Jacky’s own words
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Fukuoka
Prison hospital, Thailand, 1942
Flies buzz in the heavy heat
Rounding and dipping at my pursed lips
But I’m too feeble to resist them.
They’re warm and tickle-footed in the corners of my eyes.
Relentless black energy in a room of weariness.
Mother, I want to put down the load.
I raise myself onto my elbows
For a few seconds
Late in the afternoon
And take in the length of my body.
Light falls through the leaves outside.
I’m patch-worked.
Spindly legs lie in parallels
To the foot of my stretcher
And I cry because I’m so thin
And filthy.
Tropical ulcers.
O Mother, forgive me,
Dying is so easy.
Prison transport, Changi To Fukuoka, Japan, 1943
They bullied us into the hold
And screwed the hatch closed
On their shouts and chatter topside.
We panted in the foul air
Dreading an American torpedo.
There was no light for days.
My brother sitting by my side
Was a tense, humid presence
Slippery with perspiration.
There were sobs from in the dark.
From time to time
A man ten feet from me
Would strike a match
And check his watch.
Fifty desperate pairs of eyes
Would turn and stare.
In the smothering darkness
The point of flame
Was like a nail in a wall
That an unhinged man
Could hang a picture on.
Fukuoka
Worse by far
Than hot and hungry
Is cold and hungry.
Alighting, Japan, 1943
Even the gentler guards were kicking us
And shrieking like maniacs.
The locals turned out for the show,
Lining the platform
And then the streets
To hiss and spit
As we hobbled past.
I was in a dirty shirt
And tattered Changi loincloth.
There were dreadful beatings.
The women sneered at us.
The children gathered stones
From the roadside
And hurled them at our bony arses.
Ah, the conquering heroes.
And what right of reply?
I kept my head down.
With my frightened dick
Cringing tiny beneath my lap-lap
Even an angry sideways glance
Would have seemed, to all of us,
More than a little absurd.
First night
It was different then.
There was no Hiroshima.
No 1945.
It was just the beginning of something horrible
That could go on forever.
Prisoners of war
Mostly fetid stillness
And an occasional slick spasm of resentment
Like slimy carp in a diminishing pond-pool
Writhing against a weir.
Signing up
