Internment Camp at Batu Lintang

By Madelaine Wong

Ming-Zhu was shaken out of a deep sleep. She opened her eyes to see her father hunched over her. “It’s time to go,” he whispered. Starlight shone in through the opening of the cave. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest but she rose without complaint and quietly pulled on her thin cotton dress. Her bed, which she shared with sister, was a bamboo mat on the cave floor. She arranged the shabby blanket over her sister’s bare legs and followed her father into the cooking area.

“It’s dark Papa. Can we bring a lantern with us?”

“We dare not. It would be like a beacon to the soldiers down in the valley.”

Ming-Zhu saw the shadowy outline of her mother packing food into cloth bags. She packed sprouts and wild cucumber, into which she had cut a few small pieces of monkey meat. In another bag she placed some bananas and hard-boiled eggs, wrapped in cloth. She hung the remaining bit of meat on a hook on the wall and covered it with cloth to keep away the insects. She carefully washed her knife in the small basin then filled a bottle with water and sealed it with a cork, placing it also in the bag.

“Remember, if someone taps you on the shoulder, don’t turn around, it could be a ghost, and here, wear these,” said Fen-Fang as she slipped jade necklaces over the heads of her husband and daughter. “They will keep away the evil spirits.” Shu-Ang’s pendant was cut in the shape of a cross, Ming-Zhu’s in the shape of a teardrop. Fen-Fang handed the bags of food to them and then touched each of their cheeks in a silent blessing. It was important to be quiet. Sound traveled well in the stillness of night. The father hesitated for a moment at the mouth of the cave and he listened. Hearing only the croaking of a thousand frogs, he and his daughter slipped their sandals over their bare feet and glanced all around for any signs of movement then walked into the jungle.

They had been forced to flee from their home in Kuching when the Japanese invaded on Christmas Eve, 1941. A cave on the mountainside was now their home.

Dawn was breaking as they descended the hill. They stopped briefly to rest and eat, and then walked until they came to the edge of the jungle that met a gravel road. They heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and instantly laid flat on the floor of jungle and waited for the truck to pass. The odour of rotting vegetation filled her nose while she lay motionless in the undergrowth. Mosquitoes attacked the back of her legs and arms but she dared not move until the truck had passed. Through the gloom she spotted the red eyes of a rat as it peered at them through the long grass. It sniffed the air to investigate the intruders. The rat was the least of her worries on this journey. She glared back at it. “Get!” she said, and smiled as it scuttled away.

They stood, when it was safe, and Ming-Zhu reached out to grasp the back of her father’s damp shirt. She adjusted the bag over her thin shoulder and wished that she had remembered to tie back her long black hair. The sticky humidity caused her hair to cling to the sweat on her face. They stepped and stumbled as quickly as the dense vegetation would allow, and continued on their way. Branches and sharp nettles scratched her bare legs but she did not cry out. She felt branches brush against her shoulders and grasped her necklace, “Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around,” she whispered to herself.

By mid morning they had reached the bank of the river where Shu-Ang pulled the raft out from the cover of foliage. It was made of planks of bamboo strung together with twine. They paddled easily down river and for a time Ming-Zhu relaxed and enjoyed the beauty of the passing scenery. Trees on both sides reached their branches across the river to each other, like lovers joining hands. On shore a deer stopped for a drink, raised its head and watched them with composed curiosity. Fish swam below in the clear water coming to the surface every so often to eat a drowning insect. It was so peaceful that she almost forgot the purpose of their trip.

The winding estuary led to the internment camp at Batu Lintang where two of Ming-Zhu’s uncles had been imprisoned for the last three years, since the Japanese had invaded Borneo in 1941. They pulled the raft to shore and hid it and continued the rest of the way on foot. The sun was low in the sky when they found a fallen tree and climbed under it. Ming-Zhu fell asleep with her father’s arm around her.

They awoke early the next morning and crawled out from their cramped position under the tree. They walked on the river’s rocky edge but the rocks were slippery and the footing unstable. They retreated to the knee-high swampy water, stopping every so often to pull leaches from their legs, and watched for crocodiles that could move from stone-like stillness to torpedo speed in a split second. They then hiked through the thick jungle, until they came to the edge of a clearing, where the high barbed wire fence of the internment camp could be seen. The voices of the tortured souls within the camp floated towards them. People moaned and begged for relief. 

Ming-Zhu stopped short. She grasped the jade necklace around her neck, drawing strength. “Papa, I can’t...”

“Come,” he said gently and held out his hand.

They heard the “crack, crack” of an axe hitting a tree and crept in the direction of the sound. A man spoke loudly in Japanese and father and daughter quickly ducked behind an outcropping of rocks and they waited until the guard had walked a good distance away.

“See that white man there? Go and give him this note. Remember, he doesn’t get the food unless he agrees to deliver the note,” whispered Shu-Ang.

“But Papa, he’s a min-nan. He has red hair. Mama said I am not to talk to ‘Ang mo kui,’ the red-haired devils. She said they are like horrible green-faced beasts of hell. She says they are devils that teach our people to speak the devil’s language and to bow to the foreign Buddha.”

“The ‘foreign Buddha’ that your mother speaks of is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” he whispered angrily. “Sometimes your mother speaks nonsense. You are not to pay attention to her when she talks like that. Now go.”

