Some of the best brains in the United States, together with some of the weaker
ones, have combined recently to try to decide whether “waterboarding” is or
is not a form of torture. This problem seems to occupy a surprising amount
of time and involves not only very senior people but also President Bush
personally.
I know the answer to this difficulty and I will supply it later in this
article. Indeed, the solution is quite simple, but it requires personal
experience. There is really no scope for argument at all.
It is easy to confuse torture and ill-treatment, both of which have been
widespread throughout the whole of history. In everyday terms, ill-treatment
is self-explanatory and implies deliberate bad treatment, often as a form of
punishment. It is today widespread and looks like being with us until the
end of time. Sometimes the intention is that the victim should not survive.
Torture, on the other hand, is ill-treatment but with a specific purpose. This
purpose is almost always to persuade the victim to provide information that
he has and that he does not want to disclose. It follows that it is
preferable that the victim should be kept alive because death puts an end to
the prospect of obtaining information. Sometimes victims die, however,
because of the ferocity of the torture, which is a very dreadful death
indeed. Perhaps even worse, victims are sometimes killed when they have
provided the information required.
The variety of forms of torture embraces the full range of human ingenuity.
Indeed, there have been people who as a form of employment have specialised
in devising treatment and procedures that give rise to ever-increasing
decrees of pain and discomfort. There seems to be no limit to the techniques
and to the pain itself.
For historical and cultural reasons, which we need not explore here, many of
the most dreadful tortures have been devised and used in China and Japan, up
to quite recent times and including the Second World War.
One of these has been widely known in the Far East as the water torture and it
is this which, with adjustments, is now quoted in the US as “waterboarding”.
The water torture was extensively used by the Kempeitai, the military police
branch of the Imperial Japanese Army, in South East Asia during the Japanese
occupation which came to an end in 1945.
I am probably the only person in the UK, and possibly even in the Western
world, to have suffered personally the full-scale traditional water torture
and to have survived. This arose from having been a lieutenant in the Royal
Signals in the Second World War. My personal experience of systematic
organised and deliberate torture dates from August 1943. In that year I was
in a small PoW camp in Kanchanaburi, Siam, [now Thailand] known as the
Sakamoto Butai. This was the PoW camp supporting the main Japanese Army
mechanical workshops, responsible for maintaining the machinery used on the
construction of the infamous Burma-Siam Railway. The Japanese troops working
there were almost all technical personnel, and were mostly reasonable and
fairly civilised men. The PoW camp consisted of about 200 men, mostly
British and mostly captured in Singapore the previous year. We also were
supposed to be technicians of various kinds. The main problem in being a PoW
is usually not the physical problem of food, or even of basic survival. The
problem is one of noninformation. No one receives any reliable information
about the outside world. This is a very serious matter psychologically.
The only way to get over this difficulty in a PoW camp is to acquire and to
operate suitable radio sets. In a PoW camp this means making them, which for
obvious reasons is a matter of great difficulty and great danger. The
relatively stable day-to-day routine in the workshop camp and the technical
background were helpful for making small and totally illicit radio sets. The
technical genius who conjured up the working radio receiver at Kanchanaburi
from basic materials such as silver paper was a sergeant major in the Royal
Army Ordnance Corps; one Lance Thew, formerly the proprietor of a civilian
radio shop in Sunderland. Our radio receiver worked nicely, under secure
conditions for many months. The end came one day in August 1943, however,
when several PoW camps on the Burma-Siam Railway were raided by the Japanese
Military Police simultaneously. What gave rise to this widespread search is
not known, even to this day.
On August 29, 1943, without warning, a small group of Japanese soldiers, who
were never precisely identified, arrived in the camp and started a search of
the PoW living huts. It was not long before the Japanese discovered one
complete, usable radio set and some incomplete ones. A terrible commotion
broke out. Retribution descended first on Thew, then on an heroic sergeant
named Fred Smith, then on a group of officers, including myself. As an
officer in the Royal Signals I tended to attract attention in difficulties
like this. The Japanese regarded Royal Signals personnel with great respect,
quite rightly. But they also deemed us not only as highly suspicious, but
probably also as responsible for every communication problem in the PoW
camps throughout South East Asia.
