Japanese Commander Colonel YOSHIDA NAGAMOTO was Commander of ‘A’ Force Burma Green Force No. 3 or as was known by the Japanese ‘No. 3 Thai POW Branch’ or ‘Branch Three’.
or
Y. Nagatomo Lieutenant Colonel
Nippon Expeditionary Force
Chief No. 3 Branch Thailand POW Administration
Sentenced to death at the Singapore War Trials 1946
Nagamoto remained largely at his headquarters at Thanbyuzayat, Burma – maintaining a studied distance from from the backbreaking exertions of his charges up the line – Lieutenant Naito, Lt. Kititara Hosoda and Lt. Hoshi and Australian Brig. Arthur Varley’s whose challenge was to build rapport with his counterpart and cultivate an ability to prevail upon him to treat his prisoners with as much humanity as possible.
Varley could see a hopeless situation settling in as the size of Branch Three swelled, en route to a number approaching ten thousand men later that spring—mostly Australian and Dutch, with a sampling of British and Americans in the mix.
Above: Lt. Col Arthur Varley, CO 2/18th Battalion.
Varley was a WW1 Veteran and had received two Military Crosses for conspicuous gallantry as a young lieutenant – however nothing he had seen during WW1 could have prepared him for the ruthlessness of the Japanese now. Several months before the first Americans arrived, Varley’s men had been working near Tavoy, constructing airfields for the Japanese. Eight Australians were caught trying to escape and were brought before Nagatomo. He coolly ordered them executed. Varley’s pleas went nowhere. The death sentence was inflexible. The only thing that struck Varley more than the camp commander’s cold-blooded allegiance to the Bushido code was the good-natured, downright cheerful way the Aussie “diggers” conducted themselves as they were led blindfolded to their graves.
“They all spoke cheerio and good luck messages to one another and never showed any sign of fear. A truly courageous end,” he wrote in a secret diary that he kept, at considerable risk to his life, from the beginning of his time in Burma.
‘Confronted with Nagatomo’s murderous discipline, Varley pursued a continuous and ongoing negotiation with him and his deputies, Lieutenant Naito and Lt. Kititara Hosoda, bargaining to secure medical treatment for his weakest men and fair treatment from the guards. He monitored their treatments, provisions, and punishments, lobbied for the Japanese to make the payments they promised in exchange for work—a private got twenty-five cents a month, an NCO thirty, an officer forty—and pressed for the Japanese to allow the Red Cross to admit a ship into Moulmein, as the Geneva Convention provided.’
Nagatomo remained aloof, insulating himself by communicating to Varley through a Dutch translator named Cornelius Punt, or through Lieutenant Naito, who knew some English.
With his medical officer and senior physician among all nationalities in Burma, Maj. W. E. Fisher, Varley wrote numerous letters to Nagatomo warning him of deteriorating health conditions. By the time the second group of Americans arrived in January, contagion was well established and various diseases had a firm foothold in the camps. It seemed Nagamoto considered the growing number of dysentery and malaria patients in Thanbyuzayat hospital as malingerers. Thanbyuzayat was a large hospital with 1,000 beds however medical staff had barely enough equipment and few medicines.
Varley, documented every meeting with the Japanese, every request for drugs, beds, rice bags and canvas, drums for boiling water. He also documented the futility of such efforts.
Lieutenant Hosoda, who stood in as Branch Three chief during Nagatomo’s occasional absences, wept at his first sight of dysentery’s effects on the prisoners and ordered guards to bring in, under the cover of darkness, fruit and eggs to the patients.
There was a second lieutenant named Suzuki, a surgeon in private practice, who, according to Dr. Fisher, examined the most serious of the sick at Thanbyuzayat “competently and sympathetically, talked intelligently about surgery and expressed the hope that the fellowship of medical practitioners need not be abolished by the exigencies of war.”
On December 7, 1942, Nagatomo traveled to Singapore for a conference of camp commanders. The Allied POW commanders were uneasy about Lieutenant Naito, the Japanese junior officer who was appointed to relieve. His English was not the greatest. Six days after Nagatomo’s departure, three Dutch officers were shot and executed, supposedly, Naito said, on the personal written order of the colonel from Rangoon. On January 10, Nagatomo returned to the base camp claiming to have spent twenty thousand yen on blankets, clothes, boots, hats, toothbrushes, toilet paper, and sporting goods for the prisoners.
Nothing was ever seen of it on the railway.
