They did not know that the others were nearby and had no contact with them they were not even told when a husband or wife lay dying. The men and women were placed in separate camps at Belalau, an abandoned rubber plantation near Loeboek Linggau. The compartments were so small and the internees squeezed in so tightly that they were forced to sit upright and in this fashion they were taken after a twelve hour journey to their final camps at Loeboek Linggau. Some were carried more or less strung under the train.”Īs Jeffery noted, at Palembang the internees were placed into closed railway trucks. were left for several hours dead in the vans. We arrived at Loebok Linggau having lost several more patients on the way. The odour of sweating humanity became terrible. James continues: “We remained that night at Palembang with all the shutters down, in the stifling heat, and sanitary conditions ghastly. Next day we set off and were allowed between stations to have the shutters up a few inches. Several died before they had even left the station.
Jeffrey wrote, “That burial was a nightmare.” Once they were at Palembang they were loaded onto trains and the stretcher cases into cattle trucks. At the time people were suffering severely from diarrhea - practically everybody that had been in camp.”Ī Dutch woman died woman on the pier and an Englishwoman was buried at sea. There were no sanitary arrangements at all. The crowding on the ship was completely disgraceful. The remainder of the people were put in the hold, which was even worse. The hospital staff and the patients were put on the deck without any covering from the sun at all. Nursing sister James described the journey: “It was the same frightful boat on which we had come over previously. Those nurses who could, carried the stretcher cases onto the waiting boat, despite the presences of dozens of Japanese soldiers who watched with “horrified” faces but made no move to assist.
The Japanese insisted that the second of the three contingents to leave the Muntok camp should be the hospital staff and patients, some of whom were gravely ill and had only a few hours to live. The journey was described later by some of the AANS nurses. As usual they travelled in the remnants of their uniforms and Red Cross armbands in case anyone perchance saw them. The prisoners had no idea where they were being taken until they began heading back up the Moesi River toward Palembang where they arrived at 6.00PM the same evening, still standing. Eventually at 6.00AM the following day, having stood all night, the ship slowly moved away from Banka Island. There they were forced to stand with very little air to breathe and the conditions became unbearably stifling. The men left the jail at Muntok at mid-day on 26 February and they were placed in the hold below deck of a small cargo steamer. The journey to Palembang was dreadful, lasting a day and two nights in cramped and stifling conditions. The location of the camps shown as A (Men) and B (Women and Children) These men died in Muntok and did not re-join their friends. Some men were too sick to travel and remained in Muntok with a doctor and orderly. The men were moved at the end of February / beginning of March 1945 and the women in April 1945.
When it seemed that life could become no worse, the Japanese moved the captives back across the Bangka Straits through Palembang to their final camp at Loeboek Linggau, near Lahat. Belalau Camps, Loeboek Linggau, Lahat, Sumatra
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