalisations exist, despite the fact that they are not entirely accurate, is that they were true in a relative sense. That is to say that it was much more likely that the British would steal from one another than it was likely that the Australians would do so. For whatever reason, these perceptions do exist, and structurally it would seem that the Australians with their much lower levels of inequality had less reason to do so than the highly stratified British prisoners. This was reinforced by the domination of redistribution based on a hierarchical structure in the British case and the domination of reciprocity as a form of integration in the Australian case, which is addressed below.

Reciprocity and Symmetry In the case of the Australians, both exchange and redistribution were taking place, but unlike the British, there were also very significant reciprocal processes which, I think, is

347 Knights Singapore and the Thailand-Burma Railway, IWM 97/32/1, pp. 4, 5. 348 Owtram, (no date) IWM 66/22/1, p. 70.

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the integrating factor in the Australian camp economies. Polanyi claims that, as a form of integration, reciprocity:

gains greatly in power by its capacity of employing both redistribution and exchange as subordinate methods. Sharing the burdens of labour may be subject to reciprocity, if the sharing is done according to definite redistributive rules, as e.g. taking things ‘in turn’. Similarly, exchange at set equivalencies may be practiced reciprocally for the benefit of the partner who happens to be short of some kind of necessities.349

Reciprocity is distinguished by resting on, and in turn also reproducing, symmetrical social relationships. Indeed, Polanyi stressed that the point of it is not necessarily economic, and is more to bind the community together. He showed this by noting the extreme example where the exact same object is passed back and forth, clearly “depriving the transaction of any conceivable economic purpose”, instead arguing that the “sole purpose of the exchange is to draw relationships closer by strengthening the ties of reciprocity”.350 Reciprocity does not necessarily entail equality, but there is a strong connection between reciprocity, collectivity and equality, even if only in a relative sense. The obvious examples are of small ‘primitive’ communities. The Dayaks of Borneo, for example, in which there is some inequality of means and status, but very little, and most economic activity is collective — survival depends on it. Reciprocal relationships would be more difficult to achieve in a more differentiated community, but by the same token, other forms of economic activity would be difficult to achieve in a society structured this way. Equal distribution was the norm among the Australian POWs, the norm of mateship. Other nationalities sometimes commented that if there was only a single banana to be found the Aussies would find a way to cut it into one hundred exactly equal slices. When the Japanese introduced the usual policy of reducing rations for the sick who did not attend work at Sandakan in Borneo, where Australians were building an aerodrome, the Japanese commander, Captain Hoshijima, found that the only way he could stop the Australians from dividing up their food so that the sick got an equal share was to compel them to cook and eat their lunch at the worksite.351 That even in the face of such dramatic scarcity, in which each individual was constantly hungry, the norms of reciprocity were dominant and trumped individual desires, is a remarkable testament to the strength of cultural norms in economic activity.

349 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 717. 350 Polanyi (1968), Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, p. 90. 351 Adam-Smith (1992), Prisoners of War from Gallipoli to Korea, p. 371.

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Though they were apt to share, and the social divisions between officers and other ranks were diminished through redistribution, the Australians had far less pay to redistribute, but they overcame this through other means. For instance, the prisoners became expert at smuggling things back into camp when they returned from working parties. The Australians were particularly skilled at this. One of the reasons that the Australians were such outstanding scroungers was that they would work together collectively. Lt. Col. Alfred Knights, a senior British officer, noted in his memoir that Australians were particular adept at running scams and racketeering on the black market. He mentions the scam that involved Australians exploiting the ignorance of their peasant guards by requisitioning gallons of petrol each day to run a steamroller, which obviously doesn’t need petrol, only to sell that petrol to locals on the black market. It is the kind of scam that could not be done by an individual, but only by a group. As the profits of everything were shared, everyone was motivated to participate and take the risk of discovery and punishment. When the scam was finally noticed a very high-ranking Japanese officer drove up to berate the prisoners. When he had finished he got back into his car and drove only a short distance before the car conked out. In the brief time that he had been addressing the prisoners someone had syphoned the fuel from his car.352 This incident led to tighter checks and punishments, but the Australians continued to take risks to scrounge:

I found this attitude particularly evident amongst Australians, they would take abnormal risks to raise money by pinching from the Japanese, the outstanding feature of which was that generally speaking the money was not used for the individual’s benefit but for providing extra food etc for their less fortunate ‘cobbers’, it was a characteristic Australian trait, also, if their activities were discovered they were quite prepared to take what was coming to them without complaining to senior Allied authority. It appeared to be considered part of the risk involved.353

At a different camp another British officer admired the same qualities in the way that the Australians went about stealing food when they were working on the docks unloading ships at Keppel Harbour in Singapore:

The Australians were also working down the docks at this time and their methods of pilfering won my wholehearted admiration. In any pilfering operation everyone was involved, it was organised to a fine art. It was almost impossible for any individual to be caught owing to the elaborate system of lookouts that were posted and everyone shared the spoils. The Australians had a system of cooperation which was woefully lacking amongst us.354

352 Knights Singapore and the Thailand-Burma Railway, IWM 97/32/1, p. 2/28. 353 Knights Singapore and the Thailand-Burma Railway, IWM 97/32/1, p.3/19-20, emphasis added. 354 Howarth, IWM 67/173/1 pp.137-8.

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Even when acting alone Australians were often working for the collective. For instance, one Australian entrepreneur named Turner records going under the wire in Changi in 1942 to buy black market goods. This was risky and it was considered quite appropriate to make a profit in return for taking the risk. But it is interesting to note that he went on behalf of his section of 15 men, each of whom pooled their money. The following year, at Thanbyuzayat hospital camp in Thailand, he noted that there were many rackets. The sale of coffee at 5 cents a cup, rice rissoles for 10 cents each and slices of pineapple for 10 cents each, were made and sold to anyone fortunate enough to have a few cents. The officers made a monthly donation to the POW camp hospital which enabled the sick to have an egg and two bananas a day, which was comparatively quite generous. So there was definitely money about. Turner went into business there buying pineapples for 50 cents each, peeling and selling them by the slice, making a profit of 30 cents per pineapple. Later he scrounged sugar, sweet potatoes, onions, salt and cucumber from the Japanese cookhouse, which he on-sold to other racketeers. Turner, who clearly has an entrepreneurial drive, was not motivated only by self-interest, but perhaps mainly by a collectivist spirit of mateship. Although he seems to have had a flair for making money out of nothing, his motivations — even when putting himself at great individual risk — appears never to be have been just individualistic. He fed himself, of course, but he was mostly motivated to engage in all this trade in order to raise money for the hospital, “thus enabling me to look after my sick mates and myself”. He notes that the general wellbeing among the Australians of this camp was high, as the money kept circulating in camp and almost everybody benefited by it in one way or another.355

We have already seen that the Australian officers were particular generous in their contributions to the redistributive welfare regimes. However, Rohan Rivett, claims that despite the fact that every Australian unit in Burma and Thailand organised welfare funds for the sick, the bulk of provision for the sick came directly from individuals sacrificing their own meagre comforts for the even more needy. Rivett claims that while there were certain Australian officers, and some of the men with money, who never went near the hospital nor aided the sick in any way, “they were a minority. The thoughtfulness displayed and the sacrifices made during captivity helped forge bonds between men which will endure for the remainder of their lives”.356

355 Turner. Private Papers. Imperial War Museum IWM 71/41/1. 356 Rivett (1991), Behind Bamboo, p. 289.

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Similarly, Russell Braddon recalled that when the prisoners were first put to work at Pudu Camp in Kuala Lumpur they could earn $3 a month, provided they worked every day. This, he claimed, was sufficient to buy a handful of dried fish, some coconut oil in which to fry the fish, and possibly a banana or two. Yet, as soon as they received their first pay, the Australian other ranks decided to each contribute 25 cents to be pooled to buy goods for the men in hospital who, being unable to work were unable to earn money. In relative terms it was a huge sacrifice. Braddon recalled the delight of seeing the faces of the sick men who had been living in squalor and deprivation for weeks, or even months, and the men resolved to make the same contribution every month.357 However, it is interesting to note the response of the men to a British officer who attempted to impart an economically rational interpretation to this system:

An officer, with the soul of a born Socialist pleasure-wrecker, suggested that the scheme was, in fact, a form of health insurance from which any man who fell ill would benefit. He was howled down with the greatest promptness. In our life, where we mostly had nothing to give, we were not thus lightly to be deprived of our once-monthly opportunity to be human. It remained a direct gift to the sick…For the next six months there was always cash in hand to buy anything within reason for a sick man who needed it – whether it was black market drugs or black market food.358

They found this rationalistic interpretation repugnant. They were mates caring for one another, being decent to one another. This is, as the following statement from Polanyi demonstrates, an indication of the moral and emotional motivations that spring from the structural basis of symmetrically placed groups:

It may be said that the closer the members of the encompassing community feel drawn to one another, the more general will be the tendency among them to develop reciprocative attitudes in regard to specific relationships limited in space, time or otherwise. Kinship, neighbourhood, or totem belong to the more permanent and comprehensive groupings; within their compass voluntary and semi-voluntary associations of a military, vocational, religious or social character would create situations in which at least transitorily or in regard to a given locality, or a typical situation, there would form symmetrical groupings the members of which practice some sort of mutuality.359

As a Dutchman who, unusually, had close friends in all of the national groups, Loet Velmans offers a unique perspective:

Despite the fact that they came across as rugged individualists compared to the Dutch and the British, they seemed less self-centred and genuinely keen to support each other.360

357 Braddon (1975) [1952], The Naked Island, p. 114. 358 Braddon (1975), The Naked Island, p. 142. 359 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 171. 360 Velmans (2003), Long Way Back to the River Kwai.

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Sometimes that ethic of care extended beyond their own tribe. Hank Nelson and Gavan McCormack argued that the Australians have not been given sufficient credit for the way that they survived.361 They pointed out that while the Australians suffered the same conditions, unlike the other groups, there does not seem to have been a single case where an Australian camp “deteriorated into absolute despair or anarchy”. They pointed out that even in the most desperate camps the Australians continued to work to sustain life for the group:

They were more likely to work in groups, share hardships and windfalls, be less dependent on officers for direction, and take the initiative to adapt and improvise.362

This supports Velmans’ observation that despite the lack of obedience and reluctance to salute, the Australians were actually the best organised and the most disciplined. He points to a further external reference point: the Japanese categorisation of prisoners based on their endurance and usefulness as labour. When it came to sending prisoners out to work on the Railway and other projects in the region, the Japanese rated the Australians top, the British second and the Dutch last.363 Velmans claims that the differences are reflected in survival rates, with the Dutch outliving the Australians, who in turn outlived the British. This is a very common belief, but it is not borne out by the basic raw statistics, which show that Australians in fact suffered the highest overall mortality rates. However, as Nelson argues, there are few instances where a direct comparison of survival rates is meaningful. One of the reasons that the Australians suffered relatively high death rates on the Railway was because many of them were situated at the most dangerous locations on the Railway — the most remote and mountainous section of the Railway — where physical conditions were the hardest, the labour demands more intense and the long supply line for food and drugs the weakest.364 Very few Dutch were located in these areas, accounting for their better survival rates.365 There are also other reasons to discount the overall mortality as an indicator of the economic impacts on total mortality rates. For instance, of the roughly seven and half thousand Australians who died in captivity, over one thousand were killed in the sinking of the Montevideo Maru. This remains the single greatest maritime disaster in Australian history, and it greatly enlarges the total percentage of Australian

361 McCormack and Nelson (1993), 'Conclusion', pp. 156-6. 362 McCormack and Nelson (1993), 'Conclusion', p.156. 363 Velmans does not mention how the Japanese rated Americans, presumably because there were so few in these camps. 364 Nelson (1993), 'Measuring the Railway', p. 17. 365 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 66.

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POWs killed, and it does not reflect the impact of economic organisation. All told, more than 2,000 Australian POWs were killed in this manner, which is completely unrelated to their economic activities and organisation, or even to poor treatment and disease that was constantly threatening them. For this reason, it is more telling to look at direct local comparisons.

Nelson posits that one case where a direct comparison is possible is between the British ‘F Force’ and Australian ‘H Force’ groups so designated by the Japanese, who worked in very similar conditions, close to each other on the Railway. This comparison offers a stark indication of the impact of the different cultural responses to the situation in which they found themselves. By April 1944, 1,060 Australians had died from a total of 3,664 (29%), and 2037 British were dead out of 3336 (61%) in F Force.366 Being an Australian more than doubled a man’s chances of survival. These are the groups of POWs referred to by the Australian politician and veteran of the Railway, Tom Uren, in his maiden parliamentary speech, in which he claimed his practical experience of social organisation on the Railway caused him to become a socialist: We were living by the principle of the fit looking after the sick, the young looking after the old, the rich looking after the poor. A few months after we arrived at Hintok Mountain camp, a part of British H Force arrived. They were about 400 strong. As a temporary arrangement, they had tents. The officers selected the best, the non-commissioned officers the next best and men got the dregs…Six weeks later only fifty men marched out of that camp, and only about twenty-five survived. Only a creek separated our two camps, but on one side the law of the jungle prevailed and on the other the principles of socialism.367

Whether “the principles of socialism” or the culture of reciprocity, Rowley Richards argued that the cohesiveness of the Australians made them more ‘highly disciplined’ than other nationalities — they were not so destructively competitive nor so careless of the weak.368 Hugh Clarke stressed the distinctive Australian attitude of caring:

I can’t recall any Australian that was ever in a position where there was just himself. But I can recall plenty of occasions with, say, the Dutch or even the British, where a man would be dying and he wouldn’t seem to have any mates. He would just die on his own. I don’t recall a single Australian dying without someone to look after him in some way.369

366 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon. 367 Uren (1995), Straight Left, pp. 36-7. 368 Quoted in Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 67. 369 Cited in Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 67.

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Conclusion In previous chapters I explained the theoretical framework and Polanyi’s method of institutional analysis which he claimed could be used to analyse empirical economies to determine the structural motivations for action through the examination and categorisation of patterns of institutionalised economic activity. He identified just three main processes of integration — redistribution, reciprocity, and exchange — and the structural bases on which such processes rest. This chapter presented the findings from a comparison of the British and Australian POWs. These groups can be directly compared because they lived side-by-side in identical conditions of extreme scarcity, and yet the differences in the ways that they went about gaining a livelihood in these conditions differed significantly.

An individualistic approach would expect to find either uniformity or randomness as individuals responded to the conditions. Instead there were clearly identifiable patterns of behaviour, which were correlated with nationality. Each group entered captivity in similar circumstances with little more than their culture, and yet across many camps they set about establishing camp economies according to the recognisable patterns. In Polanyian terms this suggests that the social structures were different. The Australian social structure was characterised by symmetry, and therefore the dominant process integrating the economy was reciprocity; whereas the British structure was hierarchical and the dominant process was redistribution. This observation doesn’t explain the genesis of these emergent structural properties, and they are certainly not complete recreations of the home society in this novel and extreme situation. Rather, they seem to be exaggerated forms of just one aspect of a usually more complex society. Yet it is clear that culture shines through as the basis for action. It is not necessarily national culture, but possibly the specific cultures of these particular arms of the military of that time. These themes are further developed in light of more empirical data reported in subsequent chapters. This chapter also showed that although exchange was widespread among both the British and Australian groups of prisoners, in neither case was it the main integrating factor. For that we must look to the Americans, whose experiences in the Philippines and in Japan are examined in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively.

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Chapter 5 Every Man for Himself: The Americans in the Philippines

Introduction The Australian and British camps may have been dreadful places, but the American camps were much worse. This chapter looks at the experience of the American POWs who were captured and held in the Philippines. The experience of captivity for the Americans in the Philippines began quite differently to the Australians and British described in the previous chapter, and also proceeded quite differently. Whereas the British and Australians capitulated quickly, and the men entered prison life after very little, if any, fighting, the Americans were captured after months of hard fighting in very poor conditions. The British and Australians experienced an easier entry into prison life for the most part, and basically maintained their organisational structures. Indeed, as has been previously discussed, the Australians and the British camps were characterised by strong organisation. So much so that in the case of the British what emerged was almost a parody of bureaucratic organisation. The Americans, on the other hand, went through traumatic experiences on the way to prison, and their organisational structure was broken up. It might be at least partly due to this fact that life in the American camps was characterised by individualism and economic life was based above all on market exchange. This chapter first looks at the uniquely appalling start of captivity for some of the Americans, the Bataan Death March, and then moves on to look at the other camps in the Philippines.

A Traumatic Beginning: The Death March and Camp O’Donnell The Bataan Death March is one of the most notorious events for the Americans in the Pacific War, and it is often thought that all of the American prisoners in the Philippines experienced it. This is not the case. In fact there are two distinct groups of American prisoners: those captured on Bataan and who therefore endured the horrors of both the Death March and Camp O’Donnell, and those captured later who did not. While the these events took place only a couple of months before the others were captured and 131 Chapter 5 Every Man for Himself: The Americans in the Philippines

the two groups were reunited, the initial trauma of the those two factors, the Death March and Camp O’Donnell, had important ramifications for what was to follow. For this reason, the events at Camp O’Donnell are dealt with separately in this section, whereas the other camps of the Philippines are explored together in the following section.

Beginning Captivity: The Death March As those on Corregidor continued to fight, those captured on Bataan began their imprisonment with the notorious Death March. The Death March was actually a series of forced marches, of between five and nine days, as the prisoners were moved from their point of capture to O’Donnell Camp. The Death March is a significant factor in the experience of the American POWs. Deprived or food and water, beaten, and harassed, a large number or prisoners died,370 or were killed, and those that survived it were deeply traumatised by the first experience of their captivity. The psychological impact of the March was further compounded by the organisational effect that it had in breaking up units, so that many or most of the Americans found themselves alone among strangers.

The Japanese plan to march the prisoners captured at Bataan to O’Donnell was based on the assumption that there would only be half as many men as there actually were, and they would be in good health and able to make the march.371 In fact the estimated 76,000 prisoners, around 12,000 of whom were American, were already half-starved and in poor physical condition, after months of fighting on minimal rations. The already poor condition of the men, and lack of food and water, was compounded by the brutality with which the men were treated on the march. They were forced to continue marching — to stop, to collapse, was a death warrant. The Japanese would kill stragglers on sight. They would also randomly attack the prisoners, with bayonets, with rifle butts, with boots and fists. They might run them over with trucks, or even with tanks. Survivors described the horror of what they had witnessed; seeing men shot for collapsing or trying to drink from a muddy puddle; seeing men clubbed to death and beyond, to the point that their heads were pulverised; seeing the bodies of dead prisoners all along the road, some that had been run over so many times by trucks and

370 The exact number of casualties is impossible to calculate, there being no records kept on the number of men who began the march, and as there were no figures on the numbers killed in the final battles or how many escaped, it is impossible to accurately make a retrospective calculation. Estimates on the casualty rate vary between around one in four, and two in seven. That is, something in the order of 20,000 men died on the march. 371 Knox (1981), Death March: The Survivors of Bataan, p. 118.

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tanks that they were paper-thin. The fear and the incomprehension of what they were experiencing was overwhelmed by the physical sensations of exhaustion, of hunger, and most notably of thirst.

The March also had significant impacts on organisation as it broke up any existing units, and led to an increasing individualisation as the conditions became more and more severe. As Gavan Daws put it:

From the start there was no cohesion among the prisoners. And not enough leadership: Officers were tearing off their insignia of rank because the Japanese were zeroing in on officers for beating. The marchers started in groups large or small, with many guards or few, or sometimes no guards for miles at a time…A man might be with his outfit, or the remnants of it, or with anyone, or with no- one, alone under the hot sun, struggling among strangers.372

The effects of this are illustrated by the case of Sgt. Earl Dodson. Dodson was a member of a sixty-man Marine guard detail at General King’s headquarters. Not having been in active combat, they started the march in much better physical condition. And they also began the march as a unit under their own lieutenant. Although they were given no food or water, the first day of the march was OK. They had some supplies with them. But the next day was different. When their canteens were empty, the march became harder and they jettisoned their packs, which contained food. At the next village they came to, some of the men ran for the village water pump, but they didn’t make it to the tap before they were ordered to move on. Dodson offered to help carry a large can of water that two of the luckier ones had if he could have just a swallow. Their answer was a flat no. It was already becoming a case of every man for himself. At a field he risked the bayonet in order to break off a piece of sugar cane to drink. Later he was able to get half a canteen of water at another village. But at each stop, with the scramble for water or cane, the marines got mixed up with the others in the column and they were no longer a unit. By the end of the second day when the guards ushered them into a courtyard for the night, Dodson found himself alone among strangers. There was one slow spigot of water in operation. An army captain offered Dodson half of his can of salmon if Dodson would line up to fill his canteen. He did so, and after hours of waiting was able to enjoy the meagre meal and slept with his full canteen under his head. When he woke the next morning, the canteen was gone.373

372 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, pp. 76-77. 373 Kerr (1985), Surrender and Survival, p. 56-7.

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Oliver Allen also found the search for water on the March a lesson in how to survive these circumstances. He describes how he was close to the front of a line at a village well and trying to fill his canteen when the other Americans began to push and shove “like thirsty cattle stampeding at the smell of water”. He was shoved to the ground and unable to get back up, every time he was able to rise to his feet someone else would kick him or push him down, and as more and more men piled on top of one another he feared that he had survived the Japanese bayonets only to be trampled to death by his own compatriots. He finally managed to fight his way out, but he vowed he would never let that happen again. In future, he decided, he would get in and out of situations quickly, grabbing what he could before a crowd had time to form.374 These two examples illustrate the process of adjustment to the extreme conditions in which the prisoners found themselves and the ensuing process of ‘dehumanisation’ of these prisoners.

For those still alive, the March stopped at San Fernando, where they were taken by train to Capas, before marching on to O’Donnell. The train ride was a relief from walking, but it became another kind of hell. Crammed into cargo or box cars the men were so tightly packed that they could not sit down, or move. The luckier men were cooler in those wagons made of wood, but others suffered in steel boxes. There was inadequate ventilation, and most of them had dysentery. The stench was so bad that the guards elected to ride on the roof, but to ensure their prisoners did not escape, they locked the doors, and doing so further reduced the airflow. It was only a four-hour journey, yet in Richard Gordon’s account, madness ensued before the journey even began: In a short time the men in our car bordered on madness. Civilized behaviour became a memory. Any resemblance to human beings and disciplined soldiers had vanished before the train even got underway.375

The train slowed and stopped frequently along the journey, and the guards would open the train doors. All along the way, Filipino civilians risked the wrath of the Japanese by throwing food at the open doorways. However, those at the doorways would catch and keep the food, consuming it immediately and refusing to pass any back to those behind them. Those able to get food soon became stronger and more bully-like. Fights broke out as individuals struggled to take food from one another. On one occasion, one of those bullies in the doorway was actually thrown from the train in the process of being

374 Allen (2002), Abandoned on Bataan: One Man's Story of Survival, p. 69. 375 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 99.

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robbed. Gordon recounts how pleased he was to see one of those bullies who refused to share get a death sentence.376 As he reflects, these events on the train were a preview of camp life: “My fellow Americans in the front of the car believed in self- preservation, and damn those behind him. This act would be re-enacted in various ways during our captivity.”377 The train stopped at Capas, from where there was another eleven-kilometre march to their destination, Camp O’Donnell.

I have included only a brief section on the Death March to provide the flavour of what took place. This was a much more traumatic beginning to life behind barbed wire than that experienced by the Australians and British. Their responses to it are also quite different from the self-disciplined Australians and the tightly controlled and obedient British. Before the Americans had even reached the first camp we see individualism emerge as the key coping strategy expressed as a form of what could perhaps be deemed selfishness through the refusal to share the water and food. We also saw a selfish opportunism and a degree of commodification emerge almost immediately. It is difficult to imagine analogous events taking place in Australian or British contexts. Already, on only the second day of the March, there is a lack of organisation and a lack of leadership. But more strikingly, group solidarity, trust and concern for others were immediately missing. Individualism, expressed as a brutal and ruthless fight for survival at the expense of others, was immediately established as the key ethical frame. That this typifies the behaviour of the American POWs will become clear as this chapter proceeds.