With nutritional deficiencies came beriberi. Painful swelling that if left unchecked could assault the heart.
“If you poked your finger into your leg, the hole would stay there for twenty minutes to half an hour.”
“The soles of your feet were so swollen you couldn’t stand up from the pain.”
Dry beriberi was severely painful, but wet beri beri killed you. It caused progressive swelling from outside into the core of your body. When it reached your heart it was the end.
Mosquitoes spread malaria, leaving the men ill with cold, sweaty and debilitating chills. In the worst cases of cerebral malaria, or malignant tertiary malaria, the body overheated enough to warm the brain and bring delirium. The prisoner felt as though he were encased in a sphere, looking out through fishbowl glass at the blurry world, an oscillating, electric ringing in the head. “You feel like your mind is a closed circuit, not quite making contact with the outside world,” Ray Parkin wrote.
The Japanese rarely acknowledged the medical crisis.
Varley wrote in his diary, “The J’s require absolute proof—not warnings of these dangers. Unfortunately the proof lies in the burial of a number of men who could have been saved if our warnings were heeded and necessaries supplied. It is so difficult and heartbreaking to fight for the lives of our men in all these matters and meet a brick wall on all occasions, by being told things are not available.”
“A little quinine would have saved a lot of lives.”
“We were very rarely given it, just once in a blue moon.”
At Thanbyuzayat, Nagatomo’s headquarters camp, was a reasonably ‘well-equipped field hospital’, but it was a prohibitive distance from the work sites where the weakest prisoners fell, far up the line.
The monsoon season would arrive in a few months – multiplying the difficulty of every task. There was pressure to get the embankment laid quickly so that grass and other vegetation could grow through it before the torrents or rain washed it apart.
A471 Item 81655 Part 1: War Crimes Military tribunal – Nagamoto Yoshitada; Higuchi Tomizo, Hoshi Aiki etc.
Time and Place of Trial – Singapore, 8 August – 16 September 1946
08/08/1946 – 16/09/1946
Record file contains reports and information on war crimes, ill treatment, poor hygiene and intolerable prison conditions supplied by ex-POWs; also contains statements by Japanese and Korean guards of the Imperial Japanese Army regarding war crimes committed.
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POWs arrived by train at Thanbyuzayat, marched into camp (their stay was very short before moving on to the construction of the Burma Thai Railway) and assembed on the parade ground.
Lieutenant Colonel Nagatomo, Japanese commander of Branches Three and Five work forces, strutted with his samurai sword at his side, to a platform. He praised the Emporer then in his high-pitched, sing-song voice, he addressed the prisoners before him:
You are only a few remaining skeletons after the invasion of East Asia [by the Western civilizations] for the past few centuries, and are pitiful victims. It is not your fault, but until your governments wake up from their dreams and discontinue their resistance, all of you will not be released. However, I shall not treat you badly for the sake of humanity as you have no fighting power left at all.
His voice rose shrilly as he praised the “inestimable thoughts and infinite favours of His Imperial Majesty,” telling us we should “weep with gratitude at the greatness of them.” Then, stating his desire to correct our “misleading and improper anti Japanese ideas,” he declared:
We will build the railroad if we have to build it over the white man’s body. It gives me great pleasure to have a fast-moving defeated nation in my power. You are merely rubble but I will not feel bad because it is [the fault of ] your rulers. If you want anything, you will have to come through me . . . and there will be many of you who will not see your homes again. Work cheerfully at my command.
Then, after warning that any attempt to escape would be met with execution, the pint-sized colonel told us what an honor it was to be involved in the important task of linking Thailand and Burma by a rail line!
He concluded by ordering us to work earnestly and confidently, swaggered to his nearby automobile and was driven away in a cloud of dust.
SPEECH DELIVERED BY LT. COL. Y NAGATOMO TO ALLIED PRISONERS OF WAR AT THANBYUZAYAT, BURMA 28 OCTOBER 1942
It is a great pleasure to me to see you at this place as I am appointed Chief of the war prisoners camp obedient to the Imperial Command issued by His Majesty the Emperor. The great East Asiatic war has broken out due to the rising of the East Asiatic Nations whose hearts were burnt with the desire to live and preserve their nations on account of the intrusion of the British and Americans for the past many years.
