The End of the War
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Introduction
In mid 1942 the previously seemingly
invincible Japanese and Germans finally felt the first major setbacks. The roll
back had definitely begun even for India after the battle of Imphal and Kohima
in 1944. Yet there was still a lot of fighting till the end came with the
Atom-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And even if by Mid September 1945 the last Japanese had finally
surrendered the war had not really come to and end for Calcutta.
Freed POWs came into town needing
medical care, supply lines had to be maintained for newly freed/re-conquered
countries. Most of all the fighting men came back from the front to Calcutta
hoping for repatriation. But transport was scarce and the port overworked and
consequently vast numbers of troops had to stay on sometimes for as much as a
year without much to do, facing increasing hostility by the public waiting
impatiently for independence, and lacking the discipline of war service.
In the meantime the lucrative
defence contracts, which had led to a boom in manufacturing in the city, came
to and end, Britain one of the city's main customer and investor was itself
impoverished by the war effort, and saw not much of a future in the Raj. The
economy took a nose dive, crime and the black market boomed, and the political
future was more uncertain than ever.
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May 1942 – The Japanese fail
to win the Indian Ocean
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
Over
the Bay
The Japanese invaded India. When their warships and planes struck in the
Bay of Bengal, they struck as directly at the troubled mainland as if their troops
had landed in Calcutta.
If the Japs win the Bay of Bengal, they will have all but won the Battle
of India. They did not win the Bay last week. But they inflicted terrible naval
losses on the British. Near the key island of Ceylon, at the southwestern
entrance to the Bay of Bengal, R.A.F. fighters knocked down at least 75 Jap
planes. Yet, after a week of combat, the British were weaker, the Japanese were
relatively stronger than they had been when the battle started.
Off Malaya, off Java and now off India, the naval story was the same: the
U.S. and British were caught by superior Japanese forces. The Allies in these
areas had lost the equivalent of a formidable fleet: two capital ships (Prince
of Wales, Repulse), four heavy cruisers, three or more light cruisers, twelve
to 15 destroyers. At any one place and time, with effective air support, they
could have beaten the Japs. As it was, piecemeal, the Allies lost both the
ships and the battles.
The Admiralty Regrets. Jap battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers,
destroyers, probably submarines moved toward India from the recently occupied
Andaman Islands, some 900 miles across the Bay of Bengal. The U.S. Air Force's
Major General Lewis Hyde Brereton had led a flight of Flying Fortresses to the
Andamans and bombed Jap troopships there. From their Indian bases, his
Fortresses presumably roved the embattled Bay last week. They were not enough;
the Bay was too big, and the Japs too many.
The beginning was bad. Off eastern India, between Calcutta and Madras,
Jap warships and planes closed on a British merchant fleet. Some 500 survivors
said nothing about air defense from nearby India, nothing of defense by any
accompanying British warships. Tokyo later claimed that in this and other
attacks, the Japanese sank 2 merchantmen, damaged 23 more. New Delhi admitted
some merchant losses.
Worse was to come. Fighter-bombers from Jap aircraft carriers spotted two
heavy cruisers, the Dorsetshire and the Cornwall. Both ships had proud records
in the Royal Navy; the Dorsetshire's torpedoes sank the Bismarck in 1941 (after
she had been crippled by aerial attack). Under Jap bombs the cruisers went
down. If they had air protection, neither British nor Japanese communiques
mentioned it.
Worst was last, for finally the many Japs struck at sea-air power.
Carrier-based bombers attacked Ceylon's naval and air base at Trincomalee.
R.A.F. fighters in the area concentrated on the defense of the base. That was
too bad. Some 70 miles from Trincomalee, only ten miles offshore, was Britain's
ancient, smallest aircraft carrier, the 15-plane Hermes. Perhaps her planes
never got off the flight deck, perhaps they, too, were engaged over
Trincomalee. Or perhaps they were simply overwhelmed. Down went the bombed
Hermes.
British and U.S. planes roamed the Bay. Some of them, probably R.A.F.
bombers from Ceylon, tracked down a Jap carrier and attacked. They missed; they
also "suffered some losses." The Royal Navy still had
"substantial forces" in the Bay of Bengal; enemy accounts mentioned
at least several more cruisers, another aircraft carrier, two battleships
(including the old, U.S.-repaired Malaya). The British figured that the Japs
had three of their newest 50,000-ton battleships, five aircraft carriers, a
strong complement of cruisers and destroyers. Gloomiest index of the results of
the first battles for the Bay was a British call for help from the U.S. Navy.