In each of these vignettes, we can also see that Gordon and Allen were surprised by the way that their compatriots were behaving. In dealing with this unprecedented situation new norms were rapidly developing, but from their reactions we can see that these did not conform to their own normative expectations. And presumably this was the case for everyone else involved too. Perhaps this response can be attributed to the shock and trauma of the situation, the extreme brutality which they had both witnessed and experienced, and the fatigue, hunger and thirst, in combination with radical uncertainty. The degree to which such behaviour in the years that followed can be attributed to the March itself is uncertain, though it certainly seems to have been perceived by the prisoners themselves as important. However, it should be remembered that the survivors of the March were a minority of the overall POW

376 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 101. 377 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 99.

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population. At their first camp, though, they are the totality of the population, and it was by far the worst camp in the Philippines.

Camp O’Donnell

The Death March had been hell, but O’Donnell was a new kind of torment…Each man had to make his own adjustments to the sad and hideous scene around him. That done, he could then concentrate on his own survival.378

Situated near a river and with a view of a mountain range, but located on a desert-like plain, Camp O’Donnell was surrounded by six strings of barbed wire and bamboo guard towers when the prisoners arrived, though they were in no condition to run away. The prisoners were broken into two national groups, with the Filipinos separated from the Americans. The Americans were further subdivided into barracks according to rank. Their military units were completely broken up, and they shuffled around looking for people they knew.

Two of the buildings were designated as hospital wards, although there was no medicine available. One was for the sick and another, named Zero Ward, for the dying. Men in Zero Ward were basically left to die in their own filth, the patients being too weak to get to a toilet, and there being nothing to give them. Each day scores of the emaciated corpses were carried out for mass burial. At first they were saluted, but soon it was such a common sight that no one appeared to notice. There was also inadequate shade from the tropical sun, and the men would move around the camp trying to follow the shade, if they were able, or else crawl under the buildings, where many died.

The Americans thus began life at O’Donnell under very different material circumstances to the British and the Australians in the Japanese camps. Whereas the latter had been able to either take their own food into camp at the beginning of the imprisonment, and/or had been permitted to go outside the camp to buy food, the Americans were not allowed out, and arrived with no food, already hungry after months of short rations. Some food was provided, but it was far from adequate. Manny Lawton described it as greenish looking watery glue-like paste, which made even the starving gag, but they had to eat it.379 They also entered camp life without the material

378 Lawton (1984), Some Survived, pp. 26-7. 379 Lawton (1984), Some Survived, p.28.

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possessions that many of the Australian and British POWs were able to rely on. On arrival there was a shake down, and anything of value (including even pencils) that a prisoner had managed to hold on to after repeated searches on the March was taken by the Japanese.380 This absolute material deprivation was an important factor in the development of the camp economy.

The primary problem was the lack of water. The only source of water for thousands of men was a single spigot, which was powered by a pump somewhere outside the fence, and kept breaking down for hours at a time. The men queued for hours and hours for some of the water that trickled out. Water for the kitchens had to be carried up from a stream half a mile away in five-gallon cans. It was heavy work. Drinking the untreated water from the stream was fatal, but they still had to post guards to prevent men, crazed with thirst, from diving into it.381 There was clearly not enough water for washing or laundry. So the place soon stank of the unwashed bodies and clothing, most of them caked in dirt and faeces. Many reported later that their skin came away with the clothing when it was finally removed. Rain was a blessing and everyone would rush out into it in the hope of at least diminishing the grime if not getting completely clean, but the rain also created mud and therefore compounded the initial problem.

The distribution of water was perhaps the first insight into the themes of camp life for the Americans in the Philippines. To get to the spigot required lining up for hours (between four and eight hours) in the hot sun. As one put it:

This was our introduction to Camp O’Donnell. There was no organization, no discipline. Just exhausted, sick men trying to find a familiar face…It was a disorganized situation with each person trying to look out for himself.382

Some order was later imposed. In order to keep the line moving, water was rationed to half a canteen per man, and guards were posted to stop any fighting and to keep the line moving. But lining up in the hot sun was still a gamble as there may be no water available when you got to the end of the line. The cronyism and corruption that was to characterise life in the American camps became apparent immediately. Richard Gordon records his disgust at the behaviour of one of the survivors, who subsequently bragged about his scam at veterans’ reunions. This man would push past the hundreds

380 Olsen notes that this was particularly frightening for some of the Americans as they were carrying ‘souvenirs’, items that they had previously looted from the Japanese, including obviously Japanese items such as yen and IJA water canteens: Olson (1985), O’Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, p.43. 381 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 85. 382 Allen (2002), Abandoned on Bataan: One Man's Story of Survival, p. 801.

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waiting in line with a five-gallon can yelling ’make way for the hospital water detail’. He would fill his can and then return to his cronies behind the barracks, while those who had waited in line found the tap had run dry. He admitted to using the same ruse again and again, and when the others at the reunion laughed at his exploits, Gordon thought of those who had died as a direct result of his selfishness. This man was one of those that Gordon called ‘predators’, and he was to encounter many more of them in his time as a prisoner.383 This was not an isolated incident, and neither did such actions stop at queue-jumping. Some of the predators also took advantage of the situation to make money by gaining access to a scarce common resource like water and selling it to other desperate prisoners. Some witnesses reported that water was being sold at $10– $20 a canteen for those who still had money, or chequebooks.384

As at all camps, markets sprang up very quickly, but there are differences between the trading that took place in the American camps and that at the Australian and British camps. A key factor in the economic opportunities available to a prisoner was what job he was given. The most potentially profitable work details were those that allowed one to get out of the camp. Everyone wanted to get of O’Donnell anyway. It was clearly a better risk than facing death. Getting on an outside detail also provided the opportunity to get goods from Filipinos outside, some sold, some donated. They could bring these goods back inside and sell them at exorbitant rates. The best details were driving trucks down to Bataan and back, and working on the water pump. These jobs allowed a prisoner to travel quite far away from the eyes of guards. They could make contact with traders and bring food and medicines into camp. Some used their position to help their friends, but many used it to make a profit.385 Given the opportunities presented by mobility, the truck drivers were by far the biggest traders at O’Donnell, but as little pay had been dispersed during the Bataan siege, not many prisoners had much cash even before they were shaken down by the guards. So the truck drivers took any items of value that prisoners had managed to hang on to, things like pens, jewellery, watches or anything else that they could sell on the outside in exchange for food and drugs that they brought in.386 A few men got a job outside the main camp, working on a dam that would be equipped with a pump to take fresh water into the Filipino side of the camp. Lt. Gene Boyt was one of the lucky ones selected by a friend, Lt. Rackmill who headed

383 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 110. 384 Olson (1985), O'Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, p. 91. 385 Olson (1985), O'Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, p. 91. 386 Olson (1985), O'Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, pp. 104-106.

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the project, to join that work party. One of the benefits of the posting was that they ate at the Japanese mess with their guards. One night some Filipinos made contact with them, and supplied them with food. Rackmill, who Boyt implies was already a racketeer, established a regular trading relationship with civilians outside the wire, buying food which was smuggled into the main camp in the false bottoms of buckets to be sold at a profit.

By this time, my partners and I were eating so well that we no longer needed to take out meals at the Japanese mess. Nevertheless, we continued trekking up there three times a day for rice, fish, and the occasional beating. If we had suddenly stopped accepting their food, it would have looked suspicious, and our smuggling operation might have been exposed.387

One indication of the scale of wealth that these traders were accumulating in a matter of weeks is the price Boyt paid for treatment of his amoebic dysentery. The medic who diagnosed the condition said there was nothing they could do without emetine. Boyt left his Filipino suppliers a note with a request to obtain some for him from the Red Cross, and left a tip of $100 with the note. As Boyt notes, that was a sizable sum of money in 1942, even in America, and worth considerably more in the Philippines.388 Looked at coldly, and in isolation, these actions appear fairly unsavoury. Having exploited the position that he obtained through nepotism to profit from the poverty of his compatriots, he was then able to use that wealth to buy the drugs he needed to save his life. Yet he doesn’t really seem like a predatory or ruthless person, as many others do. And had he not done these things he would probably not have survived. Here it is worth reflecting on Polanyi’s point that individual actions are of no real consequence, but rather it is the patterned nature of processes and their structural bases that motivate action. A report by the Office of the Provost Marshall General in November 1945 recorded the testimony of one of the survivors, Captain Mark Wohfiled. He said:

Many men learned that hell is not a place, but a condition – and that no matter how bad the conditions, everything was relative. To give up and die was painless, while living was terrible. Many men slipped away through inaction, others struggled violently to keep within the breath of life. To want to live with a mad desire was the sine qua non of survival.389

This is a very common observation in all of the camps — it was easy to die, but to live required a determination. It does seem though that it was much easier to die and much harder to live in the American camps, and particularly O’Donnell in which so very many died in a short period of time, at least partly due to the structures they created.

387 Boyt (2004), Bataan: A Survivor's Story, p. 152. 388 Boyt (2004), Bataan: A Survivor's Story, p. 154 389 Lawton (1984), Some Survived, pp. 28-9.

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When General Kawane, the main planner and overseer of the Death March, inspected Camp O’Donnell in May, the Japanese Commandant, Captain Tsuneyoshi, complained about the lack of supplies, but his complaints were ignored and he was given unfavourable reports as an unintelligent reserve officer. In late May he was relieved of his command, and within a few days the orders came to close the camp as too many prisoners were dying there.390 The conditions were so bad that by the time the Americans were moved to Cabanatuan in July, about 2,000 of the Americans and 27,000 of the Filipinos were dead. The bulk of those deaths occurred in the first six weeks.391 Once O’Donnell was closed and the prisoners moved to Cabanatuan they continued to die at a disproportionate rate. Some say that as many as ninety precent of the deaths at Cabanatuan occurred in the first three months, and they were men from O’Donnell and the Death March.392

Other traders at O’Donnell appear to have been much more ruthless than Boyt. Boyt claimed that the camp commanders put a ceiling of 100% on profits from trading, and that his group obeyed this rule and still did very well, but others sought very much higher profits. It’s a rare mention of any attempt on the part of the camp administration to curb trading, and it seems to have been ignored. Among the Americans at O’Donnell was Ted Lewin. As a civilian he ought not to have been there at all. Lewin owned nightclubs, casinos and brothels in Manilla. He was a well-connected operator. He had friends on ‘Millionaire’s Row’ in the Filipino section of the camp — people like the Manilla Chief of Police, show-business figures and arms dealers. He seemed to be able to move freely between the two camps, and through him came a lot of merchandise for sale. Lewin would survive O’Donnell and go on to become a major figure in the Philippines camps. People like Lewin could only prosper through corruption or neglect on the part of the officers, particularly senior officers, and that both of these were common is clearly apparent.

The corrupt use of power to privatise and commodify public goods was a feature of life at O’Donnell. Officers were not able to get out of the camp because they didn’t work, but they controlled who did get out, so they could sell the posting to an outside work detail and take a share of the profits available. They therefore had a vested interest in the trading and profiteering continuing. Even those who did not go outside the camp,

390 Kerr (1985), Surrender and Survival, p. 65. 391 Waterford (1994), Prisoners of the Japanese in World War II, p. 253. 392 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 104.

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but had jobs that allowed them access to drugs and food routinely withheld these resources and sold them instead of redistributing them. There were also many cases where the medics sold soapy water as medicine to desperate prisoners who were lucky enough to have cash.393 It quickly became well known that those who entered the hospital did not get out alive. The medics, who are often portrayed as heroic or even angelic figures in accounts of Australian and British camps, were neglectful of the sick in the ‘hospital’ and did basically nothing to help them, preferring to concentrate on their business. The dire sanitary conditions quickly exacerbated the situation. Many of the men were buried alive because the medics couldn’t be bothered with them, and pushed them through the trap door to the burial detail waiting below. When some doctors arrived at the camp and took over the hospital in July they were appalled by the filthy conditions. The skeletal patients were lying on the floor covered in excreta. They had clearly been given no care whatsoever.394 These doctors had been spared the Death March, so they were healthier and in a better frame of mind. It didn’t take much to make a big improvement. The basic cleanliness and discipline they were able to introduce had an almost immediate impact.395 Unfortunately they arrived shortly before the camp was closed down.

Before the doctors arrived, the medics controlled access to the genuine life-saving drugs. A medic could use these not only to save his own life in cases of episodes of malaria and so on, but also to profit from the desperation of others. When Richard Gordon came down with malaria he went to see the medic who said that there was no quinine available. On the desk between them sat a large bottle of quinine. The medic claimed that this was his own personal stock, but that it was available at a price. Having no money Gordon returned to his post in the kitchen, where he fell to the ground. For two days his companions ignored him. Someone threw a rice sack over him. Then an old friend happened by and seeing Gordon’s state he left and returned with some quinine, which he stole from the same medic, saving Gordon’s life.396 Gordon was also lucky to be working in the kitchens. As always, working in the kitchen was one of the best details to be assigned to. It enabled the cooks direct access to extra food, both for themselves and for any paying customers that might have had. Yet another common good — the ration that should have been equally redistributed — was

393 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 118. 394 Olson (1985), O'Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, pp. 76-9. 395 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 114. 396 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, pp. 111-12.

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being commodified, and compounded the already terrible conditions for the many in order for the few to profit. Gordon’s story demonstrates the ruthless corruption of the medic willing to let him die in order to secure his profit, and also the lack of basic human concern on the part of the other kitchen staff to his plight. But it also demonstrates the reverse — a friend who was willing to help. Yet the startling difference between the Americans and the others is that only an existing friend would lift a finger to help. There is absolutely no sense of solidarity.

The performance of the officers at O’Donnell is rightly criticised by survivors. The officers had suffered on the March as much as anyone else, but when they got to O’Donnell they failed to establish order, which could have made a huge difference. Perhaps it is understandable that they were too traumatised or shocked or exhausted to do much at first. But there is another side to their behaviour that is more troubling and cannot be attributed to exhaustion. Not only did some of them exploit their rank to profit from the rackets, they also took more than their fair share from the common pool of resources. Though they had failed in their duty to their men, they still clung to their privileges. Orders had to be issued to stop officers from monopolising the buckets that were needed to carry water from the river for cooking.397 According to Pfc. Jack Brady, this abuse of power very nearly led to mutiny:

Trouble with officers at O’Donnell was not unusual. The one thing that just really bothered me more that anything else was the absolute lack of control anyone had over them. And they apparently couldn’t control themselves. I think they expected to have the same kind of consideration they got in peacetime. I think, too, that they thought they should have some extra privileges that nobody else had. For example, they expected somewhat better rations. The officers had better access to the Filipinos and through that were able to get better food. Once, when I was out on detail, I got four stalks of bananas. When I returned to camp they didn’t go the hospital. They went to the officers’ mess. That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about. There were a large number of people who objected to this strenuously. They were going to kill the officers responsible. A large number of enlisted men began to take things into their own hands, and either they were going to get the extra food or get rid of the few that were eating it, one of the two. I think a couple of officers finally established control and the extra food in the officer’s mess did stop.398

Violent revolt may have been a good idea. The enlisted men did not kill the officers, but the officers effectively killed many of their men through their egregious actions and inaction. The extent of officer privilege in the last phase of O’Donnell is illustrated by the declining population of the camp in the month of 5th of June to the 5th of July. Just one of the 90 officers died (1%), compared to 72 of the 271 NCOs (27%), and 196 of

397 Olson (1985), O'Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, p. 91. 398 Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 163-164.

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the 637 enlisted men (30%).399 The disparity in these mortality rates appears not to have caused the officers to reflect on their conduct. The main body of officers left O’Donnell on the 6th of June, 1942, leaving behind instructions that a special meal should be prepared to celebrate the 4th of July. Command was assumed by an army officer, Major Horton. He oversaw the celebrations, which were to be enjoyed by officers only. The feast included a pie made from the camote (which is like a sweet potato), sweetened with powdered milk and sugar, and an ersatz coffee made from burnt rice. The ingredients were taken from the hospital. The milk and sugar were a special donation made by the Japanese to try to curb the alarming mortality rate, and the officers took them to celebrate. The enlisted men were aware of this, and they despised Major Horton because of it. Shortly after this, at Cabanatuan, he died. The burial detail, several of whom had been at O’Donnell, decided he should spend eternity with the enlisted men he had ‘screwed over’ in life. They put his dog tags on the neck of an enlisted man, and placed the enlisted man in the single officer’s grave dug for Horton, and threw Major Horton into the mass grave.400

There is generally no great love for the officers of any national group. Yet the Americans at O’Donnell would seem to have a particularly legitimate cause for complaint. What was the cause of the conduct of these officers? It seems to me that, in combination with the special factors associated with the March and the conditions at O’Donnell, there is reason to suspect that culture is a strong variable in explaining this situation, particularly when it is looked at in comparison with the camps documented in the previous chapter. Whereas the British officers focussed on discipline and ran everything, and the Australian officers focussed on practicality and group survival, the officers at O’Donnell seemed to do nothing that didn’t directly profit them. It could be that this indicates that the patterns come from the top down, or else that the conduct of the officers in each case is a response the cultural structures that are the real determining factors.

The British system of committees, respect for authority (or defence and obedience) and officer management affirms or reflects, or both results from and recreates, the structural underpinnings (centricity and hierarchy) of redistributive processes. The Australian officers’ attitude of concern for the group as a whole, and practical collectivist intervention to achieve greater equality could be seen as a reflection of, and

399 Olson (1985), O'Donnell : Andersonville of the Pacific, p. 76. 400 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, pp. 116-17.

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recreation of, the structural underpinnings of reciprocal processes. The case of the American officers at O’Donnell could be interpreted as both a cause and consequence of the kind of atomised individualism that underpins an economy dominated by exchange. We will return to these themes in the following sections as we turn to explore some of the experiences of the American POWs in other camps in the Philippines.

I have dealt with the Death March and Camp O’Donnell separately here because the experience was, in many ways, exceptional. The majority of American POWs did not start their life as prisoners under these circumstances. The vast majority did not experience the Death March or O’Donnell, particularly given the extremely high mortality rates of both. It is certainly true that O’Donnell was extreme. For many of the others, such as those captured at Corregidor and sent to Cabanatuan, it was only after O’Donnell had been closed and the surviving prisoners had been sent to Cabanatuan that they first learned of the ordeals that their compatriots had experienced, and witnessed the inferior condition of those who had survived. The comparison made their own experiences seem comparatively benign.401

About one mile before reaching the internment camp at Cabanatuan, we suddenly became aware of a horrible, acrid stench, the smell of disease, dysentery and death.402

Some veterans described to Donald Knox the horror of seeing the survivors of Bataan and O’Donnell for the first time when they first encountered them at Cabanatuan.403 They describe the shock of seeing those skeletal forms, men they had known but who had lost so much weight that they had lost their facial characteristics making them unrecognisable. They describe them as being like scenes from a horror movie, shuffling skeletal zombies with yellow, sunken eyes. Matted all over with faeces. Those zombies would address them by name, they clearly knew them from before the surrender, and in some cases they were close friends, but they were so disfigured that their friends did not recognise them at all. When Captain Guyton and his crew arrived at Cabanatuan #3 from Corregidor via Bilibid Prison, they still had some supplies of

401 Hopkins (1984), 'Prisoner of War, 1942-1945', p. 30. 402 Jacobs (2006), Blood Brothers: A Medic's Sketch Book. Jacobs, a medical officer, was spared the Death March because he had been hiding out with guerrillas. By the time he arrived, he had lost 45 pounds (20 kg) through amoebic dysentery and weighed just 120 pounds (55 kg), but compared to those inside the wire, he was healthy and active. 403 Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 200-202.

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canned food. They had heard that those on Bataan had had a difficult time, but it was a shock to actually see them:

And, oh man, these guys had a vacant stare in their eyes. When you started to open a can they would just stare at the food. You could see their mouths watering. Either they couldn’t believe you had a can of food, or else they were afraid they weren’t going to get their share. They were frightening. I don’t believe I’d ever seen anything like that. It was more than I could handle.404

These accounts of the first encounters between the two groups of American POWs — those who had experienced the Death March and O’Donnell and the majority who had not — indicate that there were clear, significant and observable differences between these two groups, and not just in terms of physical condition. The Death March was obviously traumatic and the conditions at O’Donnell were terrible. Yet part of the misery was self-inflicted in the sense that a less individualistic, more disciplined and communitarian organisation of camp life could have improved conditions considerably. That this did not happen might be attributable to the trauma that each of the actors had experienced. Or it might be attributed to the failure of the officers to lead (which in itself might be explained by trauma) and to the breakdown of military units (organisation and community) that occurred during the March. There is reason to think that each of these factors, and indeed a combination of all three, had some effect. However, as we turn now to look at life in other American camps it will become clear that although the situation at O’Donnell was the most extreme example, the patterns of behaviour and social organisation that recur in each camp, which suggests that these are aspects of common culture, and it is this which best explain why the American camps differ from both the Australian and British camps. It must also be remembered that, as previously mentioned, although only a minority began their life as POWs with the Death March, all of the Americans had experienced active service under terrible conditions. For the British and the Australians surrender came extremely quickly, and few saw any action at all. For them there was a psychological impact of surrender, a sense of shame at having lost without really trying, and anger directed toward those at the top of the hierarchy who had made the decision to surrender. The Americans, on the other hand, were resoundingly defeated having fought hard, which had different psychological impacts. This was compounded by the exhaustion of having suffered from long periods with inadequate food and other deprivations.

The rest of the chapter, which is organised thematically, looks at the other camps in the Philippines.

404 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 200.

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Organisation and Leadership In terms of the basic organisational structure of the camps, the situation was very similar to that of the camps in the regions covered in the previous chapter. The prisoners were separated — in the sense of being in separate camps — by nationality, which in this case meant the Filipinos from the Americans, but not by rank. Officers may have had separate quarters or barracks, but as was the case with the Australian and British POWs, the officers had a lot of authority inside the wire, and the prisoners were responsible for much of their own internal organisation. As with the other camps, the Japanese paid the officers according to their rank, and paid the enlisted men only if they worked. The rations had to be distributed, stored, cooked, and served, and with that came the imposition of some degree of centralisation. Officers were responsible for deciding who went on what work detail, for supervising work within the camp, and usually for nominating who was to be transported away, as the British had been in Singapore. Like the British, there was a disproportionately large ratio of officers among the American POWs because the Filipino privates serving under American officers were in separate camps. Also in common with the British, the American officers did not voluntarily join their men on working parties to intervene in case of mistreatment by their guards as the Australians had done. They did not share with the Australians that sense of egalitarianism. Neither did they resemble the British in terms of organisation and discipline, and the maintenance of military standards and the implementation of collectivist schemes such as Changi’s vitamin supplementation and common manufacturing enterprises.

Perhaps the key difference between the Americans and the others is the lack of organisation in the American camps of the Philippines. The British tended toward overkill with the military authoritarianism and endless rules and regulations — what could perhaps be best described as discipline in the sense of obedience to authority. The Australians, on the other hand, tended to be disobedient, but disciplined in the sense of pragmatic self-organisation. These were different approaches but both were ways to achieve some sort of order. The Americans appear to have had very little discipline of any sort. There was very little in the way of formal organisation. The conduct of the officers is almost universally condemned. The American style of ‘leadership’ was at best rather hands-off, (or laissez faire – small government and strong markets), at worst corrupt and an exploitative abuse of power. Although the actions of officers could have larger impact than those of other ranks, this behaviour was in line with the way that the enlisted men behaved, which suggests a shared structural motivation for action. As with both the Australian and British cases, all three 146 Chapter 5 Every Man for Himself: The Americans in the Philippines

of the economic processes that Polanyi identified – redistribution, reciprocity, and exchange – are evident. However, in the American case it is much clearer that one is dominant. From the series of examples that are explored in what follows, it is clear that these economies were integrated by exchange based on price-making markets.

