Film archive audio: “Sickness, disease, starvation, brutal treatment; that is how the Japanese treated their prisoners.”
Voice over: “This footage goes some way to show what life was like in Japanese prisoner of war camps during the Second World War. But we now know the reality was often far worse - a nightmare that most of us couldn’t imagine. Many prisoners recognised the need to document their experiences as they were happening and took great risks to capture on paper the daily atrocities that were perpetrated. The sketchbooks and artworks created in prison camps that emerged after the war tell an important story of survival in the darkest circ*mstances and some artworks were even used as evidence in the trials of war criminals.”
Meg Parkes, author of ‘Captive Artists’ and Honorary Research Fellow at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM): “Images they produced in pencil, sketches or in watercolour, give an insight into daily life. There was no other way for us to see this. There's film footage once the camps were being liberated, but those are very much done for the press. These pieces of artwork tell us so much more.”
Voice over: “The act of drawing or painting was often banned in POW camps. Many artistically-inclined prisoners risked severe punishment and even death to secretly capture their experiences on paper, finding all sorts of ingenious ways to keep work hidden. So, how did they manage to keep it a secret? And could there still be artworks waiting to be discovered? Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15th February 1942, and over 190,000 allied troops were taken prisoner. Conditions in the camps varied but were particularly perilous for those forced to work on the Thailand-Burma ‘Death Railway’.”
Meg Parkes: “The Japanese viewed the Allied POW as a dispensable workforce and gave every impression of not caring whether they lived or died.”
Voice over: “Philip Meninsky recorded the lives of POWs in his sketchbook while working on the Death Railway. Starved into a skeletal state and suffering from tropical ulcers on his legs, he was eventually transferred to Chunkai hospital camp.”
Philip Meninsky oral history: “It was a terrifying place in many ways. On an average there was between 25 and 30 people a day died in Chunkai, a lot of them with anaemic dysentery. Most of us had body lice which got into your blankets.”
Voice over: “25% of British prisoners died in the Far East, compared with just over 4% who were held in European camps.”
Stephen Walton, senior curator, IWM: “On the whole, Japanese camps were much more brutal and fatal places than European prisoner of war camps. The Japanese never did sign up to the Geneva Convention, which required that prisoners of war be treated in a humane manner. Their whole military philosophy was if you allowed yourself to be captured in battle, you were dishonouring both yourself and your country. So, the Japanese regarded prisoners of war as being pretty much the lowest form of human life.”
Voice over: “In many of the Far East camps, any form of expression, either written or artistic, was discouraged or forbidden.”
Stephen Walton: “Some of the artwork that was done in Japanese camps showed quite shocking human conditions. Those were things that the Japanese would not have wanted the outside world to see.”
Voice over: “Near the start of the second world war, Captain Andrew Duncan was Senior Cipher Officer at British Headquarters in Java. After 3 and a half years in captivity, according to the weight chart in his diary, he weighed just six and a half stone.”
Meg Parkes: “Dad was never keen to talk about his captivity very much. They were traumatised. These men had been through the most appalling nightmare and many of them took it to their grave. They were taken into captivity February/March 1942. Within a matter of probably two months, the edict went out across captivity, no recording in writing or drawing, no writing materials were to be held. If they were found, there would be severe punishment. And there are documented cases of people losing their life and people being badly beaten up, certainly work destroyed.”
Voice over: “One artist who suffered brutal punishments by guards was Jack Chalker. He was a student at the Royal College of Art and became a gunner after receiving his call-up papers. He ended up at a prison camp in Thailand.”
Meg Parkes: “A passing Korean guard spotted him with bits of paper. He ran screaming into the hut, dragged Jack off his bed space, beat him unconscious. The POW and the medics dragged him back into the hut and tried to patch him up. Ashley Old saw the state Jack was in and without hesitation, did a little watercolour portrait of Jack with his face bashed up. He didn't stop to think, he was taking precisely the same risks that Jack had taken. It was instinctive. He was his friend; he was going to record this and show Jack.”
Voice over: “Unfortunately for Jack, much of his own work was later confiscated by the guards.”
Philip Meninsky oral history: “About six months before the war ended, we had a search. They found all his work and they took it away. And he was absolutely heartbroken, I mean, you can imagine.”
Voice over: “Given the possible consequences, why did POW artists still take the risk?”
Stephen Walton: “It was something that they just felt they had to do. Creating some feeling of normality and a little bit of beauty, against the system that was designed to dehumanise and ultimately to kill them.”
Voice over: “There were many reasons why POWs sketched and painted their experiences. Some built enough evidence for use in war crime trials that took place after the war. Others sketched as a simple act of rebellion or as a way to make their comrades laugh.”
Meg Parkes: “Dad was also a character who, if you give him a set of rules, he'll find a way to break most of them. And I suspect he thought, well, I don't even know if I'm going to make it through to tonight. So, what have I got to lose? It's a defiance. It's a way of getting one over.
The other thing he did was to make detailed camp plans. If he had been discovered, how could he have explained that?It was phenomenally risky. But again, he was going to show people exactly where things were; he wasn't going to rely on memory.”
Voice over: “In an attempt to keep prisoners occupied and out of trouble, the Japanese occasionally allowed them to set up classes in basic subjects. Meg’s father seized the opportunity as a cover for clandestine drawing.”
Meg Parkes: “That gave him an opportunity to be seen with a notebook doing maths calculations and geometry and he put his pieces of paper in the middle of that and he wasn't causing any interest from the guards. So, there was a lot of subterfuge.”
