Word: berhala
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...things weren't too bad in Sandakan: the Japs looted thoroughly but neither killed nor raped anyone. Mrs. Keith was beaten up by soldiers while pregnant and ill and had a miscarriage-but that was only a mild foretaste of things to come. The prisoners were moved to Berhala Island just offshore. Women & children were housed in one crowded, ill-ventilated barrack; the men some distance away in another. Said the Jap commanding officer: "You are a fourth-class nation now. Therefore your treatment will be fourth-class, and you will live and eat as coolies. In the past...
Proudery and arrogance dissolved rapidly on Berhala. The prisoners shared the floor with swarms of vicious rats. The diet consisted of rice sweepings, a tough, rubbery green vegetable and tea. For latrines there were two tin buckets. Filth and vitamin deficiency brought on dysentery, influenza, beriberi and several other diseases, mostly untreated. When the guards weren't slapping faces in anger, they were patting bottoms lewdly. Yet some of those same guards would unexpectedly share their food with the children, permit wives to see husbands in defiance of rules, even assist in smuggling provisions and medicines from friendly Asiatics...
Shared Sin. After eight months on Berhala the prisoners were moved to the main camp at Kuching. The women worked at forced field labor on a daily diet of one cup of rice gruel, five tablespoons of cooked rice, a few greens, tea, a little sugar. Soldier prisoners bargained with their guards for skinned cats and rats; "all of us were eating weeds and grass, and plenty of us would have liked to eat each other." For complaining of attempted rape, Mrs. Keith was beaten so badly that two ribs broke. Yet she was the favorite of Camp Commander Colonel...
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