WW2 75 – 27 March 1947 – A Prisoner of the Japanese: Captain Hubert John Bale (1898-1947)

Continued from 13 Sept 1945 - An Argentine connection

LIEUTENANT EVAN MACDONALD MACRAE (1915-45) 

217054, Royal Artillery 136 Field Regt  

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/01/ww2-75-13-september-1945-argentine.html

 

 

The headstone for the grave of Hubert John Bale in St Peter’s Burial Ground, Budleigh Salterton Section G, Row 11, Grave 4.

Hubert John Bale’s name does not appear on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial even though his grave is in the town’s Burial Ground, and is listed on the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

I have not been able to find out what his Budleigh family connections were, if any. I am also puzzled that he is listed as a Major in at least one WW2 record. But it was that record, on the website of the Far East Prisoners of War that led me to the grim story of Hubert John’s wartime captivity which surely contributed to his death in 1947, aged 49. His service number was 86125.

 

According to the CWGC he was the son of a Mr and Mrs Richard Bale and the husband of Alice Kathleen Bale, of Budleigh Salterton. His Japanese PoW index card, shown above,  gives his date of birth as 13 February 1898, and an address – perhaps that of his parents – as Wemys, Copper Mill Road, Wraysbury, Near Staines, Middlesex, England.  

Research by the Far East Prisoners of War association shows that Hubert John served in WW1. His service number was P86125.

What is clear is that that he was serving as a member of the 14^th Section of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) in the British colony of Singapore when it was invaded and captured in 1941 by the forces of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Naval defence policy of the British Empire in the 1920s had been based on a series of war plans from 1919 to 1941, known as the Singapore strategy. The plans aimed to deter aggression by the Empire of Japan by providing for a base for a fleet of the Royal Navy in the Far East, able to intercept and defeat a Japanese force heading south towards India or Australia. To be effective it required a well-equipped base; Singapore, at the eastern end of the Strait of Malacca, was chosen in 1919 as the location of this base. Work continued on this naval base and its defences over the next two decades.

By 1937 a New Base Ordnance Depot and Workshops had been completed in Alexandra on the south coast of Singapore Island, and in 1939 Lieutenant H.J.Bale is listed among the 17 RAOC personnel of HQ Malaya Command as an Ordnance Executive Officer 3^rd Class.

In the early 1940s tensions with Japan were rising, so a steady but insufficient reinforcement of Malaya Command was undertaken. When Pearl Harbour was attacked in December 1941, bringing the US into the world conflict, the intelligence-gathering arm of the Imperial Japanese Army already evidence of Singapore’s vulnerability. In December 1940, the Germans had handed over to the Japanese copies of secret papers intended for Air Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, the British commander in the Far East. The Japanese had broken the British Army's codes and in January 1941 were able to read a message from Singapore to London complaining in much detail about the weak state of ‘Fortress Singapore’.

On 8 December 1941, the Japanese 25th Army invaded from Indochina, moving into northern Malaya and Thailand by amphibious assault on 8 December 1941 and rapidly progressing southwards.

 

Squadron Leader Richard "Rickey" Brooker's Hawker Hurricane Mk.II of No. 232 Squadron RAF. He was shot down on February 8, 1942, crashing on East Coast Road uninjured.  Image credit: Wikipedia

The fighting in Singapore lasted from 8 to 15 February 1942, after two months during which Japanese forces had advanced down the Malayan Peninsula, forcing a British surrender. Prime Minister Winston Churchill called it the ‘worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history’ in British military history.

 

Firefighters battle the results of a Japanese air raid on Singapore, 8 February 1942. Image credit:  Wikipedia

Allied losses during the fighting for Singapore were heavy, with a total of nearly 85,000 personnel captured, in addition to losses during the earlier fighting in Malaya.  About 5,000 were killed or wounded, of which Australians made up the majority.

 

A column of smoke from burning oil tanks of Singapore Naval Base can be seen 14 miles away rises above the deserted streets of Singapore city. Image credit: Wikipedia

Hubert John was presumably wounded  in the fighting as he is recorded on the War Office Army Casualty lists 1942/04/21-WO 417/3 as Missing, and again on 1942/11/17-WO417/003, Casualty List No. 983. He had been previously been recorded on Casualty List No. 803 as Missing 15/02/1942. Finally he was reported as a Prisoner of War from 15 February 1942. There are further mentions of him in the National Archives Kew at WO 392/23, WO 345/3, WO 361/2058, WO 361/2020 and WO 361/2181.