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Apr. 20, 1942)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
Key to
a Salient
The Jap's big advantage—operation on interior lines—may continue to win him
battles. But it cannot win a global war from a foe that still hems him in. On
this basic principle of strategy the Jap got two object lessons last week. One
was the Battle of the Coral Sea (see p. 18), where his attempt to break through
to the outside across the United Nations' sea lines of communication was
smashed. The other was the taking of Madagascar by the British.
The Jap was still busy, and wondrously successful, in the first steps
toward joining the German and pinching off the great United Nations salient
between Calcutta and Gibraltar. To pinch off that salient he needed control of
the Indian Ocean, and he had a good start—Singapore, the Indies, Rangoon. But
the other key to the salient was Madagascar, and the busy Japanese couldn't get
to it in time.
In the vaulting strategy of the Axis, the Madagascar setback meant more
than the loss of the world's fourth largest* island, with its resources in
agriculture and minerals. It meant postponement of the Axis' principal aim:
control of the seas. As long as the United Nations had that control,
uninterrupted around the perimeter of the world, the best the Axis could win
would be a Germanized Europe. Without that control, the Jap's dream of a
Greater New Order in East Asia was cobwebs and moonshine.
Madagascar stands like a listless but potentially powerful sentinel
athwart the vital supply line that feeds the United Nations salient separating
Jap from German. In ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope go planes and tanks
and men to fight, from Egypt to Calcutta. They pass within range of
Madagascar's bases. North of the island, aircraft can be flown across the
Indian Ocean to Australia or Ceylon. And in Madagascar's fields and harbors,
planes and ships can be refueled and repaired.
The Jap could have used Madagascar.
* Ten largest: Greenland, New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar, Baffin,
Sumatra, Honshu, Great Britain, Celebes, South New Zealand.
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, May. 18, 1942)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
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January
1943 - The Germans surrender at Stalingrad
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_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
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The
Stilwell Road
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_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
Chiang Kai-shek in Calcutta
During the whole period of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's visit to India, the Government of India was placed in an awkward situation. It did not like such close contacts between the Generalissimo and the Congress leaders. This might create the impression both in India and abroad that the Generalissimo had come to meet us. On the other hand, the Generalissimo had made it clear that he had come to India to discuss the war situation not only with the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief but also with the Congress leaders. The Government could not therefore prevent him from establishing contacts with us.
The Generalissimo had expressed a wish to see the Taj. The Government had made a programme for an official visit when he would be accompanied by persons chosen by the Government. Madame Chiang Kai-shek, however, said that Jawaharlal should accompany them to Agra. He thus became a member of the party. This also was thoroughly disliked by the Government of India.
From Delhi, the Generalissimo went to Calcutta. The Government of Bengal had arranged that the Generalissimo would stay in the Viceregal Lodge at Alipur. The Generalissimo informed Jawaharlal about this and said that he hoped to meet him in Calcutta again. Jawaharlal did go to Calcutta and had further talks with him. Gandhiji was then staying in Birla Park and the Generalissimo came to meet him there. Their meeting lasted for about two hours with Madame Chiang Kai-shek as interpreter. Gandhiji told him how he had at first started Satyagraha in South Africa and how he had gradually developed the technique of non-violent non-cooperation for solving the Indian political problem.
I was not in Calcutta during the Generalissimo's visit. Jawaharlal told me later about the interview. During these days, Jawaharlal did not see eye to eye with Gandhiji in all matters. He felt that the way in which Gandhiji had spoken with the Generalissimo had not made a very good impression on him. It was however difficult for me to accept this version. It is possible that the Generalissimo had not been able to follow all the implications of Gandhiji's stand. He may also have remained unconvinced by Gandhiji's arguments, but I was sure that he must have been impressed by the magnetic influence which Gandhiji exercised on foreigners.
The Generalissimo, before he left, made a fervent appeal to Great Britain to give real political power to India as speedily as possible, but it was clear that he had not been able to convince the Viceroy or the British Government about the need for immediate recognition of Indian independence.
Maulana Azad, president of
Indian National Congress. Calcutta, early 1940s
(source pages 44-45 Maulana
Abdul Kalam Azad: “India Wins Freedom” London: Orient Longman, 1988.)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Orient Longman 1988)
Advice
from China
With the authority of one of the Allies' two greatest fighting leaders,
in a fighter's forthright style, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek last week told
Britain to quit stalling on the subject of India's political freedom. The
Gissimo was still visiting in India (TIME, Feb. 23), where he had just talked
with Mohandas Gandhi, but his words sounded to faraway London like a
thunderclap.
