John Wyatt Part Two
John talks about a massacre by the Japanese in the Second World War.
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I felt this hurt in my shoulder and I felt something go in my shoulder and it started to bleed quite a bit and the Officer looked round and he said, ‘You’ve been hit Corporal!’ and I said ‘Yes sir.’ Anyway Private Nicholls took me out and I got on the truck and they took me to the Queen Alexandra Hospital.
Anyway, during that night time on the Saturday, I heard this ‘rat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat!’ I knew it was the Japanese rifle fire, I’d heard it so many times. And I hobbled to the window, looked out of the window and I saw the Japanese advancing - they were covered in camouflage – towards the hospital. And I thought, ‘Jesus! I took the Japanese Officer’s watch off him in Kampa!’ As a kind of souvenir, like, which was a stupid thing to have done and I thought, ‘Blimey! Jesus! If they catch me with that watch, I’ve had it!’ So I hobbled to the toilets and put the watch on top of the cistern. I came back and then they broke in then, downstairs. And they saw patients on the operating tables and they bayoneted them, you know. And the Doctor went up to them and said, ‘These men…. leave them alone!’ But they took no notice, they just went on, killing the doctors and nurses and rapes. It was terrible what was going on down there. I heard the screaming upstairs, because all the doors were open.
These two Japanese burst in through the swing-doors. And one of them was covered in camouflage and the other had a live duck in his hand! And the live duck, it was squawking, squawking all the time, trying to get free from the little fellow. And he looked up and down the ward and he saw these two wounded soldiers there and he looked for watches and found no watches, so in front of my eyes he started to bayonet them to death. Bayoneting the two wounded, you know! So Corporal Sinclair, he was very, very brave. People don’t realise it until they see it! He went up to them with a tray with some food or something on it and he offered them the tray and he said, ‘Food!’ And with that, all that trouble they have, they go ‘Kra! Kra!’ That’s a Japanese curse, I hate it! And Corporal Sinclair was smashed to the floor with a rifle butt. And just as they were coming out of the ward, this Japanese officer came in and he saw what was going on and he kicked their backsides downstairs and he apologised that they hadn’t eaten for two days.