The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [83]
In the hold of the Kachidoki Maru the torment went on. The noise was constant and deafening, an awful cacophony of throbbing engines, moaning, coughing and occasional panic-stricken screaming the background music for this latest torture. The chilling screams of the mad and insane would stop abruptly. I didn’t know how they were dealt with but I could imagine . . .
I was completely stuck where I was in the hold and could not move. No one could. You couldn’t sit or lie down, you couldn’t even go down on your haunches, there was so little room. You didn’t really want to lie down anyway. It was a sea of human waste and you risked being trampled. You had your space and protected it with your life. Quite literally. You stayed strong, protecting your space with elbows and fists. By any means necessary. By this stage it was every man for himself. Each person had their own problems to resolve, their own life to save. Strangers surrounded me, all British but none of us knew each other. The only noise coming from outside the hold was the steady shudder of the ship as we crawled along. At least it felt like we were crawling. The noises inside continued getting louder as men kept panicking or shouting out in pain.
The smell inside the hold was indescribable, a repugnant stench. An overpowering mixture of excrement, urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, weeping ulcers and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere. There was no way we could get any fresh air. Even when the Japanese opened the hatches it didn’t really help that much – you were still breathing in what was already there.
In the darkness we had no way to keep track of time. But at some point on that first day of the voyage the battens were taken off and the hatches opened wide. I was stuck a long way from the hatch but could see the blue emptiness of the sky, a distant, tantalising beacon of freedom that from down there looked as close as I would ever get to it again. Some men, maybe forty or fifty or so, were allowed to go up on deck. Not the rest of us. That started a terrible mêlée. People climbed over each other, scratching and scrambling. It was sheer pandemonium. I supposed that the men allowed on deck could use the toilet arrangement that hung over the side of the ship. But letting fifty men use the toilet would have taken a long time and it would have been an especially long time for the impatient Japanese, so I doubt whether more than one or two were allowed to go. It did allow a lovely cool breeze to come inside the hold and ease some of the airlessness momentarily. While the hatches were open, the guards lowered down a single pail of rice. Even the most peaceful man alive turned into a real scavenger. We were fighting for our lives. When the men got put back down in the hold they found that their places had been taken over by other prisoners. Space was at such a premium. That caused more fights to break out. It is impossible to describe fully just how horrendous the conditions were. During the whole journey the guards opened the hatches just three times. I never got up on deck. I suspect that some allowed up managed to hide somewhere on the deck. I know I would have. It would have been worth the risk. Anything was better than being down in that dark hold. If anyone got caught, they would in all probability have been killed. At the very least they would have had a serious beating.
When the guards closed the hatches again, plunging us back into darkness, the feeling of complete desolation, total resignation, returned.