I hope Britain, without waiting for any demand on the part of the Indian
people, as speedily as possible will give them real political power so they
will be in a position to develop further their spiritual and material strength.
The Indian people thus would realize that their participation in the war was
not merely to aid anti-aggression nations to secure victory, but also the
turning point in their struggle for their own freedom.
These were the words of a man who does not propose to fight for white
men's imperialism. He is not a white man himself. He has fought Japan for four
and a half years to get political independence and strength for 425,000,000
yellow men. Now that he finds his cause involved in a desperate world war, he
wants the full alliance of India's 352,000,000 brown men.
His talk with the most remarkable of them all could only have
strengthened his desire. He met Mohandas Gandhi shortly after noon in the
marbled and gilded Calcutta mansion of Gandhi's rich cotton-milling backer,
Ghanshyamdas Birla. Throughout the conversations, Gandhi spun yarn on a charkha
(hand spinning wheel). He talked with the Gissimo through an interpreter, with
vivid Mme. Chiang in English. After 80 minutes the Chinese visitors dined,
while the Mohandas, as usual, abstained from mid-day eating. The conference
continued through Gandhi's evening meal of unleavened cakes, boiled vegetables,
goat's milk and fruit. Gandhi gave the yarn he had spun to the Gissimo, the
charkha to Mme. Chiang.
Action. The Gissimo's resounding statement on India pumped electricity
into India's two greatest political parties, Gandhi's Indian National Congress
and the Moslem League. A conference of Indian nonparty leaders, led by liberal
Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, at once passed a resolution asking Britain to declare
India's position "identical with those of other self-governing units of
the British Commonwealth."
In London there were immediate hints that the British Government had
understood, as well as heard, the Gissimo. Official circles were loud with
rumors that Winston Churchill, who was at last paying considerable attention to
his critics (see p. 27), would shortly move to increase India's autonomy. That
was a job which, owing to the Hindu-Moslem conflict in India, as well as to
Tory opposition at home, would call for real statesmanship. But, after the
Gissimo's words, it seemed that Britain might tackle the job.
Asia for the Asiatics. Throughout the democratic world, in fact, there
was a growing appreciation of the point of view eloquently expressed last week
by U.S. Pundit Walter Lippmann:
"It has never seemed possible to the pre-Singapore British
Government that it could apply the principles of the Atlantic Charter east of
Suez. . . . The Western nations must now do what hitherto they lacked the will
and the imagination to do: they must identify their cause with the freedom and
the security of the peoples of the East, putting away the 'white man's burden'
and purging themselves of the taint of an obsolete and obviously unworkable
white man's imperialism.
"We are at war with Japan because we refuse to sell out China and
make a deal with Japan.
. . .
"We have reason to think that the peoples of Asia will believe us.
... The Filipinos know that under American law their own independence is
assured to them. ... In this partnership now being demonstrated on the Bataan
Peninsula there is no question of imperialism, of the white man's burden, of
privileges and concessions. This is the only kind of partnership that deserves
to work. It is the only kind of partnership that can work."
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Mar. 2, 1942)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
Pick's
Pike
Allied troops in north Burma and southeast China were only 26 miles apart
across the savage mountains. They fought toward each other in wild,
monsoon-sodden terrain (see map). But even if they succeeded in joining, it
would be only a token. The real consideration in this remote. Godforsaken
battleground is a road—and the road has to wait for clean-up in the rear, and
until other terrain suitable for road-building is cleared by the fighters.
When the road is done; it will link the Calcutta railhead of Ledo in
India with China.
Only then will Lieut. General Joseph W. Stilwell and his Chinese allies
coming from Yunnan have made their objective. The road will also complete a
backbreaking, distasteful job for dambuilder Brigadier General Lewis A.
Pick—now a highway builder and the boss of Pick's Pike.
Straight-backed, six-footer Pick once said: "I can keep up with
Stilwell as fast as he can drive the Japs out of this area." He did. With
9,000 American engineer troops, a regiment of Chinese engineers and 10,000
native laborers, he had completed 167 miles of road and six airfields.
Last week he was working on the next 77-mile stretch to Mogaung, through
rain that averaged an inch a day, had already washed out some of the 700
bridges on the twisting road. The road, he had promised, would stay open
despite monsoon and high water.
Actually, the Ledo road was as much a drainage as a road-building
problem. Drainage was Pick's specialty. His heart was still in the Missouri
River Basin of the U.S., where he had been onetime Division Engineer. From this
job came "Pick's Plan," a series of dams and reservoirs to tame the
Missouri.
"I like to control water," Pick ruefully told an interviewer in
Burma. "Here, on this road, water tries to control me."