There is, therefore, no other reason for Japan to drive out the Anti-Asiatic powers of the arrogant and insolent British and Americans from East Asia in co-operation with our neighbors of China and other East Asiatic Nations and establish the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere for the benefit of all human beings and establish lasting great peace in the world. During the past few centuries, Nippon has made great sacrifices and extreme endeavors to become the leader of the East Asiatic Nations, who were mercilessly and pitifully treated by the outside forces of the British and Americans, and the Nippon Army, without disgracing anybody, has been doing her best until now for fostering Nippon’s real power.
You are only a few remaining skeletons after the invasion of East Asia for the past few centuries, and are pitiful victims. It is not your fault, but until your governments do not [sic] wake up from their dreams and discontinue their resistance, all of you will not be released. However, I shall not treat you badly for the sake of humanity as you have no fighting power left at all.
His Majesty the Emperor has been deeply anxious about all prisoners of war, and has ordered us to enable the operating of War Prisoner camps at almost all the places in the SW [southwest] countries.
The Imperial Thoughts are unestimable and the Imperial Favors are infinite and, as such, you should weep with gratitude at the greatness of them. I shall correct or mend the misleading and improper Anti Japanese ideas. I shall meet with you hereafter and at the beginning I shall require of you the four following points:
(1) 1 heard that you complain about the insufficiency of various items. Although there may be lack of materials it is difficult to meet your requirements. Just turn your eyes to the present conditions of the world. It is entirely different from the pre-war times. In all lands and countries materials are considerably short and it is not easy to obtain even a small piece of cigarette and the present position is such that it is not possible even for needy women and children to get sufficient food. Needless to say, therefore, at such inconvenient places even our respectable Imperial Army is also not able to get mosquito nets, foodstuffs, medicines and cigarettes. As conditions are such, how can you expect me to treat you better than the Imperial Army? I do not prosecute according to my own wishes and it is not due to the expense but due to the shortage of materials at such difficult places. In spite of our wishes to meet their requirements, I cannot do so with money. I shall supply you, however, if I can do so with my best efforts and I hope you will rely upon me and render your wishes before me. We will build the railroad if we have to built [sic] it over the white man’s body. It gives me great pleasure to have a fast-moving defeated nation in my power. You are merely rubble but I will not feel bad because it is [the fault of] your rulers. If you want anything you will have to come through me for same and there will be many of you who will not see your homes again. Work cheerfully at my command.
(2) I shall strictly manage all of your going out, coming back, meeting with friends, communications. Possessions of money shall be limited, living manners, deportment, salutation, and attitude shall be strictly according to the rules of the Nippon Army, because it is only possible to manage you all, who are merely rabble, by the order of military regulations. By this time I shall issue separate pamphlets of house rules of War prisoners and you are required to act strictly in accordance with these rules and you shall not infringe on them by any means.
(3) My biggest requirement from you is escape. The rules of escape shall naturally be severe. This rule may be quite useless and only binding to some of the war prisoners, but it is most important for all of you in the management of the camp. You should, therefore, be contented accordingly. If there is a man here who has at least 1% of a chance of escape, we shall make him face the extreme penalty. If there is one foolish man who is trying to escape, he shall see big jungles toward the East which are impossible for communication. Towards the West he shall see boundless ocean and, above all, in the main points of the North, South, our Nippon Armies are guarding. You will easily understand the difficulty of complete escape. A few such cases of ill-omened matters which happened in Singapore [execution of over a thousand Chinese civilians] shall prove the above and you should not repeat such foolish things although it is a lost chance after great embarrassment.
(4) Hereafter, I shall require all of you to work as nobody is permitted to do nothing and eat at the present. In addition, the Imperial Japanese have great work to promote at the places newly occupied by them, and this is an essential and important matter. At the time of such shortness of materials your lives are preserved by the military, and all of you must award them with your labor. By the hand of the Nippon Army Railway Construction Corps to connect Thailand and Burma, the work has started to the great interest of the world. There are deep jungles where no man ever came to clear them by cutting the trees. There are also countless difficulties and suffering, but you shall have the honor to join in this great work which was never done before, and you shall also do your best effort. I shall investigate and check carefully about your coming back, attendance so that all of you except those who are unable to work shall be taken out for labor. At the same time I shall expect all of you to work earnestly and confidently henceforth you shall be guided by this motto.
Nagatomo Lieutenant Colonel
Nippon Expeditionary Force
Chief No. 3 Branch Thailand POW Administration
Below: Both General Nagamoto and Lt. Hoshi were sentenced to death.