As was the case at O’Donnell, most accounts paint a picture of poor leadership on the part of the officers at the other camps in the Philippines. Corporal Kenneth Day depicts the officers at Davao as lazy and disinterested in the welfare of their men. Each barracks had a ranking officer in charge, usually a lieutenant colonel, and within each bay of the barrack housing eight men the highest ranking soldier was the bay leader. These officers were supposed to wake and prepare the men each day to get them to work, but usually the men had to make sure the officer was up before the guards discovered he had done nothing and punished them all. Each work section had an American leader and an assistant leader, both of whom were probably NCOs. Whereas the Australian officers chose to go out on work parties as supervisors specifically to attempt to come between the men and their guards to prevent abuses, the American men found themselves being beaten because their guards were so frustrated by the American officers. Day claims that the officers lost all respect and authority. The men just laughed at their officers and did as they pleased, each trying to improve his own individual situation by avoiding the hardest work. “Never,” Day concluded, “was leadership in such great demand, and such short supply”.405

Day’s criticisms don’t stop at the failure to organise working parties, but also depict a group of officers who were too lazy to do very much of anything at all. Whereas the British officers at Changi were thought to be largely disinterested in their men, they were at least active in committees and the organisation of the production of collective goods such as the bookbinding and vitamin supplements, and in the social and intellectual life of the camp, through the library, sporting events, ‘Changi University’ and theatrical entertainments. They had the time to be involved in running such activities. There were no such activities for the Americans in the Philippines. The tasks fulfilled by officers in the Philippines camps were often completely trivial, and often undertaken only at the insistence of the Japanese rather than on their own initiative. For example, the only task carried out by a lieutenant colonel, who was the owner of one of the few remaining watches at Davao, was to ring a bell on the hour. Thirty senior officers were given the job of weaving hats to help protect the men working in the fields, at the

405 Quoted in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 253.

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insistence of the Japanese who appeared to more concerned about the prisoners’ welfare than their own officers were. Some Filipinos taught them how to make straw hats, and all day long they sat chatting and weaving. But the total production of all thirty officers in a month was one single hat.406 The medical personnel at the Australian and British camps were usually significant figures in improving conditions for the prisoners, and clearly working very hard to do what they could for the sick in extremely difficult circumstances. According to Day, the medical team at Davao included some outstanding doctors, but also a lot of doctors who did nothing at all to help the sick, and there seemed to be no leadership or organisation to direct them to do their job. If a doctor didn’t want to work he didn’t have to lift a finger, and men seeking medical help faced a lottery.407

Neglect is one thing, but far worse was the active corruption of many of the senior officers. For officers, who were closer to power, it was apparent that a lot of the trouble with leadership was the prevalence of cronyism, which prevented appointments to positions of power being determined by ability, or even by rank. As previously mentioned, there were a disproportionately large number of officers because Filipino companies had American officers. This meant that there were many officers, and even officers of the same rank, from whom the selection could be made. But even so, there were a surprising number of fairly lowly ranked individuals in powerful positions thanks to the patronage of senior officers. This is an indication of the level of patronage taking place. According to the testimony of Captain Marion Lawton, the most senior American automatically became the camp commander, and it was he who appointed everyone below him. Although that was theoretically done by rank, it was really a system of nepotism.408 This cronyism or corruption, and the failure of the officers to act for the good of the men, further exacerbated the already significant existing inequalities. As one small example, Gordon claimed that even after many months at Cabanatuan one could clearly distinguish the men who had been at O’Donnell from those who had not. Those from Corregidor remained much healthier and heavier. Additionally, because they had arrived first, they had all the best jobs, so the much sicker men from O’Donnell were left the hardest jobs, further compounding their disadvantage. 409

406 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 262. 407 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 258. 408 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 266. 409 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 125.

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Corporal Day makes an important point concerning the background of the American officers. He writes that despite the fact that a posting to the Philippines was an attractive proposition in terms of lifestyle,410 it had long been a military dumping ground for the least competent American officers from all branches, and the most troublesome enlisted men, and this may have been a factor in the demography of the officer corps within the camps. Indeed, a long posting to the Philippines had often been an alternative to court martial.411 This is presumably because of its distance from home and its perceived lack of strategic importance given the USA’s pre-war intention to withdraw from the Philippines altogether. Can the demography of the officer corps explain the conduct of these officers? I don’t think so, certainly not entirely. Not all of the officers in the Philippines were there because they were incompetent. It could also be argued that the Asia-Pacific region was a low priority for Britain too, so they were unlikely to have sent the best and brightest. All in all the leadership shown by the American officers was extremely poor. But there are also limits to what can be achieved by leaders if they are not followed. Whereas the British prisoners were disciplined in the sense of obedient to authority, and the Australians were self- disciplined, the Americans displayed no form of discipline.

Another factor mitigating against the argument that this can be attributed solely to the calibre of the American officers in the Philippines is that this lack of discipline was not unique to the POWs, nor to the American troops in the Philippines. Discipline was poor throughout the armed forces prior to deployment. Prior to the War, the US Army had a very poor reputation. They were seen as an almost criminal class, and by 1941 not only was the draft restriction on convicted felons lifted, they were actively getting people paroled so they could be drafted.412 “In the popular mind it was a haven for misfits”, filled with young men who had been given a choice between Army service and penal servitude (in the 1930s some judges did offer this option to first-time offenders). Kennett claims that the reputation of the Army was so poor that the early draftees discovered discrimination as soon as they put on the uniform — being refused tables at

410 For some of the Americans posted to pre-war Manilla, the posting brought a standard of living that they had never previously enjoyed. Poor boys from the dust-bowl who joined up to escape the hunger of the Depression found themselves living the high life. Not only did an American military wage go a long way in Manilla, it was supplemented by the overseas allowance, and there didn’t seem to be too much work to do. They were able to employ household staff to keep their residence up to military standards and do many of the more menial tasks expected of them. They could keep a mistress or even two, and enjoy the nightlife of Manilla. 411 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 257. 412 Kennett (1997), G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II, p.19.

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restaurants and so on .413 In 1939 the Regular Army had numbered just 137,000 men. When the Army reached its peak in 1945 there were 8.3 million. Over 7 million of those had been drafted.414 Kennett argues that these citizen-soldiers did not have the discipline of the regulars, and once they were the majority, discipline collapsed completely.415 Morale was so bad in 1941 that the War Department permitted an investigation of conditions commissioned by Time Magazine in response to public complaints about the behaviour of soldiers. The report was undertaken by a WWI veteran, Hilton H. Railey. His findings were so shocking that the report was immediately classified as secret. Railey found that morale was extremely low, that the G.I.s had no faith in their officers, and that the officers had no control over their men. He witnessed men booing their officers, and officers in “physical fear” of their men. He reported finding a great deal of insubordination, extreme drunkenness, theft and destruction of civilian property and so on. “Railey portrayed many higher officers as sitting complacently on a volcano of discontent, refusing to hear the rumblings of trouble”.416 This led to a great deal of social research being undertaken to understand the attitudes of soldiers. The Research Branch of the Information and Education Division undertook over two hundred surveys, and it was this polling that Samuel Stouffer, a veteran of the Division, published as the classic work The American Soldier.417

In contrast to the strict egalitarianism of the Australians, and the bureaucratic rigidity of the British, the American leadership was more akin to a mafia-like organisation in which authority was bought by the powerful whose power derived from market transactions. Organised crime within the American armed forces at that time was not restricted to the POWs, nor even to those in the Pacific. Corruption and racketeering on the part of American troops in Europe took place on a vast scale. In addition to state-sponsored looting, at the individual level tens of thousands of valuable items were looted by American troops in Germany and sent back to the United States through the Army postal service.418 A few of the more notorious robberies, including the theft of the Hesse crown jewels by a ring of officers, were later exposed and

413 Kennett (1997), G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II, p. 79. 414 Kennett (1997), G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II , p. 4. 415 Kennett (1997), G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II , p. 69. 416 Kennett (1997), G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II, pp. 70-71. 417 Stouffer et al. (1949), The American Soldier. 418 McConnell (2003) ‘Preface’ to Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves, p. viii.

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prosecuted, but the vast majority were not.419 In France there were organised crime gangs amongst the US personnel who ran large-scale rackets in cigarettes and petrol stolen from the US Army and Navy and sold on the black market. More than 180 officers and men from a railway battalion were brought to court on charges relating to the cigarette rackets, which saw some 66 million cigarettes per month (or six out of seven packets) sent to the PX stores failing to reach their destination. Food, clothing and many other supplies intended for frontline troops were systematically stolen and sold on the black market.420 Indeed, such practices were not limited to the Second World War, but were also rife during the Vietnam War.421

Gregory Urwin provides an illuminating assessment of the American POWs by comparing the different arms of the military. He found within the aggregate mortality rate a wide variance between the services. He claims the mortality rates for the Army and the Marines were 40.4% and 22.8% respectively. There were more than ten times as many Army POWs as there were Marines (27,465 compared to 2,270) so the higher average obscures this distinction when the totals are aggregated. Urwin argues that the reason for this difference in survival rates is the much higher level of discipline and group cohesion among the Marines, the very selectively chosen and highly trained military elite, compared to the Army.422 The portrait he paints of the Marines is a cross between the group cohesion and mutual care of the Australians and the strict discipline and obedience of the British. Urwin claims that the Marine officers were far more successful and dedicated than their Army counterparts:

Marine officers were not as willing as their Army peers to abdicate their rights and responsibilities. Whenever the Japanese permitted them the slightest freedom of action, they assumed control of the interior management of their camps, re-establishing order and directing their subordinates to work for group survival. Anywhere Marine officers dared to act on behalf of the common good, they made a difference.423

419 Popa (2003) Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves, p.65; Even though the American officers responsible for the theft of the crown jewels were prosecuted and briefly jailed, only a third of the multi-million dollar loot was ever recovered. See Alford (1994) The Spoils of War, pp. 111-214. 420 Ecker (1945) ‘GI Racketeers in the Paris Black Market’, Yank. 421 For instance, in recalling his experiences as a war correspondent in 1965, Australian journalist Alan Ramsay said, “You could buy anything on the Saigon black-market. Just stunning. Because an awful lot of Americans became hugely wealthy out selling all the stuff, a lot of American goods, to the Vietnamese. They had these big KP stores that were only open to the Americans, and you could buy anything there. And of course a lot of that stuff got ‘filtered off’ and out into the community. Brand new stuff. You could buy anything. Any sort of weapon. Any sort of uniform you wanted. I mean it.” (interviewed on ABC Radio National, Late Night Live, 29/10/09). 422 Urwin (1984), '"Marines Don't Surrender": Marine Survival Success in Japanese Prison Camps, 1941- 1945', p.1. 423 Urwin (1984), 'Marines Don't Surrender', p. 7.

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However, he does not attribute their higher survival rate merely to better leadership, but rather recognises the importance of group cohesion and mutual assistance among the other ranks:

In prison camp, enlisted Marines acted on their own initiative to establish “buddy systems” – flexible, informal networks of mutual assistance – which measurably improved their survival prospects…A buddy system could involve a group as large as twenty to thirty-six Marines – or every Marine in camp…If a Marine fell ill, sustained a serious injury, or pulled a stint in solitary confinement without food, his buddies often pooled small amounts of their own rations to sneak him double portions. These voluntary assessments kept up until the man in question was out of trouble. Several Marines risked beatings and even death to steal food from the Japanese for ailing comrades. “In our group there were no individuals,” bragged Corporal Robert Brown. “We were all buddies.”424

The Marines also had a unique system of self-discipline, which set them apart:

“We had our own discipline,” affirmed Pfc. John B. Garrison of the Guam Marines. “Nobody got out of line, because if somebody did, we’d straighten them up ourselves. We had certain rules. You didn’t steal from anybody else, and you didn’t take advantage of anybody else.”

Urwin attributes this difference between the Army and the Marines to the different cultures of the two services. The Marines, he argues, were taught to regard themselves as part of a special group, a “culture apart” both from the other branches of the military and from American society.

“The most difficult part of boot camp training was changing my civilian attitude to one that was acceptable to the Corps,” revealed Pfc. Biggs. “The Corps demanded teamwork and men who thought not only of what was good for themselves, but also what was good for their outfit and the Corps.”425

Marine Corp training, he argues, is “more a matter of cultural indoctrination than of teaching soldiering…Before they can learn to fight they must learn to be Marines.”426 While Urwin’s analysis of the Marines offers an interesting counter example, they are not examined in any further detail in this chapter. They accounted for less than 18% of all American prisoners of the Japanese, and nearly half of them were never in the Philippines. So the numbers are too small to be separately analysed here. Nonetheless, Urwin’s account provides further insight into the role of culture in leadership and discipline.

424 Urwin (1984), 'Marines Don't Surrender', pp. 11-12. 425 Urwin (1984), 'Marines Don't Surrender', p. 10. 426 Urwin (1984), 'Marines Don't Surrender', p. 10.

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Distribution and Redistribution In the previous chapter we saw how important redistribution was, both in reducing inequality in some cases, and increasing it in others. In the American camps in the Philippines the situation was quite different. Redistribution, where it occurred, tended to be neutral or else to increase inequality, and to contribute to the overall worsening of conditions. The patterns established at O’Donnell were repeated, though to a less extreme extent. The basic conditions of distribution were the same as they had been in the British and Australian camps: the Japanese distributed rations centrally, which had to be redistributed, and they paid the prisoners differentially according to rank. There were some welfare funds to redistribute income, but these are much less well documented than in the British and Australian cases. It does seem that there were welfare funds established in most camps to achieve some redistribution of core resources, such as helping to feed the sick, but they were generally niggardly by Australian and even British standards. For the most part, the officers received the relatively high salaries commanded by their rank, and enlisted men received a pittance without any attempt to equalise their position. When it comes to rations, redistribution occurred but it was prone to be toward the already privileged rather than the other way around.

At Cabanatuan the failure to fairly redistribute Japanese issued rations was so apparent that the enlisted men complained about the obvious disparity between the rations they were receiving and what they could see their officers being fed at the outdoor officers’ mess. The officers responded by moving their mess indoors and declaring it off limits, thereby attempting to hide their inequitable redistribution of resources — just as the British officers had done at Changi. The naked evidence of officer privilege was the obviously greater amount of flesh on their bones. Rather than address the cause of this inequality, the officers instead began to allot themselves a separate bathing time, so that the extra flesh would not be seen by the ‘lower caste’.427 On Christmas Day of 1943, the prisoners at Cabanatuan each received a Red Cross parcel. An extraordinary event in itself, but even more so because the parcels had not been looted, and they received a whole parcel each. Some of those distributing the parcels cried, because they knew that for some it had come too late, the wasted skeleton receiving the parcel would not live long enough to enjoys all of its contents. This good fortune, the ‘gift’ of the Japanese, might have helped to blunt the sting of the inequality of the Christmas Eve dinner the night before. The enlisted men had received

427 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 110.

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a three-course meal: a main course of meat, potatoes and vegetables, followed by a sweet, an orange and ten cigarettes. The officers enjoyed five courses: meat gravy soup; fish rissoles; pork and vegetables; Christmas pudding made from rice, brown sugar, peanuts, ginger and cinnamon; and, fish savoury.428 To reiterate, these are examples of redistribution: the officers as recognised central authorities took from the common pool of rations and redistributed them, in this case, as in many other cases, they redistributed them unequally, according to status/rank.

This cronyism or corruption, and the failure of the officers to act for the good of the men, as has already been mentioned, further exacerbated the already significant existing inequalities. Because the men from Corregidor had arrived first, they had all the better jobs, so the much sicker men from O’Donnell were left the hardest jobs, further compounding their disadvantage. 429

These same themes of corruption and disinterest in the welfare of the men are repeated throughout the available testimonies. I have, though, found just two counter examples, which are interesting. Lt. Col. Armand Hopkins recalled that early in his time as a Group Leader at Cabanatuan, under the overall command of Lt. Col. Beecher, the Japanese issued some luxury goods, which according to Beecher were only to be made available to officers. These were things like candy bars, soap, sewing kits, peanuts and so on. Beecher divided the loot into three: one for his own staff officers, and one each for the officers of Groups I and II. Hopkins’ share was a candy bar, which he enjoyed greatly and without guilt. However, when another lot of goods arrived for officers only a week later, he suggested to Beecher that they try to find a way to share these with the enlisted men. Hopkins claimed that Beecher replied that they must follow the Japanese order to distribute them only to officers, in case the supply was stopped altogether. Hopkins ignored the order, and with the agreement of the officers in his group, half of the loot was distributed to the enlisted men by ballot. When he confessed the next day to Leo Paquet, the leader of the other group, Paquet admitted that he too had ignored the order, but he went further and distributed all of the stuff by ballot, with officers and men given the same chance. From then on Hopkins distributed these goods among his group the same way.430 This is a small and unusual example of a couple of officers trying to unofficially reduce the inequalities of rank, and trying to

428 MacArthur (2005), Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East, 1942-45, p. 184. 429 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 125. 430 Hopkins (1984) (unpublished), 'Prisoner of War, 1942-1945: Reminiscences of Armand Hopkins,' In. Carlisle, PA.: United States Army History Institute, pp. 36-7.

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institute processes of redistribution. These were tiny quantities of rare luxury goods they were redistributing, not the stuff of livelihood. But they do illustrate Polanyi’s point that embedded behaviour is not identical behaviour, but that embeddedness promotes certain dispositions rather than others, and it also illustrates his point that isolated acts do not change integrating factors.

The other example is of an officer who did seek to make substantial change. An interesting record of Bilibid comes from the top — the diaries of Naval Commander Thomas Hayes,431 who was a surgeon and from late 1943 the senior medical officer. Perhaps one of the reasons that his record is particularly revealing is that he did not survive the war, and therefore did not later censor his writing, which was highly critical of many of the officers, as well as the men. As another veteran, who was an enlisted man at the time but went on to become a career officer, commented in his own book:

Unlike many accounts of World War II, Hayes does not emphasize the cruelty of his captors and the courage of the imprisoned. Hayes does try to present an accurate account of how men behaved under the conditions found at Bilibid and other prisoner camps of the Japanese. While Hayes had no love for the Japanese, in whose hands he died, neither did he for those Americans whose integrity evaporated in the face of hardship.432

Hayes’ diaries describe a system of American corruption and cronyism at Bilibid from the very first. This can be taken as evidence to support the proposition that the Death March was not the cause of the corrupt regime at O’Donnell, and such an influence spreading, as Hayes is describing such events occurring at Bilibid long before they were joined by any of the survivors of the March. As a Navy man, he suffered discrimination from the Army officers who held the top brass in the camp. Naval officers were excluded from the officer’s quarters, leaving them the toilet and a passageway as the only remaining places to sleep. They were also excluded from eating in the officer’s mess. On the medical side, he was appalled to find the medical officers selling medicines and one medic charging to pay attention to the sick in his care (just as they had done at O’Donnell). The Naval medical officers who complained about such conduct soon found themselves being transferred out of Bilibid altogether.433 Hayes complained about the sloppiness of the Army officers, their inefficiency and failure to uphold basic discipline. He attributes much of the mistreatment that they received from

431 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary: The Secret Notebooks of Commander Thomas Hayes, POW, the Philippines, 1942-45. 432 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, pp. 131-32. 433 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 4.

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the Japanese to their own lack of discipline — both before and after surrender. Hayes charged that as a group they had acted neither like officers, nor like doctors.434

When the Japanese finally ended the first regime at Bilibid by transferring the American chief out of the camp, Hayes wrote the following in his diary:

Gooding [the previous commanding officer] was crooked, untrustworthy, characterless, and dumb. The Japs have done for us what I tried to do in the first two months after my arrival at Bilibid. The most disgusting and unforgettable fact associated with Gooding’s regime is the toadying, backslapping, hand-shaking, and condoning of his acts which has marked the conduct of so many of our officers. They feared him and hoped to feather their nests by playing up the bastard.435

Hayes was therefore pointing out that it was not just a case of one ‘bad apple’ at the top who was to blame, but rather that the majority of officers collaborated and enabled the corrupt regime, at direct and severe cost to their men. An illustration of this is one of the episodes that vexed Hayes — the Army chief replaced Army names on the transfer list with Navy names, in order to keep his cronies in Bilibid. In order to do so he had re-categorised dental staff as non-medical, thus depriving the men of a necessary medical service in order to keep his cronies happy. Nine months later, in October of 1943, when the Japanese tired of the corruption in the hospital, Hayes was appointed chief medical officer. His first act was to deal with Americans thieving. He wrote in his diary: It seems that we have as much trouble with our own people as we do with the Japanese. This has been the experience of every American who has been in charge of a group of prisoners. It’s a constant fight against selfishness. A continual battle against individuals who would sacrifice their comrades for personal gain.436

The extent of this pursuit of personal gain and the resultant inequality was apparent when Hayes conducted a survey of the clothing needs of the men. While most were in G-strings alone, and possibly preserving a shirt, there were a number of prisoners who had enough clothing to always be fully and neatly dressed. The implication is that they must have been racketeers. Hayes decided to redistribute clothing according to need.437

In this position of power he tried to implement many reforms, including introducing a welfare scheme to redistribute money from officers to the men, and especially to the

434 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 108. 435 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 122. 436 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 139. 437 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 141.

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hospital, and diverting larger proportions of the men’s income into a centralised fund for purchasing additions to rations, so as to improve their vitamin intake. He met resistance to both policies. The men refused to have their pay reduced, which frustrated him. But what most irked him was the attitude of the officers, for whom his respect declined daily. He noted that while the desperation of the enlisted men was clearly evident — they were fighting over garbage scraps or a spoonful of sugar — some officers refused to help. Hayes attempted to tax purchases at the canteen, he attempted to levy the officers income. Eventually the situation became so desperate that he even got the Japanese commandant to transfer the notional ‘savings’ that were compulsorily deducted from their wages into a general fund to buy more food for the camp, provided that the depositors agreed. Of 242 depositors all but 18 agreed, those 18 being from among the most senior officers.438 This could not be further from the taxation systems that we saw in the British, and especially in the Australian camps. There the structural imperatives seemed to compel the wealthier officers to redistribute resources, but in this American case, those with the least need saw no reason to act against their own narrow self-interest, and their position of status and power enabled them to prevent a system of redistribution being established.

Nonetheless, it would appear that Hayes was successful in creating a better environment than most. When Gordon passed through, he couldn’t believe that he wasn’t in a hospital in America. Hayes had re-established the dental service, and when Gordon’s group arrived en route to Japan they were advised to have a dental check up and get any work necessary done before departure, as there was no knowing when or if they would get another opportunity. Gordon was astonished to see dentists in clean Navy uniforms under clean white coats in a clean clinic. And then for dinner they were given mutton soup. It was the first time he had seen meat on a menu since his capture.439

The example of Hayes’ command demonstrates the importance of leadership, and what a difference a leader could make, as well as the limits on the capacity of a single officer, even the commanding officer, within such a community. Contemporary accounts depict Hayes as being a prickly character who was unpopular with others. Perhaps a more charismatic leader could have made more impact in influencing the other officers. However, he still remains the only American commanding officer that I

438 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary pp.140-202. 439 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 129.

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have discovered to have had any positive impact. In terms of institutional analysis, Hayes’ project was an attempt to move away from exchange-based economic processes, and toward redistributive processes. Had it been successful, this would certainly have had the effect of improving conditions for the vast majority. Yet he was unable to achieve that goal, which indicates that the social structures that dominated and integrated the economy were those that supported and encouraged individualism and exchange, based on price-making markets. Polanyi was clear in arguing that individuals cannot achieve substantive change, as the social structures must support integrative behaviour for it to have any affect:

This should help to explain why in the economic sphere personal behaviour so often fails to have the expected society effects in the absence of definite preconditions. Only in a symmetrically organised environment will reciprocative behaviour result in economic institutions of any importance; only where allocative centres have been set up can individual acts of sharing produce a redistributive economy; and only in the presence of a system of price-making markets will exchange acts of individuals result in fluctuating prices that integrate the economy. Otherwise such acts of barter will remain ineffective and therefore tend not to occur. Should they nevertheless happen, in a random fashion, a violent emotional reaction would set in, as against acts of indecency or acts of treason, since trading behaviour is never indifferent behaviour and is not, therefore, tolerated outside of the approved channels.440 There was no moral objection to exchange. Quite the contrary, really. It is to the topic of exchange that we turn next.