But the water was losing out. Pick, an incessant worker and a hard
driver, fought it 24 hours a day, using his equipment and men in shifts. Lead
bulldozers, often within sound of the fighting front, were no strangers to the
white-thatched engineer who trudged the job with his bamboo staff.*
Now he was approaching newly conquered territory, where the Jap had
obligingly helped out by maintaining a surfaced road from Kamaing to Mogaung,
there joining the railway and highway to Myitkyina (pronounced Mitch'-i-nah).
From Myitkyina it could go two ways: through jungle track northeast to
Lauh-kaung, south to Tengyueh, east to Burma Road; or it could go south from
Mogaung to Bhamo, northeast to Tengyueh. The battle's course would dictate the
choice.
Stilwell's Part. But first Stilwell must swab out Japanese pockets of
infection—including Myitkyina, around which, for more than 40 days, his troops
have been closing a circle at house-to-house pace. In about seven months
Stilwell had driven almost 200 miles from Ledo, had knocked out about 17,700
Japanese casualties. His Chinese, Americans, British, Burmese and Indians had
stamped out the 18th Japanese Division, whose fame at home was built on the
rape of Nanking, the capture of Shanghai and Singapore, victories in Malaya and
Burma. His troops had also badly mauled three other Jap divisions.
They still had many months of fighting ahead. But when Stilwell and Pick
meet the Yunnan Chinese, Pick's Pike will be finished.
* On a photograph of himself and Pick together Stilwell once wrote:
"To the old man with the stick."
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Jul. 17, 1944)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
Victory Deferred
Whatever Roosevelt and Churchill decided at Quebec about future blows against Japan remained a military secret. But there were signs that the Allied military disaster in Kwangsi Province (TIME, Sept. 25) might compel changes within China and thus lead to better things.
Last week the Japanese did not drive directly into Kweilin; they circled it to the south. But this made little difference; they were already in sight of their objective: driving the Fourteenth U.S. Air Force out of southeast China.* The Fourteenth still had four strips, now all doomed, east of the Hankow-Canton railway. Soon only the biggest of Chennault's planes will be able to reach the South China Sea, where in the first 19 days of September his B-24s alone had sunk 74,600 tons of Jap shipping. The hope of using Chennault's air forces to support the promised approach of Admiral Nimitz to the China coast has gone glimmering.
Chinese v. Chinese. While the situation in the field has worsened, so has the morale of China's Army. This year's Japanese campaigns, first in the Yellow River valley and then southward from Changsha to Kweilin, have been a series of defeats for the Chinese because:
¶ The underfed troops had to live off the peasantry and often were so rapacious that they alienated their own people.
¶ The morale of officers, unable to live on their pay, deteriorated equally. They often padded their ration rolls with fictitious names, sold the extra supplies for living expenses.
¶ As a result there have been cases this year of Chinese troops disarmed by their own people; other cases when officers took the few trucks that the Chinese Army had and used them to save their household goods (four high officers were shot for this after the fall of Changsha).
But one element of hope in the situation is that its gravity is forcing the Chinese to pull themselves together (see FOREIGN NEWS).
A few weeks ago Chiang Kai-shek began to take steps to reform the draft machinery. One of his ablest generals, Chen Cheng, is pushing a reorganization of the Army, to abolish about a third of its theoretical divisions, so that henceforth Chinese Army units will be full strength.
Meantime, China's allies are doing a little to remedy the basic conditions which made these reforms necessary.
The trickle of supplies to China, flown over the Hump from India by the U.S. Army Air Transport Command, has grown to a rill: almost 25,000 tons a month, as compared with barely half that in the good old days of the bad old Burma Road. In addition, the Fourteenth and Twentieth carry in much of their own gasoline. Of the A.T.C.'s tonnage, 25 to 40% goes to Chinese ground troops, under the personal allocation and supervision of General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell. This comprises 75-and 105-mm. guns, trucks, jeeps, small arms and ammunition.
Chief credit for getting so much over the Hump goes to grizzled, pipe-smoking Brigadier General Thomas O. Hardin, commander of the India-China wing of the A.T.C., who has driven his pilots to perform miracles of mountain flying. But some of the miracles have been performed farther back on the war's longest supply line.
Lean, good-humored Brigadier General Gilbert X. ("Buck") Cheves, cavalryman by background, a port commander in the Service Forces by necessity, has broken the Calcutta bottleneck. During his first month on the job, the tonnage unloaded doubled. Recently a Liberty which had taken ten days to load in the U.S. was emptied on the Hooghly in 46 hours 4 minutes (standard elsewhere: seven to nine days).