 

National Archives records at Kew quote Hubert Bale as a temporary Captain in the fighting for Singapore, and then, as a Far East PoW, a temporary Major. The above document from the time, dated 16 August 1942, listing him and other PoW officers, confirms that rank. It was small reward for the hardships which he and thousands of other Allied troops would have to endure for more than three years as guests of Emperor Hirohito.

 

Japanese soldiers shooting Sikh prisoners who are sitting blindfolded in a rough semi-circle about 20 yards away. This is photograph SE 4819 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums. 

 

A plaque commemorating the massacre of staff and patients at Alexandra Hospital, Singapore, on 14 February 1942  Image credit: Wikipedia

 

Victorious Japanese troops march through Fullerton Square, Singapore.

This is photograph HU 2787 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.

 

Surrendering troops of the Suffolk Regiment are held at gunpoint by Japanese infantry.  Image credit: Wikipedia

 

Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival (right), led by a Japanese officer, walks under a flag of truce to negotiate the capitulation of Allied forces in Singapore, on 15 February 1942. It was the largest surrender of British-led forces in history.

The taking of Singapore by Japanese troops was marked by many atrocities. If Hubert John was indeed captured on 15 February 1942 he would almost certainly have been imprisoned at Changi, to the east of Singapore City.

Following the Allied defeat, the Japanese military detained about 3,000 civilians in Changi Prison, which was built to house only one-fifth of that number. The British Army's Selarang Barracks, near the prison, was used as a prisoner of war camp, holding some 50,000 Allied soldiers, predominantly British and Australian. It was here that Hubert John would have remained for six months.  

In the first early weeks following the capitulation, the Japanese placed no restriction on the movements of any prisoners within the Changi area and they were allowed to walk about at will over the whole eastern end of the island - until 12 March 1942, when the Japanese started to limit the activities and freedom of the PoWs.

 

British and Australian POWs in Singapore's Changi Prison. Image credit: Wikipedia

The name of Changi is synonymous with the Japanese reputation for brutality in WW2, exemplified by the so-called Selarang Barracks incident when the Japanese recaptured and executed four PoWs on 2 September 1942, having deprived other prisoners of water.

In fact, for most of the war, Changi was one of the least brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, particularly compared to those on Burma–Thailand railway.

 

The Japanese prison ship Fukkai Maru transporting British and Australian Prisoners of War is shown tied up at Pusan, Korea, immediately before disembarking PoWs in October 1942.  Image credit: Australian War Museum

 And a fortnight before that incident Major Hubert John Bale is listed among the 203 officers and men – from Brigadier to Private – who were marched from Changi to Singapore harbour, boarding the SS Fukkai Maru on 16 August  to be transported to Korea. In total 1,100 PoWs were embarked on the SS Fukkai Maru.

They stayed on board for four solid days with the hatches tightly closed till they sailed on 20 August for Takao Harbour in Taiwan.

The Fukkai Maru was one of more than 200 ships on a list of Japanese Hell Ships - those that transported Allied prisoners of war during the Pacific War.

It arrived two days later at Saigon, Indochina along with the SS England Maru which was carrying about 400 men, including the defeated Lt Gen Percival, former General Officer Commanding, Malaya.

The convoy, with armed escorts, arrived on 29 August at Takao after passing through three typhoons in the South China Sea. The PoWs on the SS England Maru disembarked, to be sent later to camps at Heito and Karenko in Taiwan.

The senior officers, engineers and technicians on board the Fukkai Maru disembarked whilst the 1,000 remaining prisoners were put to work over the next two weeks unloading bauxite from the ship’s holds for the nearby aluminum plant in Takao.

All the prisoners were reembarked on 8 September for their final destination in Korea. They arrived on 22 September at the port of Pusan, located at the southeast tip of the Korean peninsula, and were split into various groups destined for separate camps. Herbert John and his group travelled to Camp K-M Keijo.  His Korea PoW number was KM-8.

Keijo Camp by Harry Kingsley; Photo courtesy of the Lancashire Infantry Museum as shown at  https://fepowhistory.com/tag/hms-implacable/   

Keijo Camp, near Keijo-Fu, capital of Korea’s Chosen Province had been just been opened and was the principal camp in Korea, designed to hold 500 prisoners. The main building was a brick structure of four storeys, formerly a spinning mill. Wooden partitions had been used to form sleeping quarters for groups of up to eight men. The prisoners were split into squads of about 35 men and were employed in a variety of tasks, from stoking furnaces to loading and unloading rice, flour, iron and timber from rail trucks.