Exchange A medical officer recorded his impressions of the diet at Cabanatuan:

The daily diet consisted of two hundred to four hundred grams of a poor grade of rice, containing fine gravel and insects, about one hundred grams of weeds (from carabao wallows), and, on a rare occasion, ten grams of "one" of the following: sugar, coconut oil, beans, camote (sweet potato), corn, or meat. The diet was usually below eight-hundred calories daily, of which protein and fat were less than fifty calories. Captives, who were able to earn a pittance by hard labour on labour details or on the farm, could supplement their diet with an occasional banana, egg, a few peanuts, or a few mongo beans. A few captives raised small gardens growing vegetables for their own use. As they ripened, the produce had to be carefully watched to prevent theft. Some captives trapped stray dogs, some ate lizards, grasshoppers and even earthworms. With food from every available source, the daily diet rarely reached one thousand calories. Fat and salt were almost never available.441

It was clearly impossible to survive on the rations alone, even if supplemented with what little goods could be bought officially with an enlisted man’s wage. Given these

440 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 170. 441 Jacobs (2006), Blood Brothers: A Medic's Sketch Book.

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conditions, further economic activity was as essential to survival for the American POWs as it was for the Australians and the British. However, in the American camps of the Philippines economic activity was instituted quite differently, here the market ruled. Frank Grady recalled that the black market sprang up almost immediately after surrender. At Cabanatuan Filipinos were slipping in to trade and Americans were slipping out. To raise money to buy other goods, prisoners began selling services, such as doing laundry or watching over belongings, or going out on work parties in place of another prisoner.442 Just the sort of services that Filipino houseboys had provided for the GIs at Clark Field before the war. Just as the pre-war situation was a reflection of inequality, this trade in services demonstrates the inequality that existed within the camps.

At Bilibid and Cabanatuan there was much greater access to outside aid than there had been at O’Donnell. Bilibid’s location in Manilla allowed local wealthy Filipinos and foreign civilians to send money and goods to the American prisoners. This made a huge difference for those who had contacts on the outside. Boys would come to a little used gate and accept notes through the wall when there were no guards around which they delivered to civilians that the prisoners knew in the city. They, in turn, could send goods or cash back through the wall to the prisoners. On one notable occasion a prisoner received a chocolate layer cake through the wall, but more useful were the drugs that friends and family in Manilla might send. These boys would also shop for the prisoners, buying them bits of food at reasonable prices, such as a custard pie for a peso, and for those with money these boys could get them lifesaving drugs.443

There were also legitimate means of purchasing commodities. At Bilibid there were several ways for a man with money to supplement his rations. Colonel Worthington arranged with the Japanese for a merchant to be permitted into the compound to sell goods such as fruit and tobacco.444 Some of the Japanese sentries were open to bribery and operated an informal business acting as blind middlemen. Prisoners would line up under the sentry tower and throw the guard some money, usually about five pesos. The guard would then throw a rope over the prison wall to a Filipino trader on the outside, who would attach a basket to the rope. The prisoner would then take whatever the content of the basket was, it might be fruit or sweets or tobacco, he would

442 Grady and Dickson (1997), Surviving the Day: An American POW in Japan, p. 64. 443 Kerr (1985), Surrender and Survival, p. 77. 444 Kerr (1985), Surrender and Survival, p. 77.

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never know in advance what he was buying, and it was usually worth less than two pesos. The guard would then throw some of the money to Filipino trader and keep the change.445 At Cabanatuan when wages began to be paid, the Japanese established a canteen. Lt. Col. Harold Johnson, who later became Army Chief of Staff, was in charge of central purchasing at Cabanatuan for over a year. He kept very thorough books. In fact he kept two sets of books: one accurate and the other for the Japanese. His records show the extent of informal economic activity. The amount of money that should have been circulating in camp, that is the money derived from Japanese pay, was around half a million pesos, but in fact three times that amount was being spent in the commissary alone. The extra cash was coming into circulation through underground aid, from counterfeiting, and from trading with the guards.446 One enlisted man bragged in his own book that when he left for Japan, after just six months in the Philippines camps, he had accumulated $100,000.00 in cash and cheques.447 This rather spectacular level of wealth for some was matched by the spectacular poverty of others.

Some men were too sick to work and therefore had no income with which to trade. They literally had nothing to sell but their faeces, and there was a market even for that! The Japanese regularly screened the men who were scheduled to be transported to Japan for dysentery, presumably because they did not want to spread disease to the homeland. They did this by obtaining a stool sample from each of the transportees. Men who were suffering from dysentery could sell their stools to other men who had more resources and wanted to avoid being transferred to the unknown conditions of Japan.448 They believed that they were better off in a tropical climate, and more likely to be liberated earlier. They were not alone in this belief. The officers, who were in charge of drawing up the lists of who went and who stayed, made sure they were the last to leave. So we see here how each used the resources that they had for their own survival: the sick sold their shit, the healthier and wealthier bought it, and the officers used their power to send their men into the unknown and save themselves.

The market dependence, inequality, and corruption led some to attempt to gain a livelihood through the only remaining means available — theft. Soon after his arrival at

445 Kerr (1985), Surrender and Survival, p. 77. 446 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 263, Weinstein 1956: 285?. 447 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 118. 448 Gordon (1999), Horyo: Memoirs of an American POW, p. 126

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Cabanatuan, Armand Hopkins ran into one of his West Point classmates, Jean Harper. Harper was in a bad state, suffering with malaria and complained that his West Point class ring had disappeared when he was having a bad spell.449 Sometime later, when the black market was flourishing, a young soldier offered to sell Hopkins the ring of a dead soldier. It was the class ring of his still living friend, Jean Harper.450

The American free market was a breeding ground not only for the kind of activity that would normally be considered petty crime, even though that could be fatal in this context, but also for organised crime on a large scale. One American wheeler-dealer recalled watching the prison camp economy, and likening it to watching an ant farm under glass:

One man would be sewing for money. One would cut hair. One would repair shoes with anything he could find for the soles. One would take in shirts for washing. One had a bit of a mirror; he charged a quarter-cigarette to shave in it. One would wash food bowls and take his pay in fishbones to crunch on. Ants by the hundred laboriously gathering the crumbs. And rats, snouting the cage, sniffing the wind, pouncing on scraps.451

Unlike collectivist ants, however, everyone was in business for himself. James Clavell’s novel, King Rat, which is set in Changi where Clavell had been a POW, told the story of an American NCO, Corporal King, who thrived in the prison camp economy, and made a fortune as a wheeler-dealer. These rats, the predators as Gordon had called them at O’Donnell, the ‘operators’ as most Americans called them, proliferated at all of the American camps to an extent unimaginable in the British and Australian camps. Even in a smaller camp like Davao, Victor Mapes marvelled at how some of them prospered:

Some of the big-time operators, the better thieves, had better techniques and contacts than the rest of us. Oh, I mean they were masters. On the outside they would be equal to Al Capone. They were professionals and they were very successful. Men you tried to stay away from. 452

What interested Mapes was that these were skills they had developed in prison. He had known some of them before, and they were not like that in civilian life. In fact, prison was the making of them. They had been unremarkable on the outside, but they really made something of themselves inside the wire. He noticed that though a few of them were country boys, most were ‘city rats’ from big cities like New York or Chicago.

449 Hopkins (1984), 'Prisoner of War, 1942-1945', p. 28. 450 Hopkins (1984), 'Prisoner of War, 1942-1945', p. 37. 451 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 146. 452 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 265.

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But he also noted that the norms of commodification and profiteering were brought to Davao by the survivors of the Death March and O’Donnell, via Cabanatuan. When they first arrived, the Davao men were shocked by the poor condition these men were in, and one of them asked Mapes if he could buy a can of sardines off him for five pesos. Although it was his last bit of food, Mapes refused the offer and gave him the can for nothing because he felt so sorry for him. The next day Mapes saw the man selling the can of sardines for thirty pesos:

He knew what he was doing. The old barter system – take a little profit, and reinvest it to make more in the black market. All of us who were in Davao learned some things the next few days. We learned these boys from Cabanatuan were desperate and they knew something about survival that we didn’t know, because we hadn’t got to that point yet. Another thing was, better look out when you had any dealings with them guys captured on Bataan.453

At Cabanatuan, the largest of the camps, it was said that you could get absolutely anything that you could pay for. The big cheese there was the previously mentioned civilian Ted Lewin. When Captain Marion Lawton arrived at Cabanatuan he was suffering from jaundice and malaria.454 The doctor told him that he needed to quickly find a source of protein if he was to survive. He knew there was a black market, but having been through the Death March and O’Donnell, he had nothing left of value to trade. But he thought he had a lifeline in the form of his great friend, Mac. They met on the ship to the Philippines and Lawton counted Mac as his closest friend. When they were under siege at Bataan, Lawton had accumulated a great stock of food and alcohol through the resourcefulness of his Filipino supply officer. In March he sent for Mac and shared his loot with him. Mac was starving and gratefully accepted his generosity. Mac had gone on to Corregidor, and so had been spared the Death March and O’Donnell. So Lawton went to find Mac and ask him for help. Lawton said that he could see Mac shiver at the sight of his old friend’s ragged clothes and wasted body, and that he could see the fear in Mac’s eyes, knowing that Lawton wanted something. Lawton asked for a loan of some money so that he could buy some canned food on the black market. Mac refused to help, saying that he only had $100 on him, and he might need it himself.

When I got back to my barracks, several hundred yards away, I was so exhausted I fell asleep. When I woke, I wasn’t mad at Mac. I thought this is survival, every man for himself. If he gives me what he has, then he’s going to have problems. It taught me a lesson. You shouldn’t expect

453 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 249. 454 See the relevant section of his oral history in Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 213-216.

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anything out of a casual relationship. It’s only within family that people can turn to each other for help.455

Instead of relying on friends, Lawton sought credit from one of ‘the operators’. He made contact with Moe Gardner, a sergeant who had become an agent of Ted Lewin. Gardner’s barracks was only half occupied, which is in itself a remarkable indication of the level of corruption entailed in the operation, and the other half of the barracks was used to store his wares. In plain sight were dozens of cans of various types of meats, luncheon spreads and so on. And standing around were a cohort of well-fed bodyguards. Gardner agreed to extend him credit, based on his officer’s salary being banked at home. It was a risk because there was no guarantee that they would both make it home alive to complete the transaction. In return he charged Lawton higher prices. They continued the arrangement only for one month, which was long enough for Lawton to recover. For that month, twice a week Lawton would go to Gardner’s store and purchase a couple of cans of fish or meat. He would sneak out at meal times and mix the meat in with his rations so as not to “tantalise” the others. Gardner charged him $130.00 for approximately sixteen cans of food, and Lawton, far from resenting this extortion, claimed that he was very grateful to him.456

This practice of extending credit was known as ‘jawboning’. Jawboning was an old practice in the US Army before the war. Every barracks had a moneylender, often the paymaster who was also in business for himself. When a soldier ran out of beer money between paydays, he could borrow from the barracks moneylender. The common rate was six for nine, meaning $6 to be repaid as $9 next pay. This usurious practice of earning 50% interest on a seven- or ten-day loan was known as ‘borrowing on the jaw bone’.457 At Cabanatuan and the other camps, in lesser hands than Lewin’s, jawboning became a form of predatory lending, a way to pray on the weak, particularly when associated with gambling. A jawboner might ‘lend’ a man a half a ration at one meal to be paid back as a full ration the next day, and sweeten the deal with a coin-toss, double or nothing. Playing with marked cards was a much more efficient way to earn a living as a gambler at Cabanatuan, and strange as it might seem that men in such deprived situation might gamble, many did and some even managed to earn a living ripping others off. The corruption at Cabanatuan seemed to pervade every aspect of

455 Quoted in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 215, almost identical to the account in Lawton’s own book, Lawton (1984) Some Survived, p. 41. 456 Lawton (1984) Some Survived, pp. 41-43 457 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 307.

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camp life. From the man who woke to discover that the man beside him has died in the night, and took his mess kit to draw an extra ration for a few days before the body started to stink,458 to the medics who sold drugs, to the officers who sold postings to good work details, such as kitchen duty, by taking a cut of all the food the cooks could steal from their own men’s rations.459

The Buddy System The Americans used the term ‘quan’ (sometimes spelt ‘kwan’)460 as a noun and a verb to identify a syndicate sharing food. So, for instance they would say ‘quan up’ to mean sharing with the other members of the syndicate whatever food each member had obtained during the day, and refer to the syndicate itself as ‘my quan’. The British used this word too. For the British officers it usually referred to all of the officers contributing to a mess fund, or a smaller subset sharing less substantial goods. For the Americans it usually meant just two or three people. Quan is a common word in the accounts of American POWs, so there is certainly some sharing going on. In a sense the dynamics of the place force them into a quan. The drastic inequality, low levels of trust and high levels of theft meant that they could not store goods. Whereas a British quan might purchase goods to be shared over a week or even a month, the Americans could not hold on to an article as it would almost certainly be stolen, so it was better to share what you had immediately and benefit from reciprocation. They also called this the ‘buddy system’. When Pfc. Victor Mapes described the buddy system, he summed up a common theme of the American POW narrative:

You had to buddy up with someone. Sometimes, maybe there would be group of three or four that would take care of each other. A loner, he had a hard time. A buddy or a group was insurance. You take care of me, I’ll take care of you.461

To describe this rather coldly as a system of insurance — in other words to be self- aware that this sharing was a strategy for the mitigation of risk — denotes a very different ethic to the one that pervades Australian accounts of sharing and caring under the rubric of mateship. This is perhaps an indication that although there was a process of reciprocity taking place in both situations, in the Australian case it was an integrative process based on symmetrical structural locations, and in the American case it was an

458 As Roy Diaz did, Knox (1981), Death March, p. 203. 459 Jacobs (2006), Blood Brothers: A Medic's Sketch Book. 460 They believed it to be a Filipino (Tagalog) word, although British prisoners in Singapore used the term as well, which might mean that it is actually a Chinese word. 461 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 265.

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ancillary activity in an economy integrated by a different factor. Other accounts include a level of calculation about reciprocal processes, rational calculation of means and ends, that is not present in Australian or British accounts. For example, Captain Frank Grady claimed that prisoners at Cabanatuan quickly discovered that there were two approaches to POW life: to become selfishly devoted to self-interest, or to pool your resources with a group and share everything. Both had advantages and disadvantages. His approach was a partnership, which he thought had some of both strategies. He formed a partnership with his friend Joe. They had worked together on codes with General King in the Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor. Though he and his partner never talked of a partnership, that is what they were, and they were one pair of hundreds in the camp. Whereas the reciprocity in the Australian case was more or less generalised, though built upon a pattern of smaller groups, these buddies were in exclusive relationships, and they did not reflect or contribute to a broader pattern of redistribution of reciprocity. Stealing from other Australians, for instance, was explicitly taboo. Grady argued that the determined commitment to survive was expressed both in the way they stole from their neighbours and in the way that they remained loyal to one another:462

Especially in those early days at Cabanatuan, there was a tense competition for survival. Your belongings weren’t safe, and any food had to be closely guarded. With everyone else in the camp, Joe and I were always protective of our own interests as a unit. With each other, however, we shared everything and helped each other through dangerous emotional states.463

The partnership was soon to be broken up because one of their colleagues from the communications unit, another officer, informed the Japanese that Grady was a valuable source of information. That officer’s reward for the information was to be shipped out of Cabanatuan. Grady was to be sent to Japan for interrogation. His last words to Joe, whispered, were to urge him to get another partner in order to survive — almost like a dying spouse urging their partner to remarry. He commented that he felt foolish saying it, but it was too dangerous to try and live without a buddy.464 It seemed that almost everybody had a buddy. Yet, this contradicts the other, perhaps slightly more prevalent theme, that it was every man for himself. Sometimes it seemed that these relationships were too fragile to withstand the conditions of captivity. For instance, Pfc John Falconer had trouble finding his buddy who was holding the food they were sharing. When he finally found him, his buddy said, “Here, you take it all,”

462 Grady and Dickson (1997), Surviving the Day: An American POW in Japan, pp. 70-71. 463 Grady and Dickson (1997), Surviving the Day: An American POW in Japan, p. 71. 464 Grady and Dickson (1997), Surviving the Day: An American POW in Japan, p. 94.

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and disappeared. Inside the banana leaves Falconer found that everything but the rice had been taken. He learned that his friend had traded all the meat and fish they had bought for cigarettes. He reflected, “It taught me a very valuable lesson in survival, however: you look out for yourself!”465 Dogs circled the camps, howling at night, feeding on the corpses. One pair of men built a trap to catch a stray dog that had been seen in the camp. While one of these men was out on a work detail the other caught the dog in their trap. He quickly butchered it and ate his half, and then sold the other half before his ‘buddy’ returned. When the word spread a particularly violent fight broke out and the man who had been cheated was demanding his share of the dog money. He was shouting, “We were partners, everything was 50-50”. Yet another American prisoner learnt that it was every man for himself.466 As one recalled, there was no such thing as a buddy system at O’Donnell, everyone just survived on their own, or didn’t survive at all.467 These relationships could be very fragile and shallow, and not at all like the generalised mateship of the Australians, or the more selective British officers’ quans. For instance there were two Americans who formed a buddy partnership. It was a partnership developed to compensate for their disabilities as one was blind and the other had lost both his legs. By working together they could overcome their disabilities and survive as a partnership. The legless man sat on an improvised dolly and used his eyes to navigate so that the blind man could tow him around the camp. Then the doctors discovered that the blind man was suffering from hysterical blindness and cured it with hypnosis. The moment he could see, he dumped his legless ‘buddy’ and left him to fend for himself.468

While the buddy system might be characterised as a system of reciprocity in the ordinary lexicon, it cannot be categorised as such according to Polanyi’s system, because reciprocal processes are never merely mutual, and the buddy system is rarely anything more than that. Also, as noted in the previous chapter, the purpose of reciprocal processes is social rather than economic, it is about fostering positive relations in the interests of group solidarity and social reproduction. The buddy system carries the air of rational calculation. It seems to be a strategy to help deal with low levels of trust, and the short time horizons this encourages.

465 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 158. 466 Lawton (1984), Some Survived, p. 30. 467 Roscoe Sellers, interview with Gavan Daws, from Daws archival material, USAMHI, no date. 468 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 261.

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Interim Conclusion When compared with either the British or the Australians, the response of the Americans to the extreme situation was in itself extreme. Polanyi’s tools of analysis can help us to understand why. Before turning to that though, it is worth pointing out that even if the scope of this study were restricted to the American camps in the Philippines, the comparative approach would still have been vital to the analysis. Had I looked only at one particular camp in the Philippines the patterns would not have been apparent. There would have been reason to look to other variables as probable causes to explain what happened in that particular camp. Had the analysis focussed on Camp O’Donnell, for instance, the economic processes that occurred there might have been attributed to the impact of the Death March. However, through comparing various camps in the Philippines we see that while O’Donnell may have been extreme, and it is likely that the Death March had an effect, the core elements of the economic activity in that camp was not substantially different to the situation in the others. As the majority of the American POWs experienced neither the Death March nor Camp O’Donnell, it is not plausible to think, as many of the Americans themselves seemed to think, that these were the causes of it all.

Another approach might be to examine the conduct of the officers in any given camp and conclude that they were responsible for establishing the conditions that led to these outcomes in any given camp. Certainly the manner in which officers used their power was an important contributory factor, but it seems unlikely to be the underlying cause. The example of the single commanding officer who tried, unsuccessfully, to establish a regime based on reciprocity is an important counter-example. There is also the problem that in some cases the actions of the officers seemed to be detrimental, but in other cases it was the inaction of officers which seemed to be an important factor. It thus seems more reasonable to conclude that the presence of the discussed patterns in economic activity indicate that the conduct of the officers is not a decisive variable or that there was another deeper cause, and that this was perhaps also the cause for the actions or inaction of the officers.

Polanyi’s method of institutional analysis shifts the focus of analysis from the behaviour of individuals, and on to institutions, because it is only through the observation of the patterns that pertain, that the underlying structures can be deduced. In other words, it is not individual characters or actions that are decisive, but rather it is the structural motivations for economic activity that are important:

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We do not wish to imply, of course, that those supporting patterns are the outcome of some mysterious forces acting outside the range of personal or individual behaviour. We merely insist that if, in any given case, the societal effects of individual behaviour depend on the presence of definite institutional conditions, these latter conditions do not for that reason result from the personal behaviour in question. Superficially, the supporting patterns may sometimes seem to result from the mere cumulation of a corresponding kind of personal behaviour, but the vital element of validation is necessarily contributed by a different type of behaviour.469

This a key point that emerges from the study of these camps. The actions of any individual, or any group of individuals, may be seen as ruthless or selfish, or merely desperate. But when looked at in comparison with the Australians and the British, we can see that the important element of validation for this type of behaviour was present in the American case, and not in the others. As Matthew Watson put it, skilfully drawing out the connectedness between moral, motivational and structural aspects of the term, embeddedness:

Polanyi argues that in a market situation, where prices are interrelated, trying to be helpful to others doesn’t work, and actually ends up doing damage. Giving away or selling goods at below their value will drive others out of business as well as yourself; working harder than your comrades makes their employment conditions worse; refusing to spend on luxuries will push some people out of work, while spending and refusing to save will harm others.

As long as you follow the rules of the market, buying at the lowest and selling at the highest price whatever you happen to be dealing in, you are comparatively safe. The damage you are doing to your fellows in order to serve your own interest is, then, unavoidable…Under such a system, human beings are not allowed to be good, even though they may wish to be so.471

Dale argues that when looking at exchange-integrated, or market, societies Polanyi perceives at a deep motivational level the values of acquisitiveness and self-interest that it sanctions and by which it is underpinned, and they are reprehensible: they atomize society and dissolve its moral fabric, spawning egotism and anomy. To say that the liberal market is ‘embedded’ in the sense of ‘instituted’, then, does not negate its ‘disembeddedness’ at other levels. The term does not denote

469 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 170. 470 Watson (2005), Foundations of International Political Economy, p. 153. 471 Polanyi, unpublished, 'Community and Society', quoted in Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, pp. 10-11.

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the economy’s separation from society but from non-economic institutions, a separation that produces a rift between individual and society and a consequent moral degeneration.472

Caught in such a structure, then, one has no choice but to behave in ways that would normally seem reprehensible. We saw that several of the Americans were shocked by what they were seeing, yet they were unable to do otherwise. Reciprocity and redistribution are never individual actions, they require structures which apparently did not exist in the American camps. When the prisoners finally left the Philippines, things got even worse.

Hellships: Leaving the Philippines An important part of many of the American prisoner of war narratives is the departure from the Philippines to labour elsewhere in the Co-Prosperity Sphere, particularly in Japan. Transportation was by ‘hellship’ — crammed in the cargo hold of ships that were also transporting civilians and troops, gasping for air in the heat of the day and shivering at night, with inadequate food, and more importantly, inadequate water. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the Japanese did not identify these transports as carrying POWs and so many were attacked by the Allies. The risk of being attacked by Allied forces was great. Many were killed outright in torpedo attacks, many drowned in the aftermath, and still others were shot by the Japanese as they finally approached the shore clinging to floating debris. Despite the horrors of the Death March and O’Donnell, more Americans died at sea on hellships. Indeed, of all of the POW deaths of all nationalities in the Pacific, one in three was killed as a result of ‘friendly fire’ at sea.473 Yet so bad were the conditions in the holds of the hellships that some of the Americans were audibly praying for a torpedo strike to end their misery.