The next big step to redress the debacle in south China will probably have to wait for the fall of Germany. With the diversion of material no longer needed for Europe, the volume of war supplies for Asia will grow more rapidly. For example, heavy bomber groups can fly from Britain or Italy to India, carrying their own ground crews. Ships on their way to Europe with munitions can be diverted to Calcutta or Colombo. There will be plenty of men and arms; and some should be able to move over a rerouted Burma Road through Myitkyina and Tengyueh into China. But still there will be difficulty finding bases close enough to the enemy to use all this military windfall effectively. But the slowly rising pressure on Japan will mount more swiftly, and aid will come not only directly to China but month by month as Admiral Nimitz moves across the Pacific—and probably from another source. Russia, meticulously neutral until Germany's fall, will want to have the voice which only an active partner can have in the Pacific settlement (see FOREIGN NEWS).
*Since the Japanese drove south from Changsha in June, the Fourteenth has lost fighter strips at Lishui in Kiangsu Province, Wenchow in Chekiang Province and a third north of Hengyang; it has lost major bases at Hengyang, Ling-ling and finally Kweilin. It has fallen back on Liuchow (now threatened), 90 miles southeast of Kweilin, and Nanning, 115 miles farther along the same line (now also threatened).
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Oct. 2, 1944)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
A
Matter of Supply
More than ever before, China's future seemed to hang on the fighting in
north Burma. As always, China's great need was supply; in north Burma this week
there was hope that soon a small part of the need would be filled. If Chinese
soldiers south of Myitkyina could fight the Burma-Ledo Road through, and U.S.
engineers could follow them closely, as they had up to now, a route for supply
from the U.S. via Calcutta and the Road would be opened to Chungking.
More important even than the Road was the 2,000-mile pipeline that went
with it. Already the line, which carries both gasoline and oil, had been laid
far into Burma. It had had steady use, had paid off at the fighting fronts with
release of planes and transport from fuel chores. It now crossed three rivers,
must still cross several more. Once completed, it would also free Hump flyers
and the Road's truckers into China for transport of guns, munitions and food.
Thousands of tons of ammunition and artillery await the day in India's
stockpiles.
This week Chrysler's Dodge Division announced that shipment to India of
several thousand trucks of special design for the Road was begun in October.
Presumably the Army wanted China to know that help was near. While the trucks
waited Lieut. General Daniel I. Sultan last week had Bhamo surrounded, needed
only 65 more miles to link India with the Burma Road. Because the Japs' main
bodies had been forced toward south Burma, there was some reason to hope that
the 65 miles might not be too long or too bloody.
Now, more than ever, the Road was a military "must." The
Japanese, with unbroken communications from Manchuria to the South China Sea,
were bulging westward. With the capture of Ishan they ousted the U.S.
Fourteenth Air Force from another airstrip. Under personal command of scrawny,
high-powered Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, the Japanese now headed for the
Chinese end of the Burma-Chungking Road. Only 180 miles away, they stood a good
chance of cutting the Road below Chungking before the Chinese at the other end
opened it up.
Fingers Crossed. U.S. Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer, in Chungking
only a few weeks as "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's successor, sized up the
situation as serious but not irreparable. Said Wedemeyer: the Japanese are
using a well-trained, well-equipped army in China led by "a very able
commander" with the intention of fighting the war in Asia rather than on
Japan's home soil. Nevertheless, he predicted that the Japanese could be defeated
within a year after victory over Germany. The U.S., said he, would concentrate
on supply for Chinese troops, continue air support for the Chinese Army. To
Chiang Kai-shek he submitted recommendations ("simple and I hope
sound") for immediate action against the enemy, kept his fingers crossed
for speedy success in north Burma.
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Nov. 27, 1944)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
Hello! Hello!
Said Kunming: "Wai! Wai! Hello! Hello!"
Said Calcutta: "Hum Calcutta se bolte hein Calcutta calling!"
For the first time China and India were linked by telephone last week. U.S. engineers, with British material and Chinese and Indian labor, had strung the wires, in pace with the construction of the Stilwell Road, across 1,750 miles of some of the world's toughest jungles and mountains, made tougher by Japanese gun fire. Said the New York Times:
"Whether or not swift communication makes for swift understanding one doesn't know. The line may carry angry words. . . . But the Orient ... is shrinking, and this is one of the shrinkages. ..."