“Yes Papa.” Ming-Zhu took the food and held note in her sweaty palm and crept nervously towards the axe wielding man, and then hid behind a tree. She shyly poked out her head. “Um, hello sir,” she said in English.

The man stopped chopping and looked curiously in her direction. “You speak English? What are you doing here?” he said. He took two steps towards her and leaned on his axe.

“My Uncles are prisoners in the camp there. Their names are Wang Chong-Hai and Wang Chong-An. I would like you to give them this note.” She held it towards him, her hand shaking.

He glanced around nervously, took the note and smiled at her.

“Well I’ll be stuffed, I’m out here in the bush with nothing but mozzies for company and I meet a little Chinese girl who speaks English.”

“Do you know how to find them? Will you give them the note?”

“Why do you need to give them this note and why should I help you? You know we get beaten around here for any reason. One time I didn’t bow properly to one of the guards and the wacker gave me this.” He pointed to a scar on his forehead.

“My father wants to help them escape.”

“Sounds dangerous. Do you have a durry on you?”

Ming-Zhu looked at him incomprehensively.

“A cigarette?”

“No.”

“Too bad. I’m sorry. I don’t think I can do this for you.” He held the note towards her.

She took the note back. She then raised her eyes to his face and noted his sunken cheeks and sad blue eyes. His skin was sunburnt and covered with mosquito bites and he looked like he had scabies too. “You can have these,” she said and held out two bananas and two eggs.

“Ace!” he said and then glanced around again. He snatched the food from her hands, peeled and wolfed down a banana then the eggs one after the other. “Taste of heaven,” he said. He hid the other banana in his shirt.

She looked around and saw no guards in sight. “Why don’t you try to escape?” she asked.

“Where do you think a white man is going to hide in this country? I don’t exactly blend in. Besides, the jungle is like a sea of green. It’s too easy to get disoriented. Yesterday a group of men tried to escape. They captured them all and we were made to watch as they were whipped and beaten with sticks. They’re still lying there in the courtyard. We aren’t allowed to help them. They’ll probably die. If I got caught the same thing will happen to me.”

Ming-Zhu nodded. “It’s okay. I understand. How long have you been here?”

“Me and my mates were captured about a year ago. I’m with the Australian infantry.”

“Is it bad in the camp?”

“Ya, it’s bad. Okay, I’ll help you but it won’t be easy. The Chinese prisoners are held in a different compound than us, but I’ll find a way to give them the letter.” He took it from her and looked at it. “It’s written in Chinese. What does it say?”

“I’m not allowed to tell you.”

“Ya, I guess it’s best that way. We better quit our jabbering. The dirty bludger will be around soon enough to check on my progress.” He hid the note with the banana, under his shirt.

“Thank-you, I am very grateful.”

“No worries. We have to help each other out in this fight against the Japs. Quick, hide!”

The prisoner resumed chopping the trees and Ming-Zhu ducked and scampered away at the sound of heavy boots coming in their direction.

The soldier called to the prisoner who picked up the chopped wood and went back to the camp.

Ming-Zhu rejoined her father who said, “What did the white man say? Is he going to deliver the letter?”

“He took the letter.”

Shu-Ang sighed, “We will hope for the best. I will show you the fence where we will wait for your uncles in one week’s time.”

An hour later the sun had gone down and Ming-Zhu and her father, concealed by the forest, stood looking up at the guard tower. She saw the shadowy outline of a Japanese soldier where he leaned casually against a post. He inhaled on his cigarette and she saw the red glow of its tip, which momentarily illuminated his face. He held his rifle across his shoulder, and looked out into the black. Though the trees had been slashed away in a twenty-foot radius around the camp, the fast growing grass and other vegetation between the jungle and fence now stood three feet high.

“That’s the spot, right there. Do you think you can remember that?”

“Yes Papa.” The courtyard of the camp was lit up and Ming-Zhu’s eyes were drawn towards it. She saw four skeletal figures lying on the ground with their limbs twisted at impossible angles. They were crying out for relief. Her eyes filled with tears.

The wind shifted and the overpowering stench of the latrine pit assaulted her nostrils. She and her father then turned towards the relative safety of the jungle. She glanced back at the camp, and her stomach turned with revulsion and she vomited on to the forest floor.

Father and daughter spoke little on the trip back. They walked back to the place where the raft was hidden, and using it as a lean-to, they spent another night in the open. In the morning they pulled the raft back on to the river and set it afloat. They had to paddle upstream but Shu-Ang was strong. After a few hours of paddling they were back at the base of the mountain, and began the strenuous climb uphill.

They arrived home and collapsed, exhausted into their beds. She stripped down again to her underwear and lay beside her sister but sleep would not come. She closed her eyes and saw again the skinny prisoner with his hopeless eyes and the injured men writhing in pain on the bare ground. She laid in bed and cried quietly.

______________________________________________________________

Madelaine Wong is a former school teacher, now full time writer. “Internment Camp at Batu Lintang” is an excerpt from her unpublished novel, Flee the Rising Sun. Chapter One of the book, “Kuching, Borneo, December 1941,” won first prize in Freefall Magazine's chapbook contest and is due to be published in the fall of 2010.