The Oryoku Maru is perhaps the most notorious of these ships.474 When survivors of the Oryoku Maru arrived in Japan in January 1945, their emaciated condition and zombie-like demeanour was so appalling that the Japanese camp commandant took an extraordinary step and ordered that they each receive extra food.475 Their stories of survival were shocking even to these hardened prisoners in Japan. One man told of

472 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, pp. 201-202. 473 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 297. 474 For a brief summary of the Oryoku Maru incident see Public Relations Informational Summary No. 510 for the war crimes trial issued by the Legal Section of General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, File No. 014.13, dated 25th of February, 1947. 475 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 310.

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how he drank the blood of the dead, and ate the flesh from their fingers. Another of how he had killed a colonel who had tried to steal his water canteen by bashing his head in with it.476 The Oryoku Maru was a luxury liner before the war. On the 13th of December, 1944, some 1,619 of the remaining able-bodied American POWs from Bilibid, Davao and Cabanatuan477 were loaded into the holds of the ship, about 20 feet below the main deck. On deck were Japanese troops and civilians, whom the prisoners assumed were diplomats and business people being evacuated because the ship’s captain and his crew kept bowing to them as they embarked. The heat in the holds was stifling, as more and more men were crowded inside. The only source of fresh air was from the single hatch and it quickly became hard to breathe. Men began to faint almost immediately. Hold Number 2 of the ship had been used to transport livestock and for that reason there was an air-conditioner in that hold, but the guards refused to turn it on. There was also very little light coming in, even at midday.

Shortly before dark the Japanese lowered a few wooden buckets of rice and seaweed into the holds. The men who had mess kits scooped up the food while those without mess kits tried to take what they could in their hands. Some water was distributed, though it amounted to only about three teaspoons per man. Along with the food, the Japanese also sent down slop buckets — a much needed facility when so many men were suffering with diarrhoea or dysentery. However, as the buckets were passed through the dark hold some of the men decided to trick their neighbours by whispering that the food bucket was the toilet bucket, or vice versa, and thought it hilarious when a hand was dipped into a toilet bucket or the food bucket used as a toilet.478 The Japanese refused to allow the buckets to be brought up to be emptied. The hold was so crowded that it was very difficult to move around without stepping on someone. Well-intentioned people missed the buckets, and soon the hold was filling up with stench of faeces and urine along with the sweat of hundreds of men. In some spaces there were no buckets, and mess kits were used if available. Tempers began to fray and fights broke out. Men began wailing and shouting, begging for water and to be released. The noise angered the guards who threatened to seal the hatch if they didn’t shut up. In hold Number 1 they did not shut up, and the hatch was closed, which led to a chaotic panic as men began to push and hit each other. Someone made it up the ladder and pushed the hatch open, but the guard yelled down that they were disturbing

476 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 310. 477 Only about 500 Americans, considered even by Japanese standards too ill to travel, remained in the Philippines camps after this transport. 478 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 219.

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the Japanese women and that he would order his men to begin shooting into the hold. This brought a shocked lull in the noise.479 In hold number 5 the threat that the hatch would be closed created more animosity between the men. Occasionally a man would wake from unconsciousness and begin to yell or cry out for air or water. Fearing the hatch would be closed someone would call out “Get him! Knife him!”. In the dark the opening of a switch-blade could be heard, a scuffle and then a sharp cry. Another attack could be heard coming from somewhere else. The tension increased, and a haunting fear gripped the deranged masses. Men began to pair off and attack the weak, slashing their wrists to drink the blood.

Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Dudley Henson stumbled to a group of officers begging them help, telling them that men in his bay were planning to kill him. They told him it was nonsense and to return to his bay. The next morning he was dead, his stomach split open. Indeed, that morning fifty corpses were stacked up. One officer remarked that once people around you realised you had passed out, you were gone. 480 On the other hand it was unconsciousness (and friends) that saved the life of Pfc Lee Davis. Davis saw men so thirsty they were trying to lick the sweat off the walls of the hold. One person near him cut the throat of another and held up his canteen to catch the blood and drink it. Davis’ friends later told him that he had gone mad, screaming and howling. Others around him were threatening to kill him, so his friends knocked him unconscious to save his life.481

In some cases catastrophe was averted when someone took charge and managed to talk the men down and restore order. Interestingly, that someone was often an NCO, not an officer. The Oryoko Maru was unusual in that almost two-thirds of the prisoners in the hold were officers. This was a result of the way that the officers had used their position to preserve themselves, by keeping out of work details and avoiding movements to other camps or places where their prospects were unknown, as mentioned previously. The Oryoko Maru was the last transport to leave the Philippines. By this late stage in the war, around 90% of the enlisted men had been shipped off to Japan, but a third of the officers still remained in the Philippines.482 So it was that the cargo held over a thousand officers, more than a quarter of whom were field grade.

479 Lawton (1984), Some Survived, pp. 155-7. 480 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 220. 481 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 350. 482 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 293.

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Their number included the senior officer from Cabanatuan, most of the combat commanders from Bataan and Corregidor, and the medical officers from Bilibid and Cabanatuan. There were also 47 civilians, including the trader Ted Lewin, 16 chaplains, 500 NCOs and enlisted men. To have such an enormous proportion of officers, including a large number of senior regular officers — 92 lieutenant colonels, 5 commanders, 14 lieutenant commanders, 170 majors — was highly unusual.483 And yet it was on this ship that the madness struck soonest in the hold, on the very first night, and went the furthest, turning to murder and general mayhem by the second night.484 There were 1,607 of them at the start of the journey, and less than 400 survived the trip, and only 271 were still alive in August of that year.485

The Oryoku Maru is not the only ship on which Americans behaved like this, though it is perhaps the most well-known. On board the Nagata Maru, when the food was lowered into the hold in big buckets, it was too crowded for the prisoners to be able to move up to collect their rations. The prisoners had to pass their mess kits forward over their heads. Sometimes they came back, sometimes they didn’t. Hunger and thirst took hold. When one man died, two others sucked his blood. This was as early as October, 1942. Sgt. Forrest Knox recounted similar experiences on another ship, though he was a lot more forthcoming than most. 486 He admitted to murdering several men himself, in order to stop them howling, so that the hatch would not be covered. He strangled them with a little towel he had, or bashed them with his canteen if it was full enough. He was twice robbed himself. Once of a Bible, which had only sentimental value to him, but had use value as cigarette paper to others, and once of his precious canteen of water. He later found the canteen and reclaimed it through threats of violence, but he never found the Bible.487

Forrest Knox offers some interesting insights. One is that there were about fifty British prisoners on his ship. They were veterans of the Burma-Thai Railway, and they had been on another ship that had been sunk and joined this ship in the Philippines. When the wailing and howling first began, the British tried to calm the madness by singing to distract the men and change their mindset. It worked for a time. Someone needed to

483 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 293. 484 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 299. 485 Survival rate of less than 17%. Estimates of the total numbers vary by a small amount (n = < 50), but I have used Lawton’s numbers as he includes a full roster of the names and home address of each of the 1,607 in his book: Lawton (1984), Some Survived, pp. 259-92. 486 In Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 338-43. 487 Roscoe Sellers, interview with Gavan Daws, from Daws archival material, USAMHI date?

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take charge and calm the men. Forrest made his way to where the officers were. He found a major and demanded to know what the officers were going to do to restore order and get the hatch re-opened. But he found that the officers were all stoned on the pills that the medics carried called ‘Blue Heaven’488 and staring blankly, completely unresponsive. For Knox it then became a case of kill or be killed. He claimed that there many men who irritated him so much on the voyage that he wanted to kill them, but he claimed that he only ‘executed’ those who were an absolute danger to him.

Historian Gavan Daws asks why it is that even though all of the POW national groups experienced similar conditions on the hellships — including the lack of food and water, the heat and the cold, the overcrowding, and even the torpedo attacks, and those coming from Singapore were on board for longer periods of time — only the Americans became violent. In all groups some men gave up and died, but only the Americans murdered one another. Only the Americans resorted to drinking one another’s blood.489 Daws points to the Australians on board hellships as a counter-example of reaction to the conditions. One ship ,that the men christened Byoki Maru, meaning ‘sick ship’, was a travelling wreck with one of its holds burnt out. The Australians were travelling in the hold for seventy days, fed meagre amounts of rotten rice, and even sailed through a typhoon. The situation would appear to have been just as desperate as the American ships. Yet, rather than becoming violent or individualistic, they organised themselves and worked co-operatively. They shifted positions at set intervals, sang songs and sat in circles to pick the lice off each other. Similarly, when the Rakuyo Maru was sunk by an American submarine with 700 Australians and 600 British prisoners on board, it was the Australians who most sought to preserve the group. The Japanese guards had denied them access to lifeboats, and bludgeoned some and shot others, but many were able to cling on to flotsam. A British survivor reported that after drifting in the water for three days he and the men he was with had almost given up when they sighted a mass of shapes in the distance. As they drew closer they discovered a flotilla of between two and three hundred men, gathered on a huge pontoon of make shift rafts, with a couple of lofty distress signals made of bits of coloured clothing fixed to sticks. As they paddled closer they realised that what the Australians had done was to form a large outer ring linked together, by bits of rope or the tape from life-jackets. Inside that circle were other rafts, not attached but safely harboured. He commented

488 ‘Blue Heavens’ appear to have been a type of barbiturate used an anaesthetic. 489 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 299.

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that the Australians seemed so organised compared to the “disintegrated rabble” that the British had become after a couple of days adrift in the ocean. He commented that: They may have been drifting as aimlessly as we were, but at least they all drifted together…One of them looped us in with a dangling end of rope. “Cheers, mate,” came the friendly voice. “This is no place to be on your lonesome.490

All the ships were clearly dangerous and on all of them the prisoners experienced lack of air, food, water, sanitation and space, plus terror at being blown up by the Allies. There are no proper records on levels of crowding, temperature, food and water to tell if the conditions encountered by the Americans were worse. It does appear though that the Japanese were more willing to allow Americans to suffer and die in the case of a ship sinking. After all, it was American torpedos and bombs that sank the ships in the first place. They tended to shoot at the POWs in the water, or when they washed up on shore. There are accounts where the Japanese stopped shooting when they realised the prisoners were not Americans, so perhaps that is some indication of a difference in attitude toward the prisoners that may have been reflected in the conditions on board. On the whole, however, it would seem that the conditions on board were similar enough to point toward a significant difference in the behaviour, attitudes and organisation of the Americans compared to the British or Australians as being determinant in the difference between a tortuous journey, and nightmare of murder and vampirism. Shortly after the Japanese surrender, when one of the American officers who had survived the hellships was asked about his captors, said: Yes, the Japanese were as bad as you say, but we – the 300 living – we were devils too. If we had not been devils we would not have survived. When you speak of the good and heroic, don’t talk about us. The generous men – the brave men – the unselfish men – are the men we left behind.491

Following the movement of the prisoners, the next chapter looks at the camps in Japan itself. In Japan all three groups — the Americans, Australians and British — met, and lived together under quite different circumstances to those in South-East Asia. This provides an opportunity to directly compare each group in a new situation of captivity.

490 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 298. 491 Quoted in Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 244. Italics added.

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The Greeks and other civilised peoples of antiquity were unfamiliar with the idea of a supply- demand market, especially for food. Such an institution would have horrified them. They would have regarded it as being in the nature of famine, anarchy, or corruption, since it meant to them the breakdown of community.492

Introduction This chapter looks at the camps in Japan itself. The Japanese camps are represented separately from the camps in other countries covered in the previous chapters because members of all three of the national groups were held as prisoners in Japan, so it represents a unique opportunity to directly compare all three groups together in the same location, and to see how they reacted to encountering one another. There was far less contact with civilians, and the camp economies were simpler and more self- contained, which provided greater clarity for comparative analysis. The move to Japan and the establishment of new camp communities also provides the opportunity to see if the patterns that were documented in the previous two chapters were repeated, or if different patterns emerged to challenge the findings, which adds a significant layer to the analysis.

The camps in Japan were also different from those in South-East Asia because the economic conditions in Japan were quite different. The economic conditions were actually worse in Japan than they had been elsewhere. This even more pronounced degree of privation highlighted the differences in the way that the economies of each of the national groups were integrated, and the social contexts in which those economic processes were embedded. Most of the camps in Japan were initially populated by the Americans, who had arrived earlier from the Philippines. This meant that the economic organisation of most of the camps had an American flavour, which was a shock to the

492 Polanyi (1953), letter to Bill Bennett, quoted Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market, p. 137.

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others when they encountered it. Similarly to the camps in South-East Asia, the American-dominated camps in Japan were integrated by exchange and by price- making markets, and this form of economic integration was at odds with the other national groups, demonstrating that while exchange was a common economic process for all three cultural groups, in no other group was it the dominant and integrating factor.

Unlike the camps covered in the previous chapters, the camps in Japan tended to be much smaller, and also tended to have several names, or to change names as they were passed from one administrative branch to another. As a result the historical sources are not nearly so clear as they were in South-East Asia. It is often unclear in which camps events took place, and what the broader conditions were in that setting at that particular time. I’m aware that this can make it unclear at times which camp I am discussing. This is an unfortunate legacy of the lack of clarity in the original sources. It is also, by the way, a reflection of the impact of the economic conditions. In general there is far less primary contemporary material available from American camps, even in the Philippines, than there is from either Australian or British camps. There are very few American diaries or letters, there is little in the way of bureaucratic paperwork, there is virtually nothing of the kind of material cultural that the Australians and British produced when times relative good, such as playbills, original songs, drawings, cartoons, camp newspapers and so on. Additionally, it should be borne in mind that the Americans were the numerically superior group throughout Japan because virtually all of the surviving Americans were eventually shipped there, whereas the British and Australians were distributed far more widely.493 So while this chapter may seem to be disproportionately occupied with the Americans in terms of a three-way comparison, it is actually disproportionate in the other direction in order to draw out the comparative elements. It should therefore be assumed that unless otherwise specified I am writing about Americans.

Effectively there are two strands to the analysis: the first is to explore what happens when the prisoners are moved in terms of establishing themselves in a new context, when they have the opportunity to do things differently; and the second is how the British and Australians reacted to life in camps that were usually dominated by Americans. This provides the opportunity to further test Polanyi’s schema to see how

493 For instance, as detailed in Chapter 3, only around 10% of the Australians in captivity at the end of the war were in Japan, Korea and Manchuria combined. Twice as many remained in remote parts of Burma and Thailand, and even larger groups remained in Singapore and Malaya.

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well it accounts for the prisoners’ economic organisation and activities in a different situation, and what that reveals about the relationship between culture, social structure and economic processes.

Background Japan began shipping prisoners around the Co-Prosperity Sphere to work on various projects to support the war effort from the start. One of the locations where their labour was needed was in Japan, where able-bodied men were desperately needed by industry to replace their lost young men in uniform. Having been at war since 1931, and with the early successes requiring garrisons to be posted across China and South- East Asia, the labour source for Japanese industry was heavily depleted. A Home Ministry conference in 1942 concluded that POW labour would be employed to work in mining, stevedoring, engineering and construction for “national defence”.494 This began very early for some of the Americans captured in the Philippines and later for some of the Australians, British and Dutch, when they had finished working on other projects such as the Burma-Thai Railway. As the war went on, more and more prisoners were shipped to Japan to work in mines and factories, and stevedoring on the docks. It is estimated that at the end of the war 32,418 POWs were being held in some 91 camps in Japan itself, 495 which represents roughly a third of the surviving POWs. They were distributed throughout seven main administrative jurisdictions, each of which had a main camp and subordinate branches. The largest administrative jurisdiction was Fukuoka, on the heavily industrialised island of Kyushu, followed by Tokyo.496

The conditions encountered in the camps inside Japan were different to those overseas in several important ways. The camps in Japan were much smaller than the camps overseas, with an average population of just 356. Some were larger and some were smaller, but none exceeded one thousand prisoners. The prison camps in Japan were also much more like an ordinary prison. Instead of the improvised atap huts and sleeping platforms of the tropics, there were ordinary buildings, with uniform tatami bedding rather than improvised furnishing. The buildings were heavily overcrowded and under-heated in the northern winters, but they were at least real buildings. The

494 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day: Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941 - 1945, p. 207. 495 It is estimated that there were around 160 camps in total, however precision is impossible as camps existed for varying amounts of time, and some had their names changed and changed again Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 360. 496 Ion (2006), 'Much Ado About Too Few': Aspects of the Treatment of Canadian and Commonwealth POWs and Civilian Internees in Metropolitan Japan 1941-1945', pp. 292-317.

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prisoners had access to running water, and there were bathing facilities. For many having their first hot bath in years was a great luxury, even though hundreds shared the filthy water. The prisoners were also issued with new clothes for the first time; numbered cotton prison uniforms, boots and even winter coats.

As had been the case overseas, the various camps differed quite markedly, as did the working conditions. The smaller size of the camps in Japan, and the more conventional prison-like approach to running them on the part of the guards, reduced the level of autonomy that the POWs had in running their own affairs. Their lives in Japan were much more regulated and rule-bound, and the scope for making improvements was quite narrow. As the camps were comparatively small, a lot of power was vested in quite junior Japanese personnel497 with very little central oversight, so individuals greatly influenced the conditions inside the camp. This was highlighted by the changes in policy and conditions that sometimes accompanied changes in personnel, or when a POW moved from one camp to another. The smaller population also impacted the demography of the camps, and the way that the prisoners organised themselves. In some camps there were officer prisoners in charge, but in others NCOs were the most senior in camp. In some of the British camps where the bulk of the population was made up of more or less intact military units, order was generally well established as the NCOs or officers were often able to maintain discipline. In less cohesive, and particularly multinational camps, things could become volatile as hunger increased.498

The prisoners were more widely disbursed, and each group was quite isolated from the others. Rather than the very large base camps accompanied by smaller transient work camps in South-East Asia, the camps in Japan were sited around permanent industrial locations such as mines, factories and shipyards, and though these were clustered together, the population was housed in many smaller camps rather than in a single large camp in each location. There were also notable differences when the responsibility for a given camp’s administration was moved from one ministry to another. Some camps were largely run by the firms for which the prisoners laboured, and this could mean better rations. Others were run by the Army, with the prisoners being sent out as day labourers to different employers depending on demand. This could mean days of no work, days of quite easy work and days of very hard work. But

497 Typically, a sergeant or even a corporal would be in charge of the day-to-day running of a camp, with command held by a lieutenant or second lieutenant Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 254. 498 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p .228.

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at least it was variety. Many of the names of the firms who employed the prisoners are familiar Japanese brands today, such as Mitsubishi, Toshiba, Mitsui and Kawasaki.499

Most of the Australians arrived in Japan between mid 1944 and early 1945.500 One of the most difficult things for them about Japan was the unexpected dissolution of the unit structures that they had maintained throughout their imprisonment — structures which had often commenced at basic training. When they arrived on the wharf they were lined up at the docks and selected by civilian companies, like at a slave market. For many it meant that they were separated from their closest mates for the first time.501 Rather than electing their own smaller groups within the prison, the much more regimented prison life in Japan required them to bunk in numerical order, which meant that they might be further separated from their friends:

You were with fellow POWs, but you hadn’t established any relationship with them. You hadn’t shared experiences over the years.502

This doesn’t appear to have affected the other national groups as much — at least it isn’t remarked upon. This disruption to personal relationships within the Australian ranks brings to light, for the first time, how important these individual connections were as the building blocks of the more amorphous general concept of ‘mates’. The fact that this dissolution of relationships is not remarked upon by other nationalities, seems to imply that the intensity of solidarity was a uniquely Australian phenomenon. The fact that these relationships had not been disrupted before, even though the Australians had moved around a lot before reaching Japan, also suggest that they had previously been able to preserve these relationships when they had some control over their movements. The Australians were a volunteer force, locally recruited. The degree to which these groups had been preserved until this point, is reflected by the reaction of one Australian sailor, Ray Parkin, who was extremely upset that fifty of his mates were replaced by fifty men from another Australian state.503 He was still part of a large group of Australians, but he had no other connection to them. They were not the mates he had been so closely associated with through so many events for these years. The contrast with the Americans, who had their units broken up either during the Death

499 For more detail on the use of POW labour by Japanese corporations see Holmes (2001), Unjust Enrichment. 500 There were about 3,000 Australians in Japan by early 1945: Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 177. 501 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p.181. 502 Testimony of Don Moore, cited in Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p.182. 503 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War: Australians under Nippon, p. 181.

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March at the very beginning of captivity, or during the fighting that preceded it, becomes stark in comparison.

Economic Conditions The economic situation in Japan was dire, and there were not many opportunities to trade with civilians, as the civilians appeared to have little more than the prisoners. Japan was heavily dependent on imports for food. Particularly toward the end of the war, the Allied success in the submarine campaigns was curtailing Japan’s ability to transport food. Additionally, agricultural production had greatly contracted, both domestically and in the source countries for imports, such as Thailand.504 By 1944 it had become routine for urban Japanese to make food-foraging trips to the countryside. These trips became more and more frequent in 1945, as both food stocks and households were hit by bombing campaigns. So much so that it became an important cause of industrial absenteeism.505 These external economic conditions impacted upon the economic conditions of the camps; both in terms of the lack of food available to be added to the ration, and the lack of opportunity to participate in external trading. In this respect the conditions inside the Japanese camps were even worse than they had been at the camps in South-East Asia. Rice was already being substituted with millet and barley in the Japanese civilian rations. The polished rice, which made up the bulk of the prisoners’ rations, was second or third grade, which the Japanese would not eat themselves. It was often heavily contaminated with rocks, dirt, glass, rat dropping, worms and maggots.506 In fact, what is referred to as ‘rice’ was predominantly other things. At some camps the rations were supplemented with the contents of Red Cross packages, which were distributed more frequently in Japan than had been the case elsewhere, although there was a great deal of variability in this. In some camps the prisoners received several issues and in others they received none.

Requests for prisoners, stipulating the type of work and numbers required, were made by firms to the War Ministry, which charged the employer two yen per man per day. The Army paid the working prisoners between 10 and 25 sen per day and kept the

504 For instance, Thailand’s export capacity in rice dropped from 1,100,000 tons in 1943 to just 300,000 tons in 1945. Japan’s fishery yields dropped by 57% between 1939 and 1945. The lack of agricultural labour had a significant impact too. Between February of 1944 and February of 1945 the agricultural population of Japan decreased by nearly 900,000 people. See Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 216. 505 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 220. 506 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 216.

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balance for expenses.507 They continued to pay officers according to their rank, without requiring them to go out to work. What cash prisoners actually received varied from camp to camp, and time to time. In some camps they did receive the cash they were entitled to, in others they had to sign for their money to be paid into an account and deductions made for expenses. In some camps there were canteens at which the POWs could purchase goods. Where there were canteens the range and availability of stock varied greatly from place to place and time to time. At some canteens the range of goods was quite extensive, at others it amounted to little more than tooth powder. On the whole, and particularly in comparison with the larger urban camps of South- East Asia, there was very little available in Japanese camps beyond the basic ration.

Scrounging on the Docks and in the Factories For those working outside the camp, particularly in stevedoring, there were sometimes opportunities to scrounge whatever it was that they were unloading. Some docks were particularly lucrative places to work, with lots of food passing through and fairly lax supervision allowing for a lot of theft of food which could either be consumed immediately or smuggled back into camp for trade. But for those engaged in mining, manufacturing and in shipbuilding there was little in the way of direct opportunities to scrounge.

In South-East Asia the conditions were very different. Prisoners were sometimes being employed in Japanese looting and transporting of the property that was being taken from the newly occupied territories and shipped back to Japan. This often offered them the opportunity to loot for themselves. Where they were involved in other sorts of work, they were out in a tropical environment where they often had the opportunity to scavenge food. They were also frequently able to make contact with civilians, and those were civilians who were living under violent Japanese occupation and therefore had no loyalty to the Japanese though they had reason to fear them. These encounters often afforded opportunity to obtain extra food, whether through donation or exchange. For these reasons, despite the often hard and dangerous nature of the work, getting out of camp was a valuable opportunity.

For the most part, there was a lot less opportunity to obtain goods from outside the camp than there had been overseas. Whereas getting out of the camp on work parties overseas had been a beneficial opportunity, in Japan it was merely a guarantee of hard

507 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 208.