Thew and Smith were badly ill-treated immediately.
A little later, on September 29, 1943, the group of six officers were removed
from the workshop camp to another one in Kanchanaburi where, eventually, we
were each individually beaten for some hours until unconsciousness took
over. I emerged from the fray with two broken arms.
After several days nominal recovery the six of us were swept into the local HQ
of the Kempeitai where the official interrogators and torturers now took
over. Once again the Royal Signals got special attention. To begin with I
was placed in front of a group of three Japanese; two were NCOs and were
quite awful, even in appearance; the third was a young man of my own age,
who introduced himself as the interpreter. The interrogation lasted for some
days, on and on and on. The Kempeitai men wanted to know everything about
the PoWs in the Sakamoto Butai, including the full story of the making of
the radios, the sources of material, the circulation of the news and of
various related sins. Men being interrogated in those circumstances are in a
very difficult position. One has only a fraction of a second to think up
answers to questions and the protection of one's life and the lives of
others must be paramount. Eventually, after several days, we reached the
point where the Kempeitai clearly felt they were not getting anywhere. They
announced that they were going to take '”further steps”.
This is the beginning of the classic torture situation. The interrogators,
unable to learn what they want by conventional question and answer, decide
that they have to resort to conventional torture.
One morning I was led out to the back of the Kempeitai building, where the
simple apparatus for the historic water torture was laid out. From its
availability I wondered if they used it quite often. I was laid on my back
on a bench; my arms, still broken and almost useless, were placed across my
chest, my face was covered by a cloth and a tap feeding a hose-pipe was
turned on. It was all so simple. To encourage me to say something the senior
Japanese man beat me from time to time with the branch of a tree. This did
not do my arms any good at all. The interpreter, who did not seem
sympathetic to the whole procedure, held my left hand. I suspected that he
wanted to make sure that I remained alive.
The whole operation was a long and agonising sequence of near-drowning,
choking, vomiting and muscular struggling with the water flowing with
ever-changing force. To put it mildly, it was ghastly, quite the worst
experience of my life. There were occasional intervals for interrogation.
How long the torture lasted, I do not know. It covered a period of some
days, with periods of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness. Eventually I
was dumped in my cell, which was so small it offered little scope for
movement. At about this time two of my colleagues were beaten to death.
Their bodies were dumped in a latrine where they may well remain to this day.
The remaining two years, until the war came to an end in August 1945 were a
long sequence of further ill-treatment, near starvation and continuous fear,
night and day, first in Bangkok then in Singapore. During this period
another of my colleagues, Major Harry Knight, a splendid Australian, died of
ill-treatment and neglect.
At the end of the war, I made a formal complaint to the War Crimes
organisation in South East Asia about the beatings that killed my two
colleagues and badly damaged the rest of us. Captain Matsuo Komai, of the
Imperial Japanese Army, was convicted of responsibility for this and was
hanged in Singapore. I did not make a complaint about the interpreter, who
presided over the water torture, but I never forgot him.
The physical damage suffered by victims of torture can usually be repaired.
But the psychological damage can never be repaired. It accompanies victims
of torture throughout the rest of their lives. It certainly accompanied me
for a long time until the appearance of a news item in The Daily Telegraph
in 1986 intimating the establishment of a new organisation, the Medical
Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. The distinguished director,
Helen Bamber, and her staff helped me enormously. Then came a review of a
book by a fellow former PoW, Jim Bradley, in the Telegraph in 1991. By
following up the review I was able to identify the interpreter present
throughout the water torture in 1943. His name was Nagase Takashi. With my
support, my wife wrote to him and we received expressions of deep remorse.
This led to our visiting Thailand and Japan in 1993 where we met. I had
started the search for Nagase with murder in mind. In the end I gave him a
formal written statement of forgiveness, in Tokyo, towards the end of our
visit.
