Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 16 August 1945
Party for the End of the War
By Elaine Sampson, aged thirteen
Today the students of Gibber’s Creek Central School decorated the school to celebrate our victory. We put up red and blue streamers in all the classrooms. Later we marched to the CWA rooms, where the CWA ladies put on a splendid afternoon tea with scones and jam and cream and pikelets. We sang ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ and ‘Along the Road to Gundagai’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Later the town band played. Mr Henderson the headmaster said that we will sing the songs again when our brave servicemen come home.
PULAU AYU PRISON CAMP, 20 AUGUST 1945
NANCY
The war had changed.
She didn’t know how it had changed. The guards did not bring out their radio again. None of the villagers left messages in the precious parcels in the bushes outside. Perhaps they too did not know.
But for five days the young guards had kept their helmets on their heads, formal with their chin straps fastened, and stood ringing the camp with machine guns in their hands.
The guards did not talk. She wondered if they even ate, for most were almost as gaunt as their charges. But they must have drunk, she thought vaguely, or they could not have stood there.
She could not stand. Her dysentery was worse again; every sip of water she took seemed to leave her within minutes. An ulcer on her leg was as big as an orange.
‘Nancy, darling, you must eat.’ Moira sat by her bunk, holding out the bowl of vegetable gruel. She had taken over picking hibiscus buds and greens.
‘Give it to Gavin.’ Nancy tried to smile. ‘It’ll just end up in the latrine if I eat it. Won’t even stop on the way through.’
She peered out the door as Gavin chased butterflies across the dusty yard. He was thin, desperately thin, his tiny legs slightly bowed; his skin so tanned that he might be a native child, native of here, native of there …
‘There’ was home. She had to keep thinking of home. While she could think of home, she would still be alive; she could still watch for Gavin, even if the other women gave him his meals; she could still hold him warm against her each night.
An engine rumbled. She blinked until she recognised the sound. A car. She hadn’t heard a car since the commandant left. She propped herself up on her elbows to look.
A shining car, very black under the sun. A Japanese man got out, small and tall and upright. He opened the back door for another man, this one in a uniform that shone almost as much as the car, covered in medals and braid.
The ring of guards bowed as one man. They kept their heads down while the newcomer stepped sedately into the officers’ house.
Nurse Rogers grabbed Gavin, and joined the others by Nancy’s bed.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Mrs Hughendorn quietly. ‘Do you think this means they have lost the war? Or won it?’
Nancy shrugged. Even that was too much work. I have to keep what’s left of my strength for when it’s needed, she thought. Not waste it on shrugs. The war was the world, would be the world forever. How could it be lost or won …?
The youngest guard came out of the soldiers’ quarters, machine gun in his arms. He barked an order at the prisoners. The meaning was clear. The women lined up, Gavin holding Nurse Rogers’s hand. Only Nancy didn’t stand, but stayed lying on her bunk inside. Once that would have prompted yells, a beating.
Now the guard ignored her.
Another yell.
The women bowed. Nancy bowed her head too, on her bunk.
The officers’ house door opened. Nancy watched as a line of three officers came out, each in a clean uniform with medals on his chest, every officer carrying something in each hand. The translator followed them.
The three officers and Mr Shigura marched to the centre of the compound. They bowed to each other, solemn bows and deep. They lifted their left hands. Nancy saw they held small cups filled with liquid. The four men raised these to the sun, and drank.
‘Auntie, what are they doing?’ Gavin broke from the line.
‘Shh. Gavin, come back here!’
Nurse Rogers was too late.
‘I want to see!’
The boy ran towards the men.
The world slowed. Nancy saw small footprints left in the dust by his bare feet, saw Mr Shigura’s look of shock. She hauled herself out of bed with every last shred of energy, hurled herself towards him, pushing her rags of body across the hut, out into the daylight, reached out her arms, yelled out, ‘Gavin! No!’ as she waited for the machine guns ringing the camp to clatter out his death.
They didn’t. Everything stayed quiet, except for the sound of her feet, and Gavin’s.
The world exploded.
The world returned, in waves of agony and too much light. She was alive. She was alive because she hurt, hurt so much she didn’t have the strength to feel the pain.
The camp had lost its sound.
No, she thought. I am deaf. The world was going on, because she could see it did. Could see her skin, coated with scattered dapples of dark brown. Could see the shadows of the hut.
She was inside. Moira lay on the bunk next to her, curled up small, not moving, her face buried in her hands.
Nancy said, ‘Gavin.’ Her lips made no noise.
A hand took hers. A face bent down. Mrs Hughendorn’s. Her face too was stippled brown, though tears had washed some of the muck away. Mrs Hughendorn’s lips moved.
Nancy said, ‘I can’t hear.’
Mrs Hughendorn’s face came closer. She shouted, which was soft as well as loud: ‘They blew themselves up. The officers and Mr Shigura. They had hand grenades. Nancy, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
Nancy asked again, ‘Gavin?’
Though she knew.
‘He was right next to them.’ Mrs Hughendorn’s too-liquid, too-soft voice. ‘It wasn’t your fault. None of us realised what was happening. Oh, Nancy, I’m sorry. I am so sorry …’
She couldn’t bear it. Had no strength to bear it. Nor was there any reason to bear it now. Gavin was gone. She should comfort Moira, but what comfort could she give? He was gone, the bright child who had laughed and chased butterflies, who had not registered the horror in which they lived because he had been loved. He had accepted death as part of life, and now it had come for him as well.
Her reason for survival had gone.
Why should she stay living now?