(source: TIME Magazine, New
York, Jun. 25, 1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
Letters:
Peacetime Conscription
Calcutta to Kunming
Sirs:
Reference is made to TIME'S [June 25] article on the Calcutta-Kunming
telephone line. . . . Word received here from the India-Burma Theater indicates
that TIME'S casual reference to construction by "U.S. engineers, with
British material and Chinese and Indian labor" has had a detrimental
effect on the morale of some 5,000 U.S. Army Signal Corps men who participated
in the project. These men spent 22 months fighting malaria, monsoons, wild
animals, pests, and Jap snipers to build this vitally important line through
1,700 miles of treacherous jungle and mountain terrain, and unquestionably
deserve a world of credit for a great job. . . .
In overcoming tremendous obstacles to build this communications link,
which serves the Stilwell Road, the pipeline and many airfields, these Signal
Corps men have made an important contribution to victory over Japan and
certainly should not be ignored in any discussion of the project.
FRANK E. STONER
Major General, U.S.A.
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Aug. 6, 1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
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05 April -
22 June 1944 - Battles of Imphal and Kohima
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
Renegade's Revenge
Thoughtful men thought
twice when they learned that sardonic, myopic Subhas Chandra Bose, traitor, was with the Japs around Imphal.
Twice President of the Indian National Congress
and long the loudest foe of British rule in India, Bose's name was
wildly cheered in Delhi after Bose
himself had turned up in Berlin seeking Hitler's aid in freeing India. That was August 1942.
By last October Bose had
worked his way to Singapore via Tokyo. He proclaimed a "Provisional Government of India,"
set about recruiting an "army of liberation," was tireless in his praise for Jap assistance in
the task. When the time came to threaten
Allied communications with southeast Asia, the Japs dubbed Bose a
general and took him along with his
"army of liberation." Through the heavy folds of British censorship
in New Delhi came word that Bose's
forces numbered some 3,000 men; others, freer to speak the truth, guess that he may have as many as
30,000 Indians from Malaya and from Jap prison
camps. More important than the size of his army was one explosive fact:
an armed, anti-British Indian stands
today on Indian soil and calls upon his fellows to rebel against the Raj.
Skillful lawyer, shrewd
polemicist, Cambridge-educated Bose speaks and writes with logic and persuasion. In Indian politics, he used
to rank at least No. 3, after Gandhi and
Nehru, and for some he still is No. 1. His theme of Samyavada (equality)
with no room for the idle rich has charm
for millions of unhappy Indians. He emphasizes a single-party state and authoritarian discipline.
Beyond the prongs of the
Jap advance into little Manipur lies the sprawling province of Bengal, Bose's home. Beyond the immediate
threat to Allied arms lies the chilling
possibility that the Japs mean what they say when they promise
350,000,000 Indians immediate
independence. Well may the canny Japanese recall how Kaiser Wilhelm shoved Lenin into a tottering Russian empire,
watched him bring the structure down.
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Apr. 17, 1944)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
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of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
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June 1944 - D
Day Landings
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Calcutta________________________
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Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
Second
Front
THE long wait is over. The invasion of Europe has begun. No more will heavy air attacks on targets on the Continent be officially described as pre-invasion raids. Yesterday morning the N coast of France saw British paratroops and landing craft about their business, and all the other activities and instruments of large-scale invasion. The first news came from German sources; that is, German wireless described what was happening, and interpreted it as the long expected invasion. London corroborrated a few hours later.
(source: The Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, June 7. 1944)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
Allied
troops hand landed an the beaches of Normandy
One morning, when Ron,
was resting during his break and I with my knitting was listening to the radio
while the children were playing at my feet, I suddenly heard the startling
announcement that on the morning of 6 June Allied troops hand landed an the
beaches of Normandy. I could not believe
it – my ears were deceiving me I thought, but then, shortly, the same exciting
news came through again. […] A wave of
optimism swept through us all with some believing that peace was in the offing
– perhaps a month or two.
Eugenie Fraser, wife of a jute mill manager, Titaghur, June 1944
(source:page 115 of Eugenie Fraser: “A home by the Hooghly. A jute Wallahs Wife” .Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing 1989)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Eugenie Fraser)
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20 March
1945 - The Allies recapture Mandalay
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
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03 May
1945 - The Allies retake Rangoon
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
Rangoon--End & Beginning
Somewhere in Burma, one
day last week, Wing Commander A. E. Saunders' Royal Air Force squadron sadly posted him as missing; he had
been gone too many hours on his
reconnaissance mission. In their wildest imaginings his men could not
have pictured what had happened: all by
himself, Saunders had occupied Rangoon, the great prize of the year-long battles from India's frontier.