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physical labour in very dangerous conditions, accompanied in the winter by the discomfort of the cold weather. For those not working in a situation that offered possibilities of gaining access to extra food, it was usually better to stay inside the camp if possible. Going out to work did offer the opportunity of interacting with Japanese civilians, and to perhaps engage in exchange with them. However, the dynamic between the prisoners and the Japanese civilians was, of course, quite different to that between the prisoners and civilians in occupied territories. These Western POWs were the enemy that the Japanese had been taught to hate, and as the war went on and the Japanese were increasingly under attack from the Allies, they had more reason to hate them. Sometimes the Japanese civilians displayed enmity, other times they offered kindness and assisted the POWs, sometimes they would trade with the prisoners. However, the opportunities to benefit economically from contact with civilians were much slighter in Japan. Whatever their feelings about trading with prisoners, the civilians often had little more than the prisoners anyway, and sometimes it was suspected that they had even less. Yet, even these limited opportunities to gain goods from outside of the camp altered the range of possible economic activities inside the camp.

Exchange Despite all of this, there was still a great deal of trade and barter taking place among the prisoners in the Japanese camps. Indeed, the limited opportunities for trade outside the camps actually makes clearer the degree to which these camps were predominantly integrated by exchange. American Edward Hale wrote an account of the constant bartering that took place in his time at Zentsuji camp, in a chapter subtitled Bartering for Physical and Mental Survival.508 It is a particularly enlightening account that includes an unusual degree of detail about the processes of exchange in the Japanese camps. Hale maintains that the barter was mostly the benign exchange of goods according to individual preferences, and that such transactions were important for mental stimulation. But the picture he paints is actually one of total commodification, and he also touches on a dark side of profiteering, though he claims this was frowned upon. Some people would trade quality for quantity, a small tasty item for a filling but bland serving of rice, for instance. Those who did not smoke could trade their cigarette ration for food, or for services such as washing clothes or taking a watch shift or a camp job. Very quickly, everything was commodified:

508 Hale (1995), First Captured, Last Freed, pp. 49-59.

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Everything in such a place has its value in proportion to its necessity for living. Most vital, of course, was food which almost never became cheap. Next in value came cigarettes, and third clothing. Soap was generally valuable, as were useful articles such as pencils, notebooks, toothbrushes and so on. These varied according to the regularity of need, the number of times supplies were issued, and their availability on the black market.509

Markets seemed to spring up in virtually all of the camps, regardless of nationality or location. We saw at Changi, for instance, that there was trade in foodstuffs and even services almost immediately. However, while those were markets, they were not price- making markets in Polanyi’s sense. To analyse the economic processes at work, it is necessary to clarify several points, as some of the terms that Polanyi used are also used differently or inexactly in everyday language or even in the language employed by economists.

Levels of Exchange Polanyi defined exchange as “the mutual appropriative movement of goods between hands”.510 All exchange is conducted at rates. But a rate does not necessarily mean a price in the catallactic sense. We tend to think of exchange and price-making market exchange as being the same thing, because this is the view of neoclassical economics, but they are not the same thing in Polanyi’s analytical schema. Polanyi identified three levels of exchange, and these can be identified according to how the rate is determined. Exchange can take place at set rates, indeterminate rates, and bargained rates. It is only in the case of bargained rates that the rates, or prices, are set by the process of exchange itself, rather than by another dominating factor. Set rates are customary, statutory or proclaimed, so they are easily identified. Indeterminate rates are more complicated. They are neither set nor bargained, but are the outcome of various other operations concerned with the movement of goods. In some cases, such as taxation, auctions and lotteries, the rate of exchange must be indeterminate because it cannot be determined at the time of transaction, and only emerges from the course of events. In other cases the rate is deliberately left over because the people engaged in the exchange deem the rate a subordinate matter, such as when friends exchange Christmas gifts or contribute to a picnic. The third level of exchange that Polanyi identified, that is exchange at bargained rates, is where the rate is determined as the result of “higgling-haggling between partners” in price-making markets.

509 Hale (1995), First Captured, Last Freed, p. 53. 510 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 180.

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These distinctions are important for this analysis because the level of exchange, the way that rates are determined, offers insight into the way the economy is integrated. Both set rate exchange and indeterminate rate exchange are compatible with either redistributive or reciprocative forms of integration. For example, indeterminate rates exist in reciprocal arrangements such dowries, but also in redistributive arrangements such as national taxation systems. Exchange at bargained rates, however, is limited to price-making market institutions.511

Core elements of price-making markets are supply crowds and demand crowds. Only if both are present can a market institution exist. This may seem obvious, because the ‘law’ of supply and demand is a core postulate of neoclassical economics. However, Polanyi showed that many transactions take place where there is only a supply crowd, such as when contracts are put out to tender, and where there is only a demand crowd, such as at an auction. This makes it clear that supply and demand, far from being a single force as depicted in neoclassical economics, is in fact two separate groups of persons, who may or may not be present together when exchange processes take place. It is only when there is both a supply crowd desiring to dispose of a resource, and a demand crowd wishing to obtain it, and when both meet that a market institution can exist. Only then can the rate of exchange, or price, be established through bargaining.512 Exchange can take place in markets, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that markets are price-making markets. For instance, prices for many items that were sold in markets were traditionally set by Jewish law.513 In that case the rates were set, not bargained. In modern states minimum wage levels are often set, to the consternation of many economists, who claim that this interferes with the market mechanism. That they do complain about this demonstrates that the price of labour is not necessarily the result of bargaining. To really understand what Polanyi meant by this, it is necessary to grasp his idea of equivalency.

Equivalency The term ‘price’ suggests fluctuation, which may or may not be true, so Polanyi preferred to use ‘equivalencies’. After supply and demand crowds, the next most important element in determining whether exchange is integrating an economy is the element of equivalency, or the rate of exchange. Equivalencies, up to a point,

511 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', pp. 180-1. 512 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', pp. 182-3. 513 For a summary of this see Warhaftig (1987), 'Consumer Protection: Price and Wage Levels'.

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correspond to forms of integration. Where the economy is integrated by exchange, equivalencies are prices, they are determined through bargaining, and they are “the designation of quantitative ratios between goods of different kinds”.514 Under redistributive forms of integration, on the other hand, equivalencies are also common, but they designate “the relationship between goods of different kinds that are acceptable in payment of taxes, rents, dues, fines, or that denote qualifications for a civic status dependent on a property census. At the same time the equivalency sets the ratio at which wages or rations in-kind can be claimed at the beneficiaries choosing.”515 This is important because it allows for flexibility in the system. But it is quite different from the cash nexus. “It is not what should be given for another good, but what can be claimed instead of it.”516 Equivalencies are quite different again where reciprocity is the integrating factor, and equivalencies relate to what is considered adequate for the symmetrically placed party. “Clearly the behavioural context is different from either exchange or redistribution”.517

For example, in a tribal context of an economy integrated by redistribution, the head of a clan might be entitled to a number of chickens on a ceremonial occasion because of his status and tradition. But if there were no chickens available, perhaps he might instead be able to claim a pig or so many fish, but not to claim cloth or gold. This is not because they are of equivalent value, in the sense that each represents, say $100 worth of goods (in a price-making market). By definition prices are unstable anyway, as they are constantly being bargained, and there is no direct comparison. Rather it is a set of equivalencies established by law or decree or tradition. Compare this to a similar situation, but an example of reciprocal integration where one village might traditionally supply another with so much of one type of food, and in return receive so much of another. Say it is so many chickens in return for so much wheat. But it the wheat crop had failed, the process of equivalency is one of determining what quantity of another good, perhaps rice, can be given in exchange instead, and this might be determined by what is considered a ‘fair share’ rather than equivalent market values. In both cases there are economic processes of exchange taking place, and taking place at a rate, but in neither is equivalency the same thing as price.

514 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 183. 515 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 183. 516 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 183, emphasis original. 517 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 183.

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Exchange Integration Hale’s account of the economy at Zentsuji contains various examples that demonstrate that it was in fact integrated by exchange. That is that rates of exchange were determined through bargaining in price-making market institutions, and these linked up to an integrated system. One particularly interesting example is that of currency. At first the officers in his camp received pay and the enlisted men, who were not yet working, did not. The officers had far more money than they could possibly spend at the canteen, and began to employ others as ‘cabin boys’. Currency was circulating, but it soon lost its value. Although there was plenty of yen in the camp, it was not used as the medium of exchange. Without the forced circulation of payment coming in and taxes and expenditure going out, and without a set stock of commodities to stabilise its value, the yen had no value inside the camp. Instead, cigarettes were used as the medium of exchange. There was a regular and reliable supply of cigarettes in the ration, and because smokers would consume so many per day, the value was stabilised. Prices were set in cigarettes. Later, when the cigarette supply became irregular, bowls of rice became the standard value. Prices changed rapidly, and quite dramatically, in response to movement in relative scarcity. For instance, a bar of soap might be worth 50 or 60 cigarettes one day, but if soap were issued the next day the value would drop to just 5 or 10. When cigarettes were plentiful a bowl of rice might sell for 50 cigarettes, but when the tobacco supply dried up its value increased greatly and a bowl of rice might only trade for two or three. These market fluctuations led some people to hoard goods when they were plentiful in order to profiteer when they became scarce — in other words, they were buying cheap when resources were plentiful, holding onto them in anticipation of changing market conditions, and then selling them dear when they became more scarce. Hale claimed that this practice of hoarding to profiteer was frowned upon, but it was not stopped. He presents quite a benign, rather jovial picture, the air constantly full of voices calling out offering to trade. But he also hints at a darker side. There were some men quietly moving around offering a lopsided deal, a “hideous racket” of charging interest on lending food.518 However, this camp was relatively affluent, so the full impact of these ‘sharp practices’, as Veblen called them, was not seen as it was at other camps, and we shall look at some of these later.

There came a period of deprivation when trade died down because there was really nothing to trade except soya beans. It is worth mentioning that the Japanese, and not the Americans, banned the trading of soya beans, and enforced that ban violently,

518 Hale (1995), First Captured, Last Freed, p. 54.

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because they were an essential source of life-saving nutrients. This decline in trade did not last forever. Hale describes how the arrival of hundreds of Red Cross boxes full of various foodstuffs instantly revived trading: Once again the amazing “wheeling and dealing” began. The rise and fall of comparative values of, for example, canned salmon against coffee or beef, would completely defy the imagination of the uninitiated.519

The volatility of equivalencies (or prices) makes it clear that exchange is taking place at bargained prices, and that these are constantly changing in a manner that is rare to see outside of the stock exchange. The fact that these are linked up together, impacting one another, indicates that these are market institutions rather than exchange taking place in redistributive or reciprocal contexts. Everything had a price. Soon even space on the stove, a common, was commodified:

The Japanese very kindly consented to allow us to boil water in our canteens on the stove, and thus even “spots” on the stove became an article of commerce. A “bottle” of hot water would always bring a cigarette, sometimes two, and that was usually the “sale price” of a spot on the stove to heat water.520

This is by no means unique to the camp that Hale described. So extreme was the level of commodification that when Americans wanted to get out of working in the mines by getting into hospital, they would try to get someone to break one of their limbs with a sledgehammer. It was quite a shock for the other nationals to learn that the norm in these Japanese camps was that if they wanted to be injured they had to pay — they paid the mutilator for the service. And it was not cheap, for a man who was desperate enough to do that was in a poor bargaining position. At Omuta the usual price was eight rations of rice and soup for a broken leg, and five rations for an arm.521

Non-Integrative Exchange The events I have related so far took place in camps that were dominated by Americans. There are few examples of camps that were not dominated by Americans. However, a contrast is provided by the approach of the Canadians who dominated at Tokyo Camp 3D, Kawasaki, where conditions were comparatively good. The D in the name of the camp indicates that this camp was under industrial administration, and the prisoners who arrived there in 1943 worked in a nearby shipbuilding yard. Captain Reid was the senior officer in charge of 500 Canadians at the camp, who had been captured

519 Hale (1995), First Captured, Last Freed, p. 120. 520 Hale (1995), First Captured, Last Freed, p. 120. 521 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War, p. 187.

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in Hong Kong. Reid encouraged trading in luxuries at this camp, as he thought it a good way of occupying the mind. He put a board up outside his room with the daily market values of various goods. He didn’t object to people losing everything in the market, because they were small luxuries, such as prunes or chocolate, and in such small quantities that they had no real nutritional value.522 The Canadian trading was limited to such luxuries. Although exchange took place, and was even officially encouraged, it was not the integrating element. Other data reveals that this economy was integrated by redistribution. The prisoner administration operated in a way more familiar to the British and Australian camps — there was a recognised central authority, which collected and redistributed the resources that were needed for livelihood, and the exchange that took place was merely ancillary. When the company allowed Reid to purchase drugs commercially outside the camp, he did so using his own money until it was exhausted, and then by taxing the men’s wages at 5%.523 At one point in 1943, Reid kept back 160 men from work because they were ill. According to usual Japanese procedure, the non-working men were issued only half-rations. In a most un-American move, the Canadians pooled their total ration and went hungry together. As a result, the camp collectively lost 4,000 pounds in August and September, an average of eight pounds (3.6 kg) per man. The explanation of the policy was simple: Better to return 500 sick men home, than 300 healthy and 200 dead.524 This demonstrates a principle that Polanyi claimed was universal to all primitive economies — the survival of the group is too important to allow for exchange in the foodstuffs that are essential to livelihood.

Hard Trading: Rice as a Futures Commodities Market The Canadians determined that trading in luxury goods was benign within an economy in which basic needs of subsistence were met by the administered economy — the process of distribution or redistribution. At most camps there were no such luxury goods available, particularly as time went on and the external economic conditions deteriorated. Most of the time there was only rice, bread, soup and cigarettes. These conditions of scarcity brought out the really hard traders, especially among the Americans. There was very little to trade, but a lot of trading took place. Some people would trade just so that they could get enough food to feel a full belly for once, even knowing that they would have to go without for many days. When the men came in from working in the winter, cold and tired and hungry, they would often be willing to

522 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 256. 523 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 261. 524 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p.260.

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trade their breakfast away the following morning, just to feel some comfort that night. There was also a desperate desire to experience some flavour. Anything that could be added to the rice to add flavour was added. Not necessarily a pleasant flavour, just anything. Toothpowder was common. If a trader could get hold of some salt, he could sell the salt by offering to salt half a ration in return for the other half. The level of commodification was striking to the non-Americans who encountered it. One Australian who was transferred to an American-dominated camp in Japan described the economic life of the camp:

Food buying and selling in this camp was one of the highlights of POW life. It was a practice brought by the Americans from the Philippines. In all our previous camps it had been the practice that when a man was too sick to eat his food, he would give it to one of his friends, who in turn helped when he was too sick to eat. But in Omuta one never gave away food, it was sold.525

But there was no big black market like there had been overseas, so if one man was to get more, it could only be at the direct expense of another. As Gavan Daws described it, In Japan it took smart men to come out ahead in trading, and more and more, it took hard men. Serious trading started with a man so hungry he could not stand it, he had to have more rice. If he had nothing to pay with, and no collateral, he would go to a trader and borrow the rice, and the trader would charge him interest: one rice now for rice and soup later, or one and a half rices, or two rices.

This wasn’t ordinary black market trading, this was trading in commodities futures. And it was predatory lending. There are few accounts from the big traders. One of those is from J.J. Carter,526 an American at Tanagawa and Amori camps. Carter’s testimony is interesting because he sheds light on how one of the big traders viewed the situation, and on his own motivations. Carter said that he was embittered by the way that he had been ripped off by other traders at Cabanatuan in the Philippines. “In Japan I decided to get even...Then it took on its own life”.527 He had started to get involved in trading in the Philippines, but that had been a matter of buying things cheap outside the camp, smuggling them in and selling them dear. In Japan it was different. Although he did do some smuggling, the core of his business was predatory lending:

525 Whitecross (2000), Slaves of the Son of Heaven, pp. 199-200; see also Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War. 526 A pseudonym used by oral historians who interviewed him, Donald Knox and Gavan Daws, because he was ashamed of his actions and did not want to be identified. Carter later became a born-again Christian, regretted his actions and sought to explain them (source: personal correspondence with Gavan Daws). 527 Carter in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 391-2.

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You did business with the weak. One end was the weak guy and the other end was the strong guy, a businessman. A guy who had helped me, named Dyer, and I went into business and this is business I’m talking about. We didn’t call it trading, it was loaning meals for other meals.528

What they were doing was targeting the hungry with an offer to trade immediate food for future food. For instance, a breakfast ration was much smaller than dinner, so he would offer his breakfast in return for the man’s dinner. Or he might offer rice now for rice and soup tomorrow. With more meals coming in than he could eat, he had to convert the food into a store of value that wouldn’t spoil. So he would sell extra food for future cigarette rations. He could sell a single meal for the full cigarette issue of ten cigarettes to a non-smoker. Then he would hold the cigarettes until the smokers had smoked their whole ration, knowing that the predictable future scarcity would inflate their value. Just before the next ration, when everyone had run out of cigarettes, and he had cornered the market, he was able to sell them for a meal each. So a meal that was valued at ten cigarettes a week ago now had a value of just one cigarette.

What you didn’t do is walk up to some guy and say, “I’ll give you one cigarette and you give me one meal.” That’s not the way. It was like the payment plan. You don’t walk up to a car dealer and give him $7,500 and drive the car out. The $7,500 would scare you off. What you look at is only the $200 payment once a month. So that’s the way you traded in camp. Always in the future.529

These were common methods across Japan. Cries would go out ‘Protein for Nicotine’ or ‘Rice now for Rice tomorrow’. The desperation of smokers, who had not only their addiction to sate, but were also willing to trade nourishment for the suppression of appetite that nicotine provides, were the most vulnerable targets, and quite literally traded to death. Two of the traders whom Gavan Daws interviewed had done their market research. They took notice of who got into trouble trading, trading beyond their capacity to pay without starving to death. They calculated that it was one in twenty, and of those at least four out five were smokers.530

Bankruptcy An interesting phenomenon within these hard-trading American camps, was the common emergence of some form of bankruptcy policy. There were slightly different approaches in different camps, but the general idea was that if a man had racked up debts that were beyond his capacity to pay, he would be declared bankrupt, restricted

528 Carter in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 391. 529 Carter in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 392. 530 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 308.

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from trade and go into administration and debt restructuring. His minimum nutritional requirements would be guaranteed, with any excess going to his creditors. Australian Bill Whitecross couldn’t believe it when he first encountered the practice at Omuta:

It amused us at first that these men could be officially declared bankrupt. This method protected other prisoners against an unscrupulous fellow who would contract deals which he had no intention of repaying, and also protected any man who might starve to death in attempting to repay debts which continued to mount because of his uncontrollable desire for more food. If anyone traded with a declared bankrupt, he did so at his own risk. The bankrupts were not allowed to sell any more of their food, but a proportion of their meals, perhaps one meal a day or every second day, would be collected by an appointed ‘receiver’, who would pay one of the bankrupt’s creditors. This was a serious matter, living on only two-thirds of a ration that was already down to starvation size.531

It is not clear from the sources how or when this system of bankruptcy and debt restructuring emerged, but it seems to have emerged independently in many camps, and it was an institution with highly developed, elaborate rules. Bankruptcy was often administered by a priest or by a medical officer. At Omine Machi, the bankruptcies were administered by Sgt. Robert Jones. He would restructure the debt to be repaid in cigarettes only, no food, and only at ten cents in the dollar. Jones supervised the bankrupts eating at a separate table to make sure that they got all their food and weren’t pressured to sneak some away from the table. He carried all their possessions in a musette bag, including their tobacco and soap. They bathed together, with Jones handing them their soap and then collecting back again before they returned to barracks.532 In the parlance of Nagoya camp there were ‘gorgers’ who deferred current rations in order to facilitate greater overall consumption by establishing sufficient capital to loan food at interest, and ‘rabbits’ who mortgaged future rations to increase current consumption. This nomenclature seems to have been unique to Nagoya camp, but the patterns are fairly consistent across almost all of the camps in Japan. ‘Rabbits’ frequently went bankrupt and would starve to death before they repaid their debts. According to Preston Hubbard, many did actually starve to death, and although some of his fellow prisoners favoured that type of absolute market discipline, the severity of bankruptcy caused reformers among the POWs to advocate some kind of social welfare for the rabbits. Consequently, bankruptcy was administered by the ‘Rabbit Commission’, which would act as a receiver and restructure debt, posting notices of

531 Whitecross (2000), Slaves of the Son of Heaven, pp. 199-200. 532 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 393.

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‘Rabbitcy’. Trading with a declared rabbit was prohibited, and if caught the trader would have the goods confiscated.533

On one hand, these bankruptcy procedures might be interpreted as some sort of humanitarian impulse, a limitation on the destructive outcomes of exchange that would be tolerated by the community. But really the point of bankruptcy procedures was to protect future creditors from bad risk by restricting people who were unable to pay their debts from trading and thereby incurring more debt that they could not repay. The trader J.J. Carter didn’t view bankruptcy as a problem. It was just part of doing business.534 But then again, he and all the other traders knew that someone came out behind on every deal, and they had watched the people they traded with trade to death.535 A dead debtor is no more profitable than a bankrupt one.

Corruption Another reflection of the economic inequality that was prevalent in many of the camps in Japan, and the low levels of trust that accompanied it, was the very high level of crime and corruption. The men turned desperately on one another, stealing from each other to trade. As there was no discipline, no effective leadership, it became a simple matter of the violent struggle of the strong against the weak. It may seem like a contradiction that there could be no discipline and corruption co-existing with the elaborate rules of bankruptcy administration. But really this was not the case, as they were both sets of norms that created the conditions for one another.

The bankruptcy system was there to protect traders from dealing with men who were insolvent, and the corruption too was all about the use of power to promote the commercial interests of the comparatively rich and powerful. Within the structure that was dominated by a powerful few, life was more desperate for the others, the ‘have nots,’ and relations between them became more fraught. At Nagoya, Sgt. Ralph Levenberg said that as the hunger got worse “the camaraderie began to break down…Guys began to steal from each other”.536 As the Australian Bill Whitecross reflected, the high crime rates that accompanied the American individualism and inequality contrasted sharply with his experience of Australian camps overseas:

533 Hubbard (1990), Apocalypse Undone, p.193. 534 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 392. 535 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese. Carlton North, Victoria, Australia: Scribe, p. 309. 536 Levengerg in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 423.

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Gone was the comradely spirit which had pervaded River Valley Road Camp [in Thailand]. In that camp it was impossible to lose anything. Lost articles were displayed at the next parade and the owners claimed them. Stealing was unknown. In Japan it was very different. On the first day we were warned not to hang wet clothes on the lines between camps unless someone sat and watched them to prevent them being stolen. In the mess hall, it was not safe to leave a meal on a table while the owner obtained a drink from the barrels a few yards away. To prevent our meal disappearing, we had to leave it in the care of a friend until we returned to the table. The loss of one’s meal was serious enough, but worse still was the loss of the Dixie and spoon, which could not be replaced.537

However, the conditions in the Japanese camps were not just shocking to Australians. An American who had been at two notorious camps in the Philippines, O’Donnell and Cabanatuan, claimed that Niigata in Japan was a much worse place than either of those, because of the even lower levels of trust. We saw how desperate the conditions were there, how solidarity collapsed, and corruption ruled. The Americans there saw O’Donnell as a God forsaken ‘dog-eat-dog’ place. And yet, he stressed, it was comparatively good:

In O’Donnell and Cabanatuan people helped each other. When we got to Japan this changed. Everyone came close to dying, so as Mr. Darwin said, it became survival of the fittest. In my camp the biggest and healthiest looking took the easiest jobs. At the end there was very little decency or human dignity left. Human worth disappeared. We were just animals and that’s all it amounted to.538

Beyond this individual level though, corruption appeared to be a key feature of many of the camps in Japan. In all camps, the distribution of food was of paramount importance, and inequities there could be the obvious sign of deeper corruption. The two basic parts of the ration were steamed ‘rice’ and very thin watery soup. Even though the prisoners usually had uniform bowls in Japan (unlike overseas), a ladle of soup and a ladle of rice, though looking similar, were not necessarily equal. The nutritional value of the soup could be increased by dipping the ladle deeper into the pot, since the few vegetables settled on the bottom. By packing the rice harder, one bowl of rice might contain up to twice as many grains as another. Extra food might be bought with bribery, supplied as part of a wider cronyism, or simply given out of favouritism or friendship. To prevent this happening, the servers were usually changed frequently in most camps.539

537 Whitecross (2000), Slaves of the Son of Heaven, p.181. 538 Wallace in Knox (1981), Death March, p. 420. 539 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, p. 255.

