The engineer turned to Bodero, who stood nearby, and said in perfect English, ‘Those men are making it very difficult for themselves.’
From then on, Tellemalie was more careful when the engineers were around.
Queenslanders Chilla Goodchap and Ronnie Crick, sailors from HMAS Perth, found themselves a rare cushy job on the dry dock project. A Japanese engineer put them in charge of his personal supply of hot water.
Chilla and Ronnie had some experience with hot water. They’d swum in it when the Perth, along with the USS Houston, had been sunk in the Java battle and the sea was on fire with burning oil.
In their job as bath attendants they were required to have a huge drum of water ready at the right temperature for the engineer at the end of the day.
Chilla and Ronnie knew their job was a sinecure and, anxious to hold on to it, they never failed to have the bath ready for the engineer. He’d arrive, throw off his clothes, jump into the drum of hot water and lie back, luxuriating up to his neck.
It went on until Chilla got sick of being a bath flunky for a Jap and told his mate he was going to warm things up.
Ronnie was appalled. ‘You mean boil him in his bath?’
‘Course not, it’d be cruel to cook the poor bugger.’
‘Then what?’ Ronnie was cautious. Chilla had got him into scrapes before.
‘ We’ll just heat his water up a bit. Let him simmer for a while.’
‘He’ll kill us.’
‘Anyone can make a mistake. We’ll apologise.’
Ronnie agreed to Chilla’s scheme, as he always did.
Late that afternoon, the Japanese engineer undressed and looked appreciatively at the steam rising from his drum of hot water. He tested it with his hand to make sure it was the right temperature.
‘Mizu okay ka?’ he asked.
‘Okay ka’, Chilla replied.
The Japanese jumped in, and his mouth opened to either scream, curse or say something, but nothing came out.
‘What’s the problem, Ron?’ Chilla called.
‘I think he’s trying to say the water’s too hot.’
‘He wants more hot water?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘His skin’s changing colour. He seems to be shivering. We’ll add a bit more.’ Chilla poured another bucket of scalding water into the drum.
The Japanese leapt out of the tub, his naked Oriental body as red as a cooked crab.
The apologies didn’t work, and Chilla and Ronnie went close to being executed. They were let off with a hell of a beating and sacked from their cushy job.
Chilla reckoned it was worth it, but Ronnie vowed to never again let his mate talk him into one of his madcap schemes.
When the Japanese called for electric winch drivers, Jim tried to convince Tellemalie to take on the new job.
‘We’re doing all right on the steam winch’, Tellemalie said. ‘Why change?’
‘The Japs eat down at the waterfront, don’t they? And where are the electric winches? Down at the waterfront. If we got ourselves posted there we might pick up a bit of stray tucker.’
Tucker? Now he was talking Tellemalie’s language.
‘All right, then’, Tellemalie said. ‘But I’m the driver, right?’
Jim sighed. ‘All right, you can drive.’
When they told the Japanese they were too skilled to be kept on steam winches, they were allocated one of the electric winches. Their first sight of the complicated mass of wheels and instruments had them wishing they’d stayed where they were.
Tellemalie suddenly changed his mind about wanting to be in control and pushed Jim into the driver’s seat.
‘I thought you wanted to drive’, Jim said.
‘I do, I do. I just think you should get some experience at it.’
Jim surveyed the mass of dials and buttons. ‘What do I do?’
‘Pull a few levers like you did on the other bugger.’
‘There’s no levers. Only buttons.’
‘Well, start pushing buttons.’
Jim pressed buttons and threw switches until trial and error gave him a rough idea of what worked what. In time, he was handling the winch reasonably well.
‘Now you got the cow by the balls’, Tellemalie told him. ‘Think I’ll have a go.’
Soon, both of them knew enough to get by and were able to unload cargo from the ships without causing too much damage. Occasionally, they enjoyed a bonus when ships’ crews gave them some rice and dried fish. One day the handout was a glorious vegetable stew with fish and pork in it.
Other waterfront food-gatherers weren’t so lucky. One lot of prisoners searching for any type of edible marine growth caught a few small crabs. They took these back to the camp and ate them, but the crabs turned out to be poisonous and two of the men died.
The men of Japan Force were never to see the dry dock finished. In August 1944, they were moved to a camp in River Valley on Singapore Island. There, watched over again by vicious Korean guards, they were ordered to build blast walls to protect the ammunition dumps.
It was hard work for Tellemalie and Jim after their soft job on the winches. Now they had to carry heavy loads of excavated earth in baskets. The guards kept count, and anyone who fell short of their quota was in for a bashing.
The irrepressible Tellemalie soon devised a method of ruining the count so that less work was involved. As the Korean guard called aloud ‘one, two, three’, he’d say ‘six’. The Korean would continue ‘seven, eight’, Tellemalie would call ‘ten’, and the guard would pick up the count from there. It never failed. The quota of fifty bags always ended up closer to thirty.
While the counting caper was successful, it was wrong to imagine that none of the Koreans understood English. One of the guards was standing on an embankment shouting abuse in his own language when a prisoner yelled, ‘Shut up, you stupid prick!’
The Korean bounded down the embankment and pushed his way among the workers. ‘Who call me stupid prick?’ he yelled.
When nobody owned up, everybody in the vicinity was given a bashing.
The Japanese headquarters were close to where the blast walls were being built, and the prisoners hungrily eyed a patch of sweet potatoes that were growing there. Cunning in the ways of pilfering, the Australians raided the patch many times at night without the Japanese knowing. They’d dig up the potatoes and replace the green leafy tops as if they were still growing, giving the impression that the plants hadn’t been disturbed.
British prisoners, novices in thievery without leaving a trace, threw the tops on the ground, clear evidence that the potatoes were missing. The Japanese saw this and placed a guard on their potato patch.
That was bad enough, but even worse was the fact that it made them more watchful when work parties were unloading ships. Items were still being scrounged, but smuggling them back into the camp became more difficult. Anyone who was caught was in for a vicious beating, or worse.
Trading with civilians wasn’t particularly productive because the population wasn’t much better off than the prisoners, even though there was any amount of money. The Chinese were forging hundred-dollar bills by the thousands, but there was nothing to buy.
Once again, the prisoners who had trampled a fortune in useless money into the dust of Singapore’s streets as they were being marched to Changi had access to a flood of it. Many became millionaires in counterfeit currency.
River Valley rations were drawn from the Gurkhas, well-disciplined soldiers who drilled and paraded every day to the sharp commands of their officers. These fierce Indian fighting men were sure the war would have only one result-the Japanese would be defeated. They left nobody in any doubt about the fate of any Japanese who fell into their hands.