The Commander had tooled
his airplane over Rangoon, and had seen no enemy activity. Warily, he peeped at the big Japanese
airfield at Mingaladon. It was empty. So he landed. By foot and by cart, he made his way the
twelve miles into Rangoon, there found a Union
Jack flying over a jail where 1,400 British, U.S. and Indian war
prisoners were quartered. The Japanese,
who had occupied the big Burmese port since the fourth month of the Pacific war, had fled.
Then Airman-Infantryman
Saunders became Seaman Saunders. He scrounged a sampan and sailed the Rangoon River southward. Soon he met
British soldiers and passed the word. Then
Rangoon was more fully and formally captured.
Big Show. To take Burma's
capital Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten had mounted his biggest combined operation of the Pacific war. To the
north of the city Lieut. General Sir
William J. Slim's land forces awaited the go signal. British East Indies
Fleet units, standing in to the Gulf of
Martaban, shelled the flatlands south of Rangoon. Paratroops floated down south of Rangoon to smooth the
way for amphibious forces. Far to the
southwest, in the Bay of Bengal, aircraft carriers and battleships
carried out strikes on the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands to prevent interference with the big show.
When the curtain was
lifted on Rangoon there were surprisingly few Japs around. Some 30,000 of the enemy remained in Burma, but
many of them were cut off by the sea to the
west, their escape routes to Thailand sealed. If the almost bloodless
taking of Rangoon was an anticlimax to
the bloody battles that had been fought for Mandalay and the roads southward, the strategic results were even
more satisfactory than had been hoped for.
Big Future. The badly
beaten Japs had left Rangoon's fine port unblocked and virtually undamaged. Soon Allied seaborne supplies for
China could be transferred there to the
rails that run to Lashio, as they were before the Japs took Burma. The
slow, arduous truck haul over the
Stilwell Road from India to Lashio might soon be merely a secondary supply service.
Rangoon—in Burmese its
name means "the end of the war"*—represented the virtual end of the Burma campaign and a good beginning
toward greater victories.
* Rangoon is a corruption
of Yan Kon; it was so named by a conquering Burmese king in 1753.
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, May. 14, 1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
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07 May 1945
- German surrender VE Day
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
A Great Leader
WITH victory drawing rapidly near, the Allies have had to endure heavy loss. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the USA for the longest period in history, was great not merely by virtue of his office. The strength of character which enabled him to overcome severe physical disability and kept him serene, confident and cap>ib'c amidst the steady more exacting difficulties of the past twelve years, during which his health was never good, was Joined with great gifts of leadership, a liberal outlook, a remarkable political, flair and statesmanship of the highest order. That his idealism was allied with opportunism caused him to be criticized by over-enthusiastic supporters as well as by political opponents. But there could be no lasting doubt either of his sincerity or of the devotion with which he set himself to forward the great ends which he had put before the nation and the world, notably freedom from fear and freedom from want.
(source: The
Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, April 4,1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
Victory
VICTORY in the West brings no clear-cut end as in November 1918. Relief and rejoicing are tempered accordingly, but are nevertheless great. They will be accompanied by determination to conclude the whole grim story and that is all to the good. Still, the most important chapter is already closed. Slaves and prisoners are being treed. The anxieties of millions diminish. Unhappily they are by no means over for the majority. The miseries which Hitler's New Order has created will take long to alleviate; the problems it has set long to solve.
Less than eleven months have passed since D-Day, when Allied landings in Europe at last prepared the way for that combined effort on land which the Russians had long been urging. Even in its final stages, it was but additional to (and would have been impossible without) their own greater and long-enduring struggle.
(source: The
Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, May 8, 1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
Nandita's story - Calcutta -
August 1945
In 1945 I lived in Calcutta, which was where the war was fought from, facing the Japanese front. We were aware that the war had finished in Europe, but it wasn't yet finished for us. Calcutta was where the Chindits launched their Burma operations from - it was stuffed with soldiers - a huge force from all the nations -- Poles, White Russians, Americans, British and, of course the enormous Indian Army; we had 2,000,000 soldiers under arms. Several Air Forces flew sorties against Japan out over the 'hump of China'.
Nandita Sen, Schoolgirl,
Calcutta. August 1945
(Source: Nandita's story at: http://timewitnesses.org/english/%7Enandita.html,
Nandita Sen Hyderabad - January 2005, seen 18th November 2005)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Nandita Sen)
Escaping
India to Europe
By July 1945, the war
with Germany being over, my father decided we should return to the U.K., as at
that time India, politically, was in turmoil. We sailed from Bombay on the
"Johan an Oldenverd", a Dutch vessel manned by a Javanese crew. This
again was a troopship with returning servicemen, many of the officers accompanied
by their brides. We were allotted a cabin holding 30 women and children. It was
very overcrowded and so hot and stuffy that many of us slept on board until we
reached the Mediterranean. We had travelled all round the Cape and now returned
via the Suez Canal - this time only taking three weeks.