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At Niigata, Pfc. William Wallace claims that corruption was rife, and was evident in several aspects of daily camp life.540 The most obvious was aspect was that the jobs people did were never rotated. The men who had the best jobs, the jobs which offered the opportunity to obtain extra food directly, or else to obtain saleable commodities — like jobs in the kitchen or stevedoring on the docks — kept the same job throughout. As did those with the worst jobs, doing hard and dangerous manual labour such as coal mining, or the slightly better foundry work, both of which offered no opportunity to obtain extra calories, but certainly expended extra calories. It was also painfully clear who was in and out of favour when it came to food distribution. Very obviously and despite public protestations, the men who ladled out the rations did tightly pack some bowls, pushing the rice down hard to cram in double the rations, and lightly filled the bowls of others.

At the multinational Camp Fukuoka 2, the Americans held all the key jobs in the camp. It is not clear why, perhaps because they were there first, or perhaps because the senior officer was American and could appoint all of those below him. In any case, they used the power that came with those positions as profitably as they could by various means: by stealing from the commons, by controlling markets, and by extortion. If a prisoner was too sick to work, but not sick enough for hospital, he could be put on light duties. However at Fukuoka 2 it was not the condition of the prisoner that dictated his treatment. Those who were sick needed to be certified ‘light sick’ by a medic. At Fukuoka 2, the price of that certificate was a payment to the medic of a bowl of rice.541 This would have been an unimaginable state of affairs at an Australian or British camp in South-East Asia, where redistribution to the sick was a common practice, and where an ethic of care pervaded all the dealings with the sick. But there were precedents for this kind of exchange at the American camps in the Philippines where the medics restricted access to drugs and commodified them.

The cooks were using their control over the food ration, which they were supposed to redistribute, for profit by embezzling large portions of it to either consume or exchange. This, of course, led to desperation, and some of the men stole from the stores. They were really accessing what they should have had access to, but the cooks were determined to protect their business. They took an extraordinary step of informing the Japanese. This is something that was never done, even when there were legitimate

540 Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 420-421. 541 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War, p. 185.

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cases, because the Japanese punishment was always extremely harsh, and often fatal. To report a prisoner to the Japanese was therefore tantamount to killing him. When the cooks caught a small group stealing a can of salmon from a storeroom they were reported to the Japanese. Their punishment was to be tied to a post, beaten and whipped, and deprived of food and water several days. They would have died there but for the intervention of the Japanese commander’s interpreter who persuaded the commander to release them. The physical condition of these men was so poor that the Japanese commander ordered that they be taken to the kitchen and given a double ration. The cooks took the opportunity to embezzle the extra ration, and gave them just one.542

There was no solidarity among the Americans in Japan, or even pity for the most unfortunate. When one guy realised that he was in too much debt to traders he decided to hang himself in the toilet. After stepping off the seat he changed his mind, but couldn’t free himself. Another American opened the door and saw him hanging gasping for breath and trying to free himself. He muttered ‘good riddance’ and went to the next stall. This is simply unimaginable in either the British or Australian cases. It was a Japanese guard who found him in time, had more sympathy and cut him down and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.543 One American wrote in his diary:

If I leave this prison camp with any illusion of man’s kindness to fellow man, or belief in the Golden Rule as a standard rather than hackneyed sentimentalism, I pray someone boots my can up to my shoulders. It’s dog eat dog and the only consideration shown your friends is you don’t hook them. And keep your fingers crossed they reciprocate.544

Camp 17 in Omuta545 was the probably worst camp in Japan. The work in the Mitsui mines and factories was hard and dangerous, but that did not set it apart from the other camps. Rather, it was the internal camp organisation of the prisoners themselves, characterised as it was by the most extreme cronyism and corruption, that made it the worst camp in Japan for all but a few. Camp 17 was an American camp, par excellence, although there were Australian, Dutch and British prisoners there too. Geoffrey Adams wrote a scathing memoir of his time there. A British survivor of the Burma-Thai Railway, he was shocked by what he encountered at Camp 17. The camp was well-established when his group arrived. The cultural clash between them and the

542 Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 428-429. 543 Adams (1973), No Time for Geishas, p. 170. 544 Hitchcock, cited in Urwin (2004), ‘Preface’, p. xxi. 545 The camp was located in Omuta, which was in the Fukuoka prefecture and administrative jurisdiction of the island of Kyushu, and hence referred to either as Omuta 17 or Fukuoka 17.

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Americans they were joining was evident from the first, when on arrival some fit, well- nourished American cooks brought in some freshly baked buns. When the chief cook offered the food first to the officers, the British officers told them to feed the troops first. The cooks looked astonished, and said “You’ll soon change here, gentlemen”.546 They soon discovered that these cooks were part of a mafia-like regime that ruled the camp. One of the things that they noticed immediately was the physical differences between the prisoners. All of the officers looked well fed and prosperous, with the exception of the senior officer, Captain Tisdale. The cooks and several NCOs were also much healthier looking. And they were also immaculately dressed. It was soon made clear that the camp was run by a gang who called themselves ‘the Democrats’. They ate well and they did not work outside. The Republicans did not eat, and they did work outside. The camp was being run by organised criminals who controlled access to resources and who went to work, and used their power to profit by exchanging these things.

Captain Tisdale, although the titular head, was a Republican, and therefore had no real power. The Democrats controlled everything in camp, with the support of equally corrupt guards. They controlled the kitchens and reduced the ration, keeping the excess for sale. They ran a loan-sharking operation. They controlled the issuing of the cigarette ration and embezzled about 30% of the ration, which they kept or sold on. The corruption was absolutely blatant, and the signs of resultant inequality were startling. The Master-Sergeant was a chain-smoker, which was impossible on the ration of one cigarette per day. While most of the prisoners were malnourished, the Democrats looked healthy, and even employed some of the other men as prostitutes — having any sex-drive was unknown in the Japanese camps and a clear sign of significantly better nutrition.547 The British tried to fight the corruption of the Democrats but they got nowhere because of the complicity of the Japanese guards.

Comparisons The camps in Japan add an extra dimension to the comparison of the three national groups. It was the only time that all three were present in the same place, making direct comparison possible, and it was the only time that all three encountered one another. Furthermore, the conditions in Japan were different enough, and the original groups sufficiently disbanded, for it to be seen as new beginning. This allows us to see

546 Adams (1973), No Time for Geishas, pp. 140-144. 547 Adams (1973), No Time for Geishas. pp 140 - 63.

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how the prisoners responded to new situations. The fascinating thing is that they more or less replicated the institutionalised behaviour displayed overseas.

As has already been stated, the camps in Japan were probably the worst of all. The primary cause was the absolute deprivation that resulted from having to rely almost entirely on the inadequate rations provided, without access to the external black markets that had subsidised the prisoners overseas. However, the conditions were made far worse by the way that the prisoners dealt with the conditions, and particularly by the fact that the camps were dominated by Americans and the American way. And this is made so much more stark by the multi-national demography of the camps in Japan. Historian of the Australian POWs, Hank Nelson wrote:

In Japan the different national groups often lived close together, and the differences in this behaviour were significant. The trading of the Americans was almost a parody of a free capitalist economy. And in their reminiscences Americans are likely to recall prisoner life as competitive with survival going to the fittest. Australians, however they behaved, are more inclined to talk about people sharing and surviving as groups.548

Gavan Daws, historian of the American prisoners, is more forthright in his appraisal of the stark differences in the economic ethic of the different national groups:

When POWs of other nationalities came to Japan and ran up against these hard American rice traders, they were staggered. The Dutch were supposed to be a nation of traders, but they would have nothing to do with trading to death. The Australians were horrified. They had seen nothing like it in their Southeast Asian camps and when they first laid eyes on it in Japan they could not believe what they were seeing. Charging interest on rice – it was simply beyond their tribal comprehension. Australians would cheat and lie and steal without blinking an eye, at least outside their own tribe; they were famous for it…But Australians could not imagine doing men to death by charging interest on something as basic to life as rice. That was bloodsucking; it was murder. Within little tribes of Australian enlisted men, rice went back and forth all the time, but this was not trading in commodities futures, it was sharing, it was Australian tribalism. And the British – even if they were called a nation of shopkeepers they stuck to moral principles.549

The difference in the leadership of the American and British officers was quite clear. As much as the British may have been willing to enjoy the privileges of rank at the expense of their men at Changi and on the Railway there were limits, and the corruption and predatory behaviour of the Americans were beyond the pale. At Hoten, the American officers took advantage of the fact that they were left alone in the camp while the enlisted men were out working. According to Private Lewis Elliot, when a large contingent of officers arrived the enlisted men had to leave some of their number

548 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War, p. 185. 549 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 309.

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behind to guard their property from the officers who were stealing it. According to Pfc. Robert Brown, when the officers began to work inside the camp they stole the food that was meant to be the meagre ration for the men out working. It became so bad that the Japanese had to remove the officers, at the request of their own men.550 The Americans also noticed the difference when they compared the conduct of their own officers with the way that the British officers attempted to intercede when their men were being beaten by guards: I never once saw one of my American officers try to defend anybody. Maybe they thought they didn’t have a chance. I saw the British officer go over to the Japs and raise hell with them. He got knocked on his butt, but got up and started all over again.551 This comment highlights the differences between the British officers’ sense of entitlement, which was accompanied by a sense of duty, of noblesse oblige, and the American officers who seemed to see their privilege as means to profit, unencumbered by duty. However, there were also deeper cultural roots to their actions. The big trader J.J. Carter reflected on the American-ness of the trading:

It is unrealistic to think that the American camp commanders could have stopped the trading. I think the officers accepted that this enterprise system was part of the American way of life.552 Carter added, though, that the officers were also reliant on the trading system if they were to obtain any goods, especially as they were not going outside to work:

Let me put it this way. I was in six camps and I was never in a well-run one. I doubt they existed. I mean, how were our officers going to lead and what were they going to lead with? The Japs owned and operated everything. These officers, I don’t care what rank they carried, were trying to live, too.553 Here Carter is acknowledging the embeddedness of the actions of the officers in institutions, but at the same time seems to take these institutions for granted, as natural and unchangeable. Yet, when Carter came into a camp of British in northern Honshu and tried to establish the kind of rice trading business that he had operated in five previous camps, the senior British officer gave him a stern talking to, saying “See here, trading is not tolerated in this place”. The trader laughed, but he was never able to make any headway with the British.554 The probable reason that he was not able to re-establish his business in a different cultural setting is just that, the cultural norms there were different. He was now in an economy that was not integrated by exchange, and his individual efforts could not change the structure.

550 In Knox (1981), Death March, p. 395. 551 Brown in Knox (1981), Death March, pp. 407-8. 552 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 394. 553 Knox (1981), Death March, p. 394. 554 Daws (2008), Prisoners of the Japanese, p. 309, and Knox (1981), Death March, p. 415.

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As mentioned in the previous chapter, Polanyi argued that personal behaviour in the economic sphere fails to have expected results when it takes place in an unsuitable structural context. Polanyi asserted that “since trading behaviour is never indifferent behaviour” it is not “tolerated outside of the approved channels”. Random acts of barter, he claimed, provoke “a violent emotional reaction…as against acts of indecency.” 555 It is interesting that Polanyi should identify the emotional reaction to such acts when they occur outside of an exchange-integration culture, a moral repugnance really. This does seem to be the way that other nationals viewed the American ways in the camps. And this is not without precedence. Herbert Gutman has shown how wave after wave of migrants to the USA reacted the same way. Eastern European Jews, for example, were prone to rioting in New York to demonstrate against profiteering and to demand that the rabbi set prices for meat instead of being forced to pay what they perceived to be immorally fluctuating prices.556

The correlation between national culture and economic system is not always so direct. At Oeyama the prisoners worked in a nearby nickel mine and refinery. The racketeering and theft became such a serious problem that in May of 1944, the Japanese removed those in charge and appointed a warrant officer as Camp Sergeant Major and gave several NCOs extra disciplinary powers. This group of British and Canadian NCOs came to be known as the ‘The Big Four’. It is not clear how and why this corruption developed, but when the Japanese intervened, they did not choose any Americans to run the camp, which may suggest that they thought the Americans were the problem. However, the ‘Big Four’ themselves were just as corrupt as any of the Americans and they began a corrupt reign of terror for which they were later court- martialled. They adopted the Japanese system of withholding food from those who did not work. They embezzled Red Cross packages, and took control of the hospital, despite protestations from the medical officer. In early 1945 a group of relatively healthy Americans arrived and began to use their physical strength to intimidate the Big Four and soon established a racketeering gang using the usual trading practices and predatory lending that soon saw a lot of the prisoners in debt and missing meals. Within a year there were three changes of regime, and yet the corruption and profiteering continued, so it would seem likely that the structure that allowed this was an economy integrated by exchange. 557 This would seem to support Polanyi’s

555 Polanyi (1959), 'Anthropology and Economic Theory', p. 170. 556 Gutman (1977) ‘Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America, 1815-19191’, pp. 61-63; Hyman (1980) ‘Immigrant Women and Consumer Protest’, pp.91-105. 557 Roland (2001), Long Night's Journey into Day, pp. 227-230. 199 Chapter 6 Rice Now for Rice and Soup Tomorrow: Hard Trading in Japan

assertion that the integration of the economy rests on particular structural supports, and the aggregation of individual behaviours do not produce structures, which ‘spring from the societal sphere’, by which he means the cultural apparatus that supports and validates the institutionalisation of some processes and not others.

Things did eventually change at Oeyama. When a group of Australians and British arrived in April they found it a terribly depressing place. Their officers took control of the camp, cancelled all debts and ordered that the debtors eat under supervision to protect them from the racketeers. Trading meant that a few ate well, but most were not getting sufficient food to survive. They forbad trading altogether, but with only limited success. It is not clear why change was possible. It could be that the Australian and British officers simply pulled rank, but it seems more likely that their arrival coincided with a cultural and demographic change within the camp, as more new Australian and British POWs arrived who were not acculturated to the American norms in the camps in Japan and they reproduced their own ‘native’ cultural norms. Oeyama is not the only example of this. When the Australian other ranks got the chance to revert to their communitarian ways, they took it. For instance, Australian Don Moore recalled that at Fukuoka 17 where commodification and trade was king, the Australians had joined the system. But later he was transferred to another camp, with more Australians, where he reunited with his mates: Then one day one fellow said, ‘Look, I can’t have my rice, who wants to trade it?’ ‘Give the bloody thing away’. ‘What?’ ‘Give the thing away. Don’t start that bloody racket again. We’ll turn this into an Australian camp.’ And from then on everything was pooled. The attitude was quite different.558

So far these examples from POW life in Japan seem to suggest that the pattern was a kind of ethnic preference for one’s own cultural norms. Some camps in Japan were established by other national groups, but in the majority of cases the Americans outnumbered the other nationalities, and they had also arrived earlier so they established the norms within camps and obtained positions of power, hence American cultural norms tended to dominate. The other nationals who found themselves in these camps had to conform to the dominant culture, and therefore helped to reproduce its structure. Yet, when they got the opportunity, the British, Australian (and Canadian) prisoners tended to institute their own familiar processes.

Preston Hubbard offers an interesting counter example. He was an American at a camp in Nagoya, which was administered by the British. He reflected that this camp

558 Nelson (1985), Prisoners of War, p.185.

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was run more efficiently and more equitably than the American camps in the Philippines had been, because of the “virtual absence of corruption”. Prior to the British take-over of the camp, there had been constant fights because of the inequity of food distribution. Once the British took over, they ran the central kitchens without American participation or intervention, and distributed the food equitably. So much so that the Americans came to consider the British in the camp as more trustworthy than their American ‘buddies’.559

Had the matter been put to a vote most American prisoners undoubtedly would have chosen to continue with British administration of the kitchen. Americans at Nagoya came to feel that the sissy- accented British and the foul-mouthed Aussies, were innately fair.560

In this rare example Hubbard and the other Americans who experienced living in a new culture actually preferred to be in a system that was integrated by redistribution rather than exchange. However, we have seen that more generally in Japan members of each national group preferred to recreate the patterns that they had created in Southeast Asia. From the point of view of Polanyian institutional analysis, the camps in Japan represent an interesting site for comparison. Moving to Japan and the breaking up of existing groups may have represented an opportunity to do things differently. Yet what happened was actually a repeat of the events in South-East Asia. To the degree that they were able to do so in the new surroundings, each group re-established the patterns that they had favoured previously. Each group brought with them to Japan their own norms. The confrontation with the other, as Nelson noted, led the prisoners to reflect on their own ways, to notice the taken-for-granted. For the most part the Americans were dominant and their institutions supported exchange integration. The other nationalities who were used to living in cultures where reciprocity or redistribution integrated the economy experienced what Polanyi predicted, a “violent emotional reaction” to exchange integration, and they also changed it when they had the opportunity. The counter-examples, of the Australians who adapted to the system at Fukuoka, the Americans who preferred redistributive processes and the corrupt British and Canadians who ran the camp integrated by exchange only serve to highlight Polanyi’s point that each of these patterns of integration assumes definite institutional supports. They are not merely aggregates of individual behaviour at a personal level, as neoclassical economics assumes, as these do not produce structures. Instead, as Polanyi argues, the supporting structures — their basic organisation and their

559 Hubbard (1990), Apocalypse Undone, p.176. 560 Hubbard (1990), Apocalypse Undone, p.176.

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validation — “spring from the societal sphere”. He used redistribution as the first, clearest example, as it is plain that the movement to the centre and back out simply cannot take place without an established centre:

Redistribution is not an individual pattern of behaviour at all; and even where started on a small scale, it would depend upon the prior existence of a recognized centre. With reciprocity and exchange, the position is essentially the same. They certainly also denote definite kinds of personal attitudes and actions, those of mutuality and barter; but diffuse individual acts of mutuality or barter lack the essentials of effectiveness and continuity on the societal plane. Neither reciprocity nor exchange is possible on that plane without the prior existence of a structure pattern which neither is nor can be the result of individual actions of mutuality or barter. As to reciprocity, it involves the presence of two or more symmetrically placed groups whose members can behave similarly toward one another in economic matters. Since symmetry is not restricted to duality, the reciprocating groups, as such, need in no way result from attitudes of mutuality. As to exchange, random actions of barter between individuals, if they occur at all, are incapable of producing the integrating element of price. Here, as with reciprocity, the validating and organizing factor springs not from the individual but from collective actions of persons in structured situations.561

So with this in mind it seems clear that the POWs were basing their actions on existing social structures. Polanyi did note that the structures influence personal attitudes. For instance, Polanyi noted that hardly anywhere do we find the habit of reciprocal gifts accompanied by hard bargaining practices:

Whatever the reason for the elasticity which gives preference to equity rather than stringency, it clearly tends to discourage the manifestations of economic self-interest in the give-and-take relations of reciprocity.562

The example that Daws gave of the Australians sharing, as quoted above, “rice went back and forth all the time, but this was not trading in commodities futures, it was sharing” illustrates this point. On the other hand, redistribution is “apt to integrate groups at all levels and all degrees of permanence”, and as with reciprocity, the “more closely knit the encompassing unit, the more varied will the subdivisions be in which redistribution can effectively operate”.563 But exchange has rather different effects. In regards to bargaining behaviour, Polanyi’s ‘higgling-haggling’, or exchange at fluctuating prices, each party is trying to get the better of the other, so there is a distinctively antagonistic attitude, which erodes social solidarity. This is clearly in evidence in the American camps in which the economy was integrated by exchange, both in the Philippines and in Japan. Polanyi offers a particularly apt observation on the exchange of food:

561 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 37. 562 Polanyi (1977), The Livelihood of Man, p. 39. 563 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', p. 255.

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No community intent on protecting the fount of solidarity between its members can allow latent hostility to develop around a matter as vital to animal existence, and therefore, capable of arousing as tense anxieties as food. Hence the universal banning of transactions of a gainful nature in regard to food and foodstuffs in primitive and archaic society. The very widely spread ban on higgling-haggling over victuals automatically removes price-making markets from the realm of early institutions.564

Once again this point is amply demonstrated by the American POWs. Solidarity broke down completely, and dog-eat-dog individualism prevailed: The market acts like an invisible boundary isolating all individuals in their day-to-day activities, as producers and consumers. They produce for the market, they are supplied from the market. Beyond it they cannot reach, however eagerly they may wish to serve their fellows. Any attempt to be helpful on their part is instantly frustrated by the market mechanism.565

While Polanyi can help us to understand, from a strong structural position, how difficult it is to change an economic system, because fundamental changes to social structure is required, and therefore emphasises social reproduction, his insights stop short of explaining the genesis of these patterns. We can see that the prisoners in Japan tended to reproduce processes and structure that they had done previously, but the question remains: why is it that the POWs established the particular societies that they did? It is an important question, but one that cannot be fully addressed in this dissertation. However, there are some ideas that are worth considering. The POWs did not recreate their home societies. Instead they appear to have highly selectively, perhaps exaggeratedly, emphasised some particular cultural traits. It may be that, given the dire privation they experienced, it was those traits most closely associated with the core economic processes of securing livelihood that became so heavily emphasised.

For instance, as illustrated in figure 4, when it came to army pay the Australians were used to a much more equal scale than were the British; and Americans were used not only to considerably higher incomes than either group, but also to significant inequality.

564 Polanyi (1957), 'The Economy as Instituted Process', p. 255. 565 Polanyi, unpublished, 'Community and Society', quoted in Dale (2010).

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Figure 4. Monthly pay rates for armies of United States, Great Britain and Australia in 1940 566 Source: Ross (1985) The Myth of the Digger. It is difficult to assess the comparative purchasing power, and there is no indication of allowances, perks and so on that complicate the matter, but what is particularly interesting is stark differences between each group in the steepness of the gradient from lowest to highest paid. At the bottom of the scale, the British private was by far the lowest paid, and the American private significantly wealthier. However, from the lowest to the highest rank the Americans have a fairly uniform swing upwards, whereas the British pay rates reveal a sudden leap at field rank, and then a massive increase at the highest levels. The Australians, on the other hand, have a much flatter gradient. Australians were paid better than the British at every rank below field rank, then substantially less at higher ranks, with the very highest ranks earning less than half of their British or American counterparts. So, while the Australian Army pay rates create a relatively low level of stratification, and the American rates produce a very high level of inequality, the British system creates a sort of staggered system of stratification with three different groups: the privates, NCOs and arguably even junior officers at the bottom, then a middle class of those at field rank, with a wildly disproportionately paid elite at the top of the scale. This does reflect, to some degree, the conditions that the

566 Unfortunately Ross does not provide the units used on the y axis, nor sources for the data. However, it is relative rather absolute values that are of interest here.

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prisoners reproduced for themselves during captivity, and these Army pay rates are themselves probably somewhat representative of the stratification in civilian life. As POWs their pay rates of each national group were equalised (according to rank) of course, but it is interesting that while the Americans took what they were given, the Australians and the British implemented redistribution schemes that somewhat mirrored their normal level of inequality, with the Australian officers donating a lot of their pay to other ranks to reduce stratification, and the British officers donating a little.

