The Japanese

I have no regard for the Japanese, none whatever. I view them with no little distaste.

Due to unprovoked Japanese attack on Chinese territory at the start of 1932, my return from Hong Kong to England, at that time, was delayed for a months their aggression interrupted Far Eastern maritime operations in a big way, especially at the important Chinese port of Shanghai.

Throughout the 1930s their militaristic disposition surfaced in a big way when they seized several Chinese ports, something they would not succeed in doing with the present Chinese regime.

Then territorial aims were extended in December 12941 when they seized and occupied (until 1945) British, American, French and Dutch territory in the Pacific region. Their aim was political domination and the mineral wealth of those areas coupled with strategic advantage in French Indo-China, as they used that territory as a spring board for their subsequent operations against Malaya and Burma. All of the territories were liberated in August/September 1945 when Japan capitulated following the atom bomb.

After World War II the Japanese developed their economy to a successful level. Prior to the war, the Japanese were great copyists of the technology and merchandise of other Nations.They produced in Japan the products of other countries, which they marketed as their own, under their own trade names, so expertly that it took a highly skilled technical eye to detect which was the copy and which was the real thing.

I had personal had first hand experience of the Japanese race as a prisoner of war in their hands for three and a half years (1942/45).

The Japanese general in overall command of our camp (on Singapore Island) possessed the “inspiring” name of:-

Shimpo Foo Kee.

That was too much for us so we gave him a name of our own. Whenever this disagreeable personage appeared on the horizon we quickly passed the word around:-

“Look out chaps here comes Cock-Eye”.

Cock-Eye had an overwhelming opinion of his own importance. On one occasion we had to parade and stand in the gruelling tropical heat, with no shelter whatever, for some four hours, awaiting the presence of the celebrity as he intended to “address us in person”. When this luminary and his cavalcade of followers eventually appeared, some four hours late, he mounted a rostrum, contemptuously surveyed us and through an interpreter announced that we were “to obey all Japanese orders”. He then departed, all in the space of one minute. For that we had waited, drenched in perspiration, for four hours and we were not impressed.

During the early days of our captivity he ordered the execution of four of our comrades, who had attempted to escape. For that diabolical crime he experienced a similar fate of his own in 1946, ordered by the Allied Post War Crimes Tribunal in the Far East. That was the end of Major General Shimpo Foo Kee of the Imperial Japanese Army, better known to us as “Cock Eye”, By then we had returned to England but needless to say, there were no regrets from us.

Over the three and a half years, we had suffered a catalogue of atrocities at his hands and those of his barbarous minions.

KBC - 19/04/1972

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