Page 119 - JSOM Winter 2022

An Ongoing Series

Prisoner of War Medical Ingenuity in Far East Captivity

Meg Parkes, MPhil *; Geoff Gill, MD, PhD 2
1

ABSTRACT
Research into British perspectives of the medical history of Far the sick, the prisoners of war (POWs) had to be resourceful
East prisoners of war (FEPOWs) has been conducted by the to survive.
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom), re-
sulting from decades of treating FEPOW veterans that began Just over 50,000 British were captured, their numbers con-
after their repatriation in late 1945. This paper examines some centrated in Singapore (up to 32,000 men) and Hong Kong
of the ingenious ways that British medical officers, medical (8,000 men), with roughly 10,000 prisoners scattered across
orderlies, and volunteers fought to save the lives of thousands the Netherland East Indies and Borneo. Although larger
1
of FEPOWs during captivity in the Second World War. It high- camps were run under British Army regulations, many smaller,
lights some of the key medical challenges, together with the more remote POW camps had few officers. In Japan and Tai-
resourcefulness of a “citizen’s army” of conscripts and volun- wan, POW camps were situated in heavy industrial areas with
teers who used their civilian knowledge, skills, and ingenuity few POW doctors available.
in many ways to support Allied medical staff. Using the most
basic of materials, they were able to produce a vast array of By June 1942, the first drafts of Allied POWs, including 30,000
medical support equipment and even drugs, undoubtedly sav- British, were arriving in Thailand to work on the construction
ing many lives. of the Thai-Burma railway. Thousands more were shipped to
the Japanese homeland to bolster its industrial and agricul-
Keywords: World War II; Prisoners of war; medical support tural workforces. There were generally an insufficient number
of POW medical officers, and many smaller camps had none.
Desperately sick men were forced to work or they did not eat.
Doctors were regularly beaten if insufficient men were avail-
Brief Historical Overview
able for daily working parties. Approximately 12,500 British
On 7 December 1941, the Japanese entered the Second World FEPOWs died in captivity (roughly 25%). 1
War by simultaneously attacking the American fleet at Pearl
Harbor and invading Hong Kong, Malaya, and the Philippine The Medical Crisis
Islands. Allied defenses crumbled: Hong Kong fell on Christ-
mas Day, Singapore and Malaya on 15 February 1942, the It became rapidly apparent to the Allied POW medical offi-
Netherlands East Indies on 8 March, and the Philippines on 7 cers that there were to be serious medical consequences from
April. In just 5 months, Japan had secured access to unlimited imprisonment, for which they were ill equipped. A major and
supplies of oil, rubber, and tin, the vital raw materials needed continuous problem was nutrition; the food supplied was
to conduct mechanized warfare. mostly poor-quality rice, with only tiny amounts of meat, fish,
or vegetables. At one remote jungle camp in Thailand in 1943,
The resulting capture of more than 140,000 Allied prison- the daily ration per man was estimated to be rice, 610 g; beans,
ers of war and more than 100,000 Western colonial civilians 90 g; beef, 30 g; and fish, 3 g. Significant weight loss was uni-
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presented a huge and unexpected problem for the Japanese. versal, and various syndromes of vitamin deficiency began to
Having refused to ratify the 1929 Geneva Conventions, Japan present. Most notable was beriberi, caused by the deficiency of
felt under no obligation to care for thousands of exhausted, thiamine (vitamin B ), which had two forms: “wet,” with fluid
1
demoralized, and hungry men. The Japanese herded them into retention and heart failure, or “dry,” with damage to the pe-
overcrowded makeshift camps large and small, in towns and ripheral nerves (causing pain and/or tingling in the lower legs).
cities, on airfields or in jungle clearings, and initially left them
to fend for themselves. With inadequate rations, little in the Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and contaminated water sup-
way of clean water or sanitation, and few medical staff and plies led to the appearance of diarrheal diseases, in particular
resources to treat battle casualties and growing numbers of dysentery, usually caused by bacteria of the Shigella species.

*Correspondence to meg.parkes@lstmed.ac.uk
1 Meg Parkes and Dr Geoff Gill are affiliated with the Clinical Division, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place, Liverpool, UK.
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