We saw too that the American POWs were unique in the level of interpersonal violence, particularly homicide. This too reflected civilian norms. The Americans came from a more violent society than did the other nationals. Prior to the outbreak of war, the homicide rate in the USA was five times greater than that in Australia, and twenty times that of Britain.567 Gurr has traced and compared rates of violent crime from the Middle Ages to the 1970s. His work shows that there has been a steady decline in homicide and assaults over that time in Europe. In colonial Australia the rates of homicide and assault were extremely high, much higher than they had ever been in England, but declined sharply in the mid-nineteenth century, following the end of convict transportation, and continued to fall. The homicide rate in the United States in the 1930s, even though it was much lower than it had been in the previous decade, was higher than it had been in England at any time since the early seventeenth century. Compared to the decades that followed, the American POWs came from a strikingly more violent society, with homicide rates that were higher than they would be again until the 1970s. 568 Indeed, the 1932 United States Census Bureau commented that: In brief, human life was never as cheap and insecure in the United States as it is at the present time and murder is decidedly more common in this country than in any other country of the world which makes a claim to being civilized.569

Perhaps this difference in homicide can also be attributed to inequality, as the most well-established environmental determinant of interpersonal violence is income inequality.570 On the other hand, Australia’s murder rate was higher than Britain’s

567 In 1935 the rates were 8.3 per 100,000 in the USA compared to 0.4 in England and Wales, and 0.45 in Scotland (Whitfield 1937: 984). In Australia it was 1.06 per 100, 000 (Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics Yearbook 1938: 417). These relative proportions are fairly stable for the period. Homicide rates were very much higher in the United States during the 1920s, but dropped and remained stable following the end of prohibition in 1933 (Gurr 1981: 338). 568 See Gurr 1981. For data on colonial Australia see p.326, for data on historical trends in the USA from 1850 to 1980 see graphs on pp. 325 -326; and for data on the historical trends in England see p.313. 569 Quoted in F.L. Hoffman. ‘The Homicide Record for 1932’, 570 Wilkinson (2004) ‘Why is Violence More Common Where Inequality is Greater?’, p.1.

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despite lower inequality. Perhaps it is the extreme level of market-dependence that triggered or at least influenced the level of violence among the Americans, both in the camps and at home. It certainly appears to have been psychologically damaging. An American psychiatric study of thirty-five former POWs of the Japanese carried out in the year immediately after repatriation found an extraordinarily high level of psychopathy among the subjects. They found that there were two personality types predominate among the survivors: personalities of the “highest order of adjustment” and psychopaths, but more the former than the latter. The authors suggested that, rather than being the result of their experiences, the level of psychopathy could mean that psychopathic characteristics were an aid to survival.

These individuals were emotionally blunted and lacked the restraints of conscience. Therefore, they were able to seize every opportunity to satisfy their own personal needs without consideration for the group as a whole.571

The authors found that although a few of their subjects had helped their comrades, “there was, in general, a lowering of moral standards. Food was often obtained by devious means at the expense of other prisoners.”572

The authors do not report whether personality type was correlated with nationality, but they do report that in their sample of thirty-five POWs, one of whom was Dutch, six were British and the rest American, that the Americans stood out in expressing resentment towards their own countrymen, rather than the Japanese.573 Rather than accepting that there may have differences in the experiences of different national groups, the authors assume that this is a universally experienced displaced resentment, “directed toward their own superiors and associates where it could be more safely lodged” rather than with the Japanese, but that the American cultural tendency to “speak their mind” is the reason that Americans alone report such feelings.574 Though Wolf & Ripley’s sample was very small, a 1954 study of 3,654 American former POWs also found very high levels of psychotic and psychoneurotic diagnoses among men who had been POWs in the Pacific, but not among those held in Europe.575 Cause and effect are difficult to identify, but it certainly seems that despite the subsequent development of understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder and

571 Wolf & Ripley (1947): 192 572 Wolf & Ripley (1947): 186 573 Wolf & Ripley 1947: 186 574 Wolf & Ripley 1947: 186 575 Reported in Kluznik et al (1986) Forty-Year Follow-Up of United States Prisoners of War.

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other developments in psychiatry, there remains a very high level of psychopathology observed among the American veterans of the camps and not the other nationalities.576

At the level of culture, Lipset’s (1963) comparative analysis of the value patterns of these three societies (and Canada) provides an interesting, and deeper, analysis of the causes for the differences between them. Using an adapted Parsonian scale, Lipset ranks the relative rankings of the three countries as depicted in Table 4 below.

Table 4. Relative rankings of three English-speaking countries according to certain pattern variables. Great USA Australia Britain Elitism – Equalitarianism 3 4 1 Ascription – Achievement 4 2.5 1 Particularism – Universalism 4 2 1 Diffuseness – Specificity 4 2.5 1 Note: The ranking, on a scale of one to four, is given according to the first term in the polarity. For example, in the first polarity, 1 represents the most elitist and 4 the most equalitarian. Source: Lipset (1963) ‘The Value Patterns of Democracy’, p.521.

Lipset argues that the observation of a traveller in 1884 still applies at the time of his writing. “In England the average man feels he is inferior, in America he feels superior, in Australia he feels equal”.577 Whereas the British are ranked as the most elitist and the Australians as the most ‘equalitarian’ in his ranking, which fits with the findings of the present study, Lipset claims that Americans are very close to the Australians on that score. However, what is particularly interesting is the impact of the combinations of values that Lipset identifies. The American and Australian sense of ‘equalitarianism’ are tempered by higher achievement orientation for the Americans, and a higher particularism orientation on behalf of the Australians, which translates to a different interpretation of equality: the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome (or status). Australia differs from the USA, he argues, “in the extent to which its social structure is tied to strong particularistic sentiments”, by which he means ‘mateship’. These particularistic values have “prescribed class, economic, and political organization”.578 Lipset draws on Taft and Walker’s definition of mateship as “the

576 See Dent (1987) ‘"Precursors of Depression in World War II Veterans 40 Years after the War”; Klonoff, et al. (1976), "The Neuropsychological, Psychiatric, and Physical Effects of Prolonged and Severe Stress”; Robson et al. (2009) "Consequences of Captivity: Health Effects of Far East Imprisonment in World War II."; Tennant et al (1986) "Clinical Psychiatric Illness in Prisoners of War of the Japanese”; Tennant et al (1986) "Australian Prisoners of War of the Japanese: Post-War Psychiatric Hospitalisation and Psychological Morbidity." 577 Quoted in Lipset (1963) ‘The Value Patterns of Democracy’, p.522. 578 Lipset (1963) ‘The Value Patterns of Democracy’, p.522.

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uncritical acceptance of reciprocal obligations to provide companionship and material or ego support as required.”579 In the same piece, Taft and Walker also make another relevant observation when they argue that there is an ambivalence in Australian values – “a passive dependence on authority combined with a contemptuous and even aggressive attitude towards it.” By reliance on authority they are referring to the active participation of government in economic activity, particularly through the provision of public goods and the repression of private industry.580 This is a fairly good summary of the attitude of the Australian POWs: they were not subservient (or obedient) towards their officers, but they were happy for them (and expected them) to administer the economy much like the welfare state. In between the two extremes of the Americans and the Australians in the POW camps were the British, who appear to be much further away from the other two on Lipset’s scale. However, Lipset argues that there is another layer of values that interact to produce more interesting combinations. The British are the most particularistic, but an emphasis on particularism can also be linked to a collectivist orientation, such as is the case with noblesse oblige. It is this, he argues, which makes Britain more like Australia (and unlike the USA and Canada) in accepting welfare state programs, which are likely to be resisted by Americans because of their emphasis on self-orientation.581

It is interesting to note how closely the social organisation of each of these national groups in the camps resembles Lipset’s assessment of the civilian societies twenty years later. But where do these patterns come from? Lipset argues that history is important in understanding this, and he traces the relevant key themes of the accommodating nature of the British elite which prevented revolution and resentment on the part of the lower classes, and different drivers of settlement and contrasting frontier experiences of the new nations of the US and Australia. These big-picture assertions of causation are difficult things to prove and there are always revisionist histories to attack the fundamental tenets. However, whether based on reality on myth, I do think that such ideas can influence future action. Lipset argues that events structure institutionalised arrangements (values) and predispositions and these in turn determine later events. As such, values themselves become significant determinants of the direction which changes in a society might take.582

579 Taft & Walker (1958) ‘Australia’, p. 144-145. 580 Taft & Walker (1958) ‘Australia’, p. 146. 581 Lipset (1963) ‘The Value Patterns of Democracy’, p.530. 582 Lipset (1963) ‘The Value Patterns of Democracy’, p.531.

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There are similarities here between Lipset’s arguments and Polanyi’s with contemporary theorists such as Bourdieu and Giddens. There seems to be a process of reproduction, such as structuration or habitus, in which people do not slavishly reproduce every aspect of society, but engage in a form of limited improvisation based on their experiences and prevailing social norms.583 To fully formulate this would require another dissertation. However, it does seem that the POWs arrived in their first camps with little more than their cultural schemas, and set about establishing new norms of economic activity, which were neither complete replications of their home societies, nor entirely new, but were rather an improvisation based on particular, and exaggerated, cultural traits.

Conclusion Japan is the only case where all three groups were in the same location and therefore presented the unique opportunity for the direct comparison of all three. It was also an opportunity to see if the prisoners would establish different processes and structures in a new situation. Instead the history of the camps in Japan turned out to be a repeat, more or less, of the events in Southeast Asia. Given the opportunity, for the most part, each national group attempted to institute the processes that they had instituted in the previous contexts of earlier captivity. However, the camps in Japan also revealed that where the dominant group instituted exchange as the integrating process, it was not possible to anything but to join in. As the Americans were the dominant group in Japan, most of the camps conformed to the norms developed in the Philippines, but in the context of smaller and more isolated camps they did so to an even more extreme extent. Even some of the Americans seemed have been shocked by it, but it as if they did not know what to do to change it. Once they had the opportunity to do so, the Australians and British quickly returned to their familiar administered economies based on redistribution and reciprocity. Japan also served to further illustrate the validity of Polanyi’s structuralist approach, and structural bases necessary to integrate economies based on each of the core instituted processes for gaining a livelihood.

583 I am particularly drawn to the reformulation of structuration and habitus in Sewell (1992) ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency and Reproduction’.

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It is a tremendous task to integrate society in a new way. It is the problem of a new civilization.584

The data presented in this dissertation represented a novel way to re-examine aspects of a fundamental question in sociology: what is the relationship between culture and economy? Specifically, I sought to understand why it was that given the same extreme situation the Australian, American and British prisoners of the Japanese organised their economies so very differently, and did so in a regular, patterned manner. What could explain these startling patterns of emergent structural properties under such extreme and unusual conditions?

The first task was to empirically verify the premise of the question. In looking at the broad comparative picture, the findings were fairly clear. There were indeed quite obvious patterns of economic activity. At a more local level there were other possible explanations. However, the value of a comparative analysis was confirmed. When the data was all brought together and compared, what may have explained isolated cases failed to explain the broader patterns. The only satisfying explanation for the production and reproduction of these three formations was the cultural norms that the three groups brought with them into captivity. Culture here is meant in the broadest sense as a way of life, or normative field. Not necessarily just national culture, though the three groups examined are categorised as such. They are also a particular subset of that national culture, but it is evidently culture at work nonetheless.

It is fairly common for veterans to reflect in their memoirs that in the camps they had seen the essential human beings, stripped of the cultural norms that would normally have constrained their actions. For instance, one American wrote that the “veneer of

584 Polanyi (1947), 'On Belief in Economic Determinism', p. 102

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civilization thinly spread to begin with was wiped off like chalk from a slate”.585 Another wrote, Man is an adaptable creature, and a most interesting animal when the veneer rubs off. With the outer coat of civilization gone, he lays open his inner structure.586 Obviously, they do not mean ‘civilization’ in the sociological sense, but rather use the term to refer to cultural norms. Similarly, one British memoirist wrote,

With its societal skin flayed, human nature became visible as never before. Greed, cowardice and vanity, perseverance, altruism and generosity, in brief the wide panoply of virtue and vice, were there to be observed in the open, without pretence, with no place to hide.587 It is indeed the case that this extreme situation does allow us to see more clearly underlying properties, processes and causes. However, what they are missing from their individual perspectives, and what becomes clear from the comparative approach taken in this study, is that what they were seeing was in fact culture, rather than its absence. Civilization and biology are common to all three groups (and all individuals). What these eyewitnesses do not realise is that what they were seeing was not an essential human nature, but cultural relativity, culture as a key ‘variable’.

In looking for a theoretical explanation for the patterned behaviour examined in this study, I found that the individualist approaches, the variations on rational actor models, that dominate both neoclassical economics and much of contemporary economic sociology, could not provide an adequate explanation. The formalist vision of the economy, not only as being something separate from society, but also as limited to exchange, also was not an adequate starting point for analysis of this situation. Returning instead to Karl Polanyi’s work on embeddedness proved to be enlightening. For a long time I resisted it. I found it too structuralist, too deterministic, what Granovetter would call ‘over-socialised’. But the evidence continued to pile up, and there was no other explanation that I could find was satisfactory. Polanyi’s definition of the economy as an institutionalised process of provisioning, allowed for the delimitation of the object of study: namely anything that contributed to the livelihood of the prisoners, whether through the provision of rations, redistribution, production, theft, gift or exchange. By moving to the substantive definition of the economy, the analysis was able to explore the embeddedness of economic processes within social institutions, which might be ordinarily categorised as either ‘economic’ or ‘non-economic’, but which affect the way that a livelihood is gained. Polanyi also provided the typology, or the

585 Weinstein (1948), Barbed-Wire Surgeon. 586 Feuer ed. (1987). Bilibid Diary, p. 44. 587 Stewart (1988), To the River Kwai, pp. 164-5.

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toolbox, for comparative institutional analysis. His work revealed that there are just three main forms of economic process: redistribution, reciprocity, and exchange. Each one of my cases was integrated by a different one of these forms. It is almost too perfect.

I am aware of problems with the analysis though. There were many limitations on what I could achieve empirically, but more important, I think, are the theoretical limitations. The most significant is the inability to explain the genesis of these patterns beyond reference to pre-existing social structures. Some of the criticisms of Polanyi’s work apply to this study too. Notably, Jenkins’ critique that because institutional analysis is “essentially descriptive, the problem of explaining the genesis and the evolution of the ‘embedding institutions’ is not broached directly”.588 Similarly, Godelier’s critique that Polanyi “never seeks to discover the hierarchy of causes that determine the reproduction of the social system”.589 These are problems with Polanyi’s work and they also apply to this study. I did seek to find the causes, but it proved to be beyond the scope of what could be achieved. There are hints, but they are not conclusive. Polanyi argued that the task of the analyst is essentially a categorising imperative to discover the form of integration that is dominant.

Process and institutions together form the economy. Some students stress the material resources and equipment – the ecology and technology – which make up the process; others, like myself, prefer to point to the institutions through which the economy is organized. Again, in inquiring into the institutions one can choose between values and motives on the one hand and physical operations on the other, either of which can be regarded as linking social relations within the process. Perhaps because I am more familiar with the institutional and operational aspect of man’s livelihood, I prefer to deal with the economy primarily as a matter of organization and to define organization in terms of the operations characteristic of the workings of the institutions. I am conscious of the inherent limitations of such a treatment particularly from the point of view of general sociology. For the process is embedded not in “economic” institutions alone – a matter of degree, anyway – but in political and religious ones as well; physical operations do not exhaust the range of relevant human behaviour, either. But it helps roughly to disentangle the economy from other subsystems in society, such as the political and the religious, and thereby make reasonably sure that we know what we mean when we so confidently talk about “the economy”.590

By ‘roughly disentangling’ the economies of the camps, we were able to see that the economies of each national group were instituted by a different one of the processes identified by Polanyi. In each case all three processes were evident, and indeed co-

588 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi, pp. 122-3, quote is from Jenkins (1977): 87-88. 589 Dale (2010), Karl Polanyi, pp. 131; Dale is drawing on Godelier (1981) and (1986). 590 Polanyi (1960), 'On the Comparative Treatment of Economic Institutions'. pp. 329-330.

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present, but it was also clear that a different process was dominant, and that made a huge difference to how the prisoners experienced captivity. The American camps were dominated by exchange processes, the British by redistribution, and the Australian by reciprocity. As Polanyi argued, each of these patterns of economic process rests on a structural base, a pre-existing structural base, and it is that which allows it to be dominant.

In sum, Polanyi’s view of the economy focuses on social reproduction. The basic function of the economic process is to reproduce society, with or without expansion. Power and value, hand in hand, manifest the reality of society and the necessity of reproducing it. The economy does not merely involve production of goods and services; although it does that, its primary significance lies in the reproduction of society. That process involves, in addition to the simple production of material, the reproduction of the species acculturated to the manner of existence…Social reproduction is not merely intergenerational; it is an ongoing process. The perspectives, values, and skills of individuals are continuously evolving. The individual is formed and reformed throughout his or her lifetime.591

However, the situation in the camps was highly unusual. Most empirical economies that could be studied have a long developmental history, and it is very difficult to disentangle its constituent parts, if it is even desirable. The sudden development of these camp economies, which are not mere reproductions of their home economies, is a different matter. When T.H. Marshall was interned with other British civilians at Ruhleben in WWI, he reflected that this experience, which he described as “a real-life experiment” deeply affected his view of the world and awoke in him a sociological curiosity which he was later able to trace through reading his letters home:

As early as 1915 I was surprised ‘how quickly one develops engagements and obligations, just as binding as if they were imposed by the strictest discipline,’ and I watched, and recorded the proliferation of societies which led eventually to a sort of institutional hypertrophy… Equally important was the immersion in a society with no established social barriers and, initially, no privacy. But it was not a classless society, although the principal external indices of class - occupation, property, and wide differences of income - were lacking. For we brought with us the distinctive cultures that these circumstances, combined with family and education, had implanted in us before internment. And these deeply influenced the character and composition of the various societies, though not wholly dominating them.592

Marshall’s sociological eye revealed the deep influence of cultural background on the shaping of a new society behind barbed wire. Similarly, the psychologist and survivor of Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps Bruno Bettelheim claimed that:

591 Stanfield (1980), 'The Institutional Economics of Karl Polanyi', p. 603. 592 Marshall (1973), 'A British Sociological Career', p. 401.

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prisoners did not suddenly begin to behave in the camps altogether differently from the way they had behaved in freedom. The extreme conditions of the camps brought out in often-exaggerated form the values by which the prisoners had lived, but rarely changed them. One was forced to do things one would not normally have done, but internally there were always limitations derived from previous behaviour patterns.593

Both authors claim that what they saw in their camps was not the invention of something entirely new, but rather the improvisation of bits of pre-existing cultural forms in a new context. In Bourdieu’s words, “conditioned and limited spontaneity”.594 Why it was that each of these three national groups of POWs so heavily emphasised one aspect of their culture is an interesting question. Perhaps it suggests that this was the dominant aspect underlying the social structure of their home society. As a form of shorthand, we can say these were status (or class) for the British, egalitarianism for the Australians, and individualism for the Americans. This does not seem too contentious, and probably accords with each nation’s stereotype of themselves. However, I must stress that I concur with Lipset when he states (with an air of exasperation),

In dealing with national characteristics it is important to recognize that comparative evaluations are never absolutes, that they are made in terms of more or less…Comparative judgments affect all generalizations about societies. This is such an obvious, commonsensical truism that it seems almost foolish to annunciate it. 595

So I mean that the Australian social structure was relatively egalitarian, not absolutely so. Specifically with regard to economic activity, the Australian norms emphasised much more than the others, and more than anything else, a preference for roughly equal outcomes, as opposed to the American preference for equal opportunities, And by American individualism, I mean the sort of anti-communitarianism described by Lipset in the previous chapter, which was frequently expressed as a sort of selfishness in economic terms, and a sort of solitary survival in existential terms. By status I mean that the British orientation favoured elitism rather than egalitarianism, ascription rather than achievement, and particularism rather than universalism. This was expressed in the privileges allowed officers, but also in the form of communitarianism that the British followed, shaped as it was by bureaucracy and elite power.

593 Bettelheim (1979), Surviving and Other Essays, p.302. As Fleck and Muller argue, Bettelheim’s observation here stands in complete contradiction to the theory of identification that he was proposing Fleck and Muller (1997), 'Bruno Bettelheim and the Concentration Camps', p.21. 594 Bourdieu (2005), The Social Structures of the Economy, p. 211. 595 Lipset (1996) American Exceptionalism, p. 32.

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The findings also suggest an unfashionably limited capacity for individual agency. Polanyi was explicit on the point that individuals cannot change the system in which they live, and that the forms of integration rest on pre-existing structural bases. However, in the search for a (slightly) more individualistic explanation, none was satisfying. The data also revealed that attempts by individuals, even powerful individuals, to change the system were unsuccessful.

Polanyi’s characterisation of the social environment, the attitudes which accompany particular forms of integration, was also borne out by the data from this study. For that reason, if I had to be one of the prisoners, I would prefer to be an Australian, and my last preference would be to be American. However, in response to any claims to chauvinism, I should also point out that if I were civilian at around that time in history, I think my preferences would be reversed. The egalitarianism that made the Australian camps so much more bearable and humane is accompanied by a cultural homogeneity that is oppressive and led so many intellectuals and artists up to the generation of the children of the POWs, to leave Australia. The dynamism, and the other side of the individualistic coin, and not just the economic opportunities of American society was a drawcard for immigrants from across the world. After all, Polanyi himself moved to New York from London. Australia’s greatest attraction to migrants was merely its distance from Europe.

Despite its limitations, though, I do think that this study offers a modest but significant contribution to knowledge. The empirical basis of the research, a ‘natural quasi experiment’ is so rare in the social sciences, particularly one that allows for such a graphic, and perhaps ‘strategic’, comparative approach. These findings offer the potential to be re-examined and more adequately theorised. There are many aspects, particularly theoretically, that I did not have time to pursue, but I will be able to return to do so later, and hopefully others might too. The findings also offer a rejoinder to the mainstream of the NES and may hopefully contribute to the current rediscovery of Polanyi’s embeddedness concept.

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Glossary of Terms

Military terms and slang

Atap – a Malay term for roofing thatch made from palm fronds

Batman – (Brit.) an officer's personal servant

Corvée – menial, non-military tasks undertaken by soldiers, such as cleaning or fetching water (see also ‘detail’ and ‘fatigue’)

Crotching – the practice of smuggling goods into camp by carrying them inside the crotch of shorts or a jap happy

Detail – American term used as a noun to mean a small detachment of troops, or as an adjective to refer to special duties assigned to such a detachment — equivalent to the terms fatigue and corvée in the British and Australian military

Doover – a pun on hors d'oeuvre, small items of cooked food improvised with whatever was available, usually based on rice

Fatigue – menial, non-military tasks undertaken by soldiers, such as cleaning or fetching water (see also ‘detail’)

Jankers – (Brit.) punishment cells

Jap Happy – usually used to refer to a Japanese issued G-string, officially called fundoshi, a thin strip of fabric held up by a piece of string worn around the waist; however, the term ‘jap happies’ was also used to refer to Japanese rubber boots, and could also refer to a prisoner was too friendly towards the Japanese

Nip – an abbreviation of Nippon, meaning Japanese (the guards often referred to themselves as Nippon, for example ‘Nippon very sorry’); Americans did not use ‘Nip’ and instead shortened Japanese to ‘Japs’

Scrounge – (Aust.) to steal, not personal belongings, but from a department or some other embodiment of authority, especially the Japanese, but also could refer to stealing from civilians

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Military Ranks

Field Officer – an officer with a rank senior to a company officer, but below a general officer (i.e. from the equivalent of a Captain to a Brigadier)

Non-commissioned Officer – an officer who does not hold a commission, and therefore holds a rank between the equivalents of Corporal and Warrant Officer

Other Ranks – term used in British and Australian forces to denote ranks other than officer ranks, the equivalent of private soldier in the Army; the American equivalent is ‘enlisted men’

Regular Officer – a commissioned officer normally employed full-time, as opposed to a reservist

Territorial Officer – (Brit.) a part-time volunteer, equivalent to the Army Reserves in Australia, or the national Guard in the USA

Abbreviations/Acronyms

AIF – Australian Imperial Force

JIA – Japanese Imperial Army

NCO – non-commissioned officer, i.e. an officer with a rank below lieutenant

POW – prisoner of war

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