The repercussions of August and September 1943 are still with us today. In
July 2007, a deputation from north Japan made the journey to
Berwick-upon-Tweed to visit my wife Patti and me. It was led by Osamu Komai,
son of Captain Komai who was responsible for the dreadful beatings which
killed two of my colleagues and which left me very badly damaged. Although
aware of my responsibility for the execution of his father, Osamu Komai
wished to come in person to apologise formally for the beatings. Then on New
Year's Day, this year, Nagase Takashi and I had a telephone conversation.
Ideally, Mr Nagase and I would like to meet again but age and health are now
problems.
In case anyone is still in doubt whether the water torture is, or is not,
torture I shall refer to a Japanese Army document, which is authoritative. I
have an extract from the Japanese Secret War Service Guide, headed
'”Fundamental Rules for Interrogating War Prisoners”. This was probably
issued in the Kwantung Army in Manchuria in 1938. In the list of “official”
tortures item No 3 reads: “Putting the person interrogated on his back (it
is advisable to raise the feet a little) and dripping water into the nose
and mouth simultaneously.” A later section draws attention to the importance
of minimising the disturbance caused by victims' screams.
The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, published by Vintage, is available for
£7.99, and from Times BooksFirst for £7.59, free p&p. 0870
1608080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
Eric Lomax: from Post Office worker to Prisoner of War
1919 Born in Edinburgh. Works in the Post Office after leaving school.
Is very interested in trains
1940 Commissioned into the Royal Corps of Signals
1942 Now a lieutenant, he is captured and sent to the prisoner of war camp
in Kanchanaburi, Siam, now Thailand (where the infamous “bridge on the River
Kwai” is located)
1943 The camp is raided by the Japanese Military Police, who think he
is a spy because of a map he has drawn of the Burma-Siam railway. They
torture him. He is moved to Bangkok and Singapore and ill-treated and nearly
starved for the next two years
1945 The war ends. Lomax returns to Edinburgh, now a captain. He
discovers that his mother has died and that his father has remarried. He
marries his prewar fiancée, with whom he has two daughters
1948 Retires from the Army. Works for the Civil Service (including some
years abroad), then obtains an academic post at Strathclyde University
1982 Retires
1983 Marries his second wife, Patti
1987 Discovers the name of the interpreter who was present during his
torture via the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture
1988 Meets him in Kanburi, Thailand, and forgives him
1996 Publishes his memoirs, The Railway Man
The Railway Man was the basis of my dissertation at University, Mr Lomax was kind enough to answer a letter of mine as research for my work. He and those like him are an inspiration, he is not only a great writer but a great man, the country could do with more like him.
Stuart Potts-Perkins, Stourbridge, England
Absolutely agree with you Nick. The fortitude with which this man takes life's events on the chin is incredible. It is humbling. We are indebted. I hope the author gets to read a few thank you notes such as mine. There are a thousand more echoed in society that go unspoken.
Luke Calthrop, Perth, Australia
I am in the process of finishing Eric Lomax's book. He is was in Changi Goal where my grandmother, Patricia Williams, was interned in during WWII. As a radiographer/nurse she was caught up in the fall of Singapore. It fills in a lot of unawnsered questions about what happened to the POWs in Changi.
Graeme Hosken, Pretoria, South Africa
Once in a while an article appears which is just such a magnificent piece of writing that all one can do is offer thanks to the writer - this is one such occasion.
Nick Hay, Birmingham , UK
I read Eric Lomax's book as a young teenager and I can honestly say it was one of the fundamental shapers of my abhorrence of the practice of and the belief in the utility of torture. It is a wonderfully written memoir which all should be encouraged to read and reflect upon, for very few would suggest that behaviour of that nature is something they could survive or meter out, making his experience and subsequent addressing of its impact all the more awe-inspiring.
Joanna Williams, London,
Those of us born since 1945 owe a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid to Eric Lomax and the millions who fought and suffered alongside him.
Colin Shearman, London,