I Will Make You Coolies
Yamashita's Boast
I Will Make You Coolies
Yamashita's Boast
When Yamashita paid his debt for his part in the crimes committed by his soldiers in the Philippines on Saturday, it was an ignominious end to the Tiger of Malaya’s boasted intention to turn Allied Prisoners of War into white coolies under the provisions of the Japanese ordained Co-Prosperity Scheme in East Asia.
The writer recalls the hectic preparations of the Japanese for the expected visit to the newly-formed working party in the city of Singapore when the first news of the general’s visit was mentioned.
When questioned, the Japanese guards in charge of working parties could only mutter feverishly and excitedly “Japan No 1 Soldier he come”.
Prisoners of war received elaborate instructions as to the correct method of bowing to the man who was then the hero of a nation and the master mind behind the brilliant strategy that wrote finish to British resistance throughout the Malayan Peninsula.
The great day arrived. The serried ranks of the newly captured Allied prisoners stood in the hot tropical sun wondering and waiting. The guards fidgeted. The nervous tension increased as time went on. The guards in their ill-fitting long sleever tunics and long putties that reached their knees, paced up and down in their shapeless boots of rough pig-skin.
“Banzai”. Immediately the guards sprang to attention: apprehensive eyes turned towards the ranks of prisoners of war fearing lest one should do anything that might incur the displeasure of the almost sacred emblem of a militant Nippon.
“Kasharar Hadari”. Eyes turned right as a limousine drew up. Jabbering voices rang out, as heads bowed deep obsequiously. With his left hand on the handle of his Samurai sword as he returned the bows of the guards and officers in attendance, Yamashita moved along the front line of the prisoners.
No one moved. They were determined to let him and his nervous and excited guards see that Australians even when prisoners of war were not as they were so soon to be called “the progeny of bushrangers with no sense of discipline.”
Even then, in their hour of defeat they were proud. Pride of race was in their bearing as they stood there wondering and waiting for the next move in the game of subjection will all its degradation and sense of futility. They never moved. They could hold themselves like soldiers no matter what the stumpy mis-proportioned be-ribboned symbol of arrogance that was Tomoyaki Yamashita, High Command of the imperial Japanese Army, could say.
With eager guards steadying the cases placed as steps against a larger case, Yamashita scrambled arrogantly up where he stood for a few moments blandly surveying the assembly. A sudden hush manifested itself. The ribbons on his chest grew bright in the sunshine. The gold bars on the red tabs on the lapels of his khaki tunic glistened. When he spoke his adam’s apple moved up and down. The muscles of his bull neck showed taunt from the open-necked white shirt he wore. The flabby, squat body looked almost ludicrous as he stood feet apart towering above the heads of the gathering.
Then he spoke. Arrogance was in every word. He shouted, grimacing wildly like a gorilla. He was sure of himself. He was cock of the walk. He knew it. Gloating was in every gesture, in every word. No one moved. If anyone flinched it was inwardly. Neither by sight nor sound did anyone betray the fact that they understood the things he was saying.
“You are only the last remnants of a rabble army” he went on castigating Britain and the Dominions that had ignored the injunctions of the Japanese to surrender before they did. “Britain” he spat, “For too long has Britain made slaves and coolies of the coloured races, but now I will make you - all of you proud white men – coolies to the very people that Britain has held in subjection for so long.” “Banzai” cried the guards.
Yamashita stepped down, his hour of triumph complete. One of his many staff officers jabbered something. He looked at the front line and laughed, as he strode away while servile guards tried to outdo one another in an effort to make the occasion as memorable as possible.
The escort of cars drove off, Yamashita saluting and bowing to the salutes of guards. When they were out of sight the guards hastily wiped their faces now beaded with perspiration. “Stand Easy” came the order.
And so ended Yamashita’s first visit with its humiliating subjugation and the beginning of an era of almost unbelievable horror, sadism and bestiality the price of which was paid in full by at least one notorious Japanese leader when the hangman’s noose plunged him into eternity in a cane field on one of the very islands he attempted to include in Japan’s Co-Prosperity Scheme in East Asia.
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