Mary Anderson (nee Hezmalhalch), schoolgirl, Calcutta, Summer 1945
(source: A2640601 A Schoolgirl’s War in the Far East at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
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August 1945 -
The Atom Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
The
Charter
IN his admirable address at the closing plenary session of the United
Nations Conference, President Truman, who spoke with confidence of ratification
by the USA, called the new United Nations Charter a great instrument for peace
and security and human progress, but also not s final or a perfect instrument.
The Delegates spoke in the same strain. There has been a tendency in this
country to dwell on its imperfections, even to suggest that it was bound to
prove unworkable at a time when its shape was still unknown. But delegates at
San Francisco are convinced that this is far from the truth. The candid
statement issued by the Indian delegation shows success here, failure there,
compromise elsewhere. This was the experience of many countries, including the
greatest and most powerful. But the Indian delegates, though also alluding to
the imperfections, are convinced that the Charter is an heroic attempt to create
an international organization for the welfare of mankind. The word
"attempt" seems very suitable.
(source: The
Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, June 30.1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
Obsequies
AT Geneva the 26-year old League of Nations is dying. The mourners have gathered, many as sincere as Lord Cecil, a godfather. It is customary to speak well of the departed. The assets left behind have been estimated at Ł3,000,000. Not convention nor great expectations, however, but justice requires that the League's obituary should have regard to its achievements, which were substantial for good. Admirable and lasting work was done in social questions, including protection of women and children, control of drug traffic and abolition of slavery and forced labour, and in public health and in economic and financial questions, especially on the statistical side.
Inevitably, however, it is by its political record that it is judged. Its small, but useful successes are forgotten. Its large, but disastrous failures are remembered.
(source: The
Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, April 9, 1946)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
Hiroshima Mon Ami
HIROSHIMA, the great port and Japanese Army base 150 miles west of Kobe, on Honshu, has achieved the unenviable distinction of being the first target to feel the devastating effects of the world's most terrible instrument of destruction—the new atomic bomb.
The existence of the Allies' atomic bomb, more powerful. than 20,000 tons of TNT (trinitrotoluol) and having more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British 22,000 Ib "Grand Slam" was first disclosed by President Truman in a statement from Washington yesterday.
The President said : "With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form, these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development".
He said Mr Churchill and the late President Roosevelt had agreed on the wisdom of carrying on atomic bomb manufacture in the USA which was to outreach the German attack.
President Truman continued: "We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely even,' productive enter prise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war."
"It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued from Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth."
(source: The
Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, August 8,1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
The atomic bomb
August 8,1945
Dearest Ritter:
It has been several days since I have used the little fellow (the typewriter), but I notice that it still types with gusto...whenever I hit the right keys.
There has been just one subject of conversation anywhere in the hospital today;
that is right, the atomic bomb. I was pretty sure that they would succeed in splitting and harnessing the atom, but I had hoped its power would be less than what had been predicted. Apparently it is even greater than first guessed. Unless the stories are all propaganda, the effect of the first bomb ever to be dropped has been terrific, it matters little now whether the Japs quit or not; we can proceed at a methodical rate to obliterate them with almost complete safety to ourselves. Furthermore, there can be no objection to its use since the Geneva convention does not mention it.
But in another sense the atomic bomb fills me with a sense of impending doom.
Now all the Jules Verne stories about mankind being wiped out are more than theory. It could be done. There will be no question about international amity now..either we have it or we have nothing.
The USA has the upper hand on this atomic bomb; surely it will have sense enough to keep it. But what our scientists have done, so can those of other nations. In a few years, those who were first will have no particular significance. Nevertheless, the short time goal which I first note is that of getting the war over with and that will make possible the attainment of my ONE goal, getting back to you. I doubt if it can be done by Christmas, but it isn't outside the realm of reality, as it was several weeks ago.
I am sure that I am catching a slight cold, which is not making me any happier or easier to get along with. I worked hard all day, but found that the morning program kept getting out of order.
Tonight positively nothing, except to drop flat on the bed and sob with relief...I intend to dream of you. Just you, sweetest girl...
Love and devotion,
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, August 8,
1945.
(Source: pp.178 ff. of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
Fate
Closing In; Last week's atomic conversation:
Alamogordo, N. Mex. was abuzz with the news that red Hereford cows had
turned white following the first atomic explosion nearby. At Carrizozo, a black