Voice over: “Meg’s father managed to keep 9 notebooks hidden, including one home-made and bound with mosquito netting and rice paste.”
Meg Parkes: “My father hid his diaries and artwork in the lining of his kit bag. Another person hid their artwork in the cemetery with one of the recently buried men.”
Voice over: “And Jack Chalker concealed artworks in a section of hollow bamboo.”
Jack Chalker oral history: “You had to put a, make a very good seal for this because termites got in. On certain occasions I lashed my, you know, the bamboo with some of the drawings and some of the notes in on the underside of my bed space. You had to be careful it couldn’t be seen.”
Voice over: “Perhaps the most famous POW artist was Ronald Searle. Aside from the incredible visual record that Searle created during the SWW, his most well-known achievement was creating the St. Trinians cartoons. After the war, Searle served as a courtroom artist at the Nuremberg Trial, but during his captivity, he knew secrecy was paramount.”
Meg Parkes: “Ronald Searle describes hiding his artwork with the cholera patients and the Japanese tended not to go anywhere near them. This of course came with considerable risk to himself. Cholera is very infectious and is deadly, as he would have well known.”
Voice over: “Art materials were also often banned in the camps. A lucky few managed to smuggle in their supplies and they went to great lengths to keep this precious equipment hidden.”
Meg Parkes: “As a gunner, Jack was required to do sketches of range finding for the big guns and for small artillery and he took Winsor and Newton porcelain pots of paint in his haversack with him.”
Voice over: “After capture, he reportedly hid his paints, brushes and drawing nibs inside a scrap of an old gas cape, within a false bottom of his haversack.”
Jack Chalker oral history: “It was disallowed to have any materials of this sort or to make any records. It was rather like sitting on an unexploded bomb, hiding this wretched stuff.”
Philip Meninsky oral history: “I had an extraordinary stroke of luck. One day I noticed a Japanese artist sitting, drawing. And he said, “You draw?”. And I said, I did. He said, “Tomorrow you will draw me”. Well, I was in some trepidation, because I thought, goodness me, if I make a bad job of this, what's going to happen? However, he brought paper and charcoal, and I did a drawing of him, and he was delighted with it. So, the following day he brought me a supply of watercolours and pens, some Chinese ink and some pencils.”
Voice over: “Others turned to their surroundings and produced homemade art kits.”
Meg Parkes: “They used the local flora and fauna. Beetles were quite useful, apparently, ground up.
They had paintbrushes but they could also make them, they could make them from hair.”
Philip Meninsky oral history: “I used the brushes that came on the iodine bottles. You know they were sable brushes, cost a fortune if you buy them now.”
Voice over: “In the average camp there was plenty of organic materials lying around. A small piece of burnt wood could pass for charcoal.”
Meg Parkes: “Ashley discovered that he could use the laterite clay which was everywhere across Southeast Asia. If you dried it and powdered it and mixed it with some water, it made the most amazing colours.”
Voice over: “Crafting improvised tools from a range of available things, otherwise known as ‘bricolage’, allowed POW artists to produce an enormous, collective body of historically significant work. So, what else can these artworks tell us about life as a POW? Several artists chose to sketch the brutal Selarang Square incident in Singapore. Over five days, the Japanese tried to bully prisoners into signing a pledge ‘not to escape’, which they refused.”
Philip Meninsky oral history: “It was a horrific experience. They put 17,000 of us into one block of barracks, which was known as Selarang. I mean, you couldn't lie down, you had to sit if you wanted to sleep. You were physically touching somebody all the time, which was a very strange sensation. Men were becoming sick, left, right and centre.”
Voice over: “After nearly five days with little water and no sanitation, the Japanese allowed them to sign their parole under duress, keeping their rank and pay. Artwork is still coming to light nearly 80 years after the men brought it home.”
Meg Parkes: “I’m quite sure that there's still more to be discovered that's been hidden away. Ashley Old thought he'd done over a thousand portraits over the whole of his captivity. We at LSTM know of the whereabouts of 20 of them.”
Voice over: “Even on the eve of liberation, artists were still recording the scenes in front of them, perhaps in memory of the friends they were leaving behind.”
Meg Parkes: “Art was the key to documenting Far East captivity and it's very important that these artists are regarded as war artists.”
Voice over: “Artworks produced in POW camps have become collectors’ items and are often sold for thousands of pounds at auction.”
Meg Parkes: “FEPOW artwork has turned up in people's lofts; they've moved into a house; they’ve gone and found things. So, it's worth people checking. You don't know what might turn up.”
Voice over: “For those artists who did not come home - their work could still be where they left it, rolled up in a bamboo cane or buried somewhere in the grounds of the former camp sites. Even in recent years, individuals working at these sites have made exciting discoveries of artefacts, such as the 5 forgotten murals uncovered at an old chapel within Changi prison camp, decades after the inmate painted them.”
Dr Jon Cooper, University of Glasgow’s Centre for Conflict Archaeology: “And again, hopefully we’ll find some kind of trace of POW existence…”
Voice over: “And in 2011, more than 1,800 items were uncovered at Adam Park, a former POW camp and the site of an intense battle between British and Japanese forces during the Second World War. After Singapore fell, 1,000 British and 2,000 Australian POWs were held there and many of the artefacts discovered provide intriguing insights into their ordeal.
These discoveries continue to demonstrate the inventiveness and determination of POW artists to secretly create a pictorial record of their life in captivity. And their body of work shows that art thrives, even in adversity.”