In many ways, Herbert John was luckier than most Allied PoWs.  There was adequate accommodation, access to Red Cross parcels, delivery of mail - although slow - fewer atrocities and better food than at other camps.  

Konan, for example, in the far northeast of North Korea opened in September 1943, and  was a work camp. The 350 prisoners there were expected to work 15 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their work comprised tending the lime kilns, blacksmithing and stoking the carbide furnaces. This was the hottest and most dangerous job, especially as workers stoked for 20 minutes and needed to recover for 40.

Keijo, on the other hand, was manipulated by the Japanese as a show camp, opened specially for the International Red Cross Committee teams to demonstrate to the Allied powers Japanese chivalry towards prisoners. A 2018 University of Kent thesis by Richard Davies used the Keijo PoW camp as a case study to argue that Japanese PoW propaganda was co-ordinated by the Huryojohokyoku – the Tokyo-based Prisoner of War Information Bureau set up in January 1942 – and that it succeeded in confusing the

International Committee of the Red Cross and the British government, and in presenting an overly positive picture of PoW incarceration.

Nonetheless, conditions for the prisoners were still harsh. Jane Davies, Curator of the Lancashire Infantry Museum, in a recent article for FEPOW described face smacking by guards as commonplace, citing the case of Corporal, later Sergeant, Takuma Mastaro earned himself the nickname ‘Scoops’ following an incident in which he hit a prisoner in the face with a ladle five times. Following the end of hostilities and the setting up of war crimes trials he received 31 years’ hard labour.

The fact that Keijo was a ‘show camp’ should not distract from the harsh conditions that PoWs lived under, writes Jane Davies. Second Lieutenant Pigott was caught exchanging an old shirt with a Korean for a small loaf of bread.  His punishment was to spend the remainder of his time as a PoW in the civil prison, without heating and in winter, a nightly 40 degrees of frost. Near the end Lieutenant Piggot re-joined the camp, but only lasted a few days.  He died on the 29 August 1945.

Weight loss and malnutrition were significant problems. Hubert John’s fellow-PoW Lieutenant Lever in his diary, held in the Lancashire Infantry Museum, recorded that ‘men were now changed so much that they were unrecognisable as the same people they had been before the surrender.’ He later went on to say that ‘body and soul were often kept together by the rare red cross parcel which was deemed infinitely better than the eternal, infernal, rice and stew.’

The approaching end of WW2 in 1945 was a time for tension for all Allied PoWs. The Senior British Officer at Keijo, Brigadier Elrington, in his reminiscences about life as a PoW quoted by Jane Davies, stated:  ‘It will be remembered that after VE Day there was no prospect of an immediate end to the war in the Far East. After the reaction of VE Day our morale ran so high that we chafed as each day went by. But, our captors not only chafed, they trembled. Their paramount fear was not of defeat, or death, but of war with Russia. They had no illusions about the Russians, and no power to stay their advance.’

 

Aerial photo of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, taken by Charles Levy.

As the Russians were approaching Keijo, in a last act of defiance and cruelty, the Japanese guards threatened to shoot all the officers imprisoned there. As the Japanese were to die at their posts then the Allied officers were to, too. The officers were only saved by the dropping of the second atom bomb and the consequent surrender of Japan on 15 August.

From Korea it is likely that Hubert John and other liberated PoWs embarked for the Philippines. From there they went on HMS Implacable to Vancouver and eventually reached England in October 1945 where they were reunited with friends and family.

What was Hubert John’s state of health after those years of captivity I wondered? He was older than most of his fellow-PoWs and would perhaps have been less able to cope with the physical hardships that he’d had to endure. What changes would his parents and his wife Alice Kathleen have seen in him? Did she really come from Budleigh Salterton, as stated on his CWGC record?

Less than two years after his return to England he died, on 27 March 1947. On 15 April, a few weeks later, an announcement appeared in the London Gazette to the effect that Captain (O.E.O.)* H.J.Bale had been placed on the h.p. (half-pay) list ‘on account of disability’. A further announcement in the Gazette, dated 9 May that year, stated that the previous notification of 15 April ‘is cancelled’ because Captain Bale was ‘now deceased’.  * Ordnance Executive Officer.

Was this really the way that the Far East Prisoners of War of WW2 were treated by the British Government?

You can read about the Far East Prisoners of War at

https://www.fepow-community.org.uk/

The next post is for 

CAPTAIN EUSTACE ROTHERHAM (1892-1947)  

10 July 1947 – ‘A born ship handler’.

No service number, RN, HMS Royal Arthur.

https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2024/01/ww2-75-10-july-1947-born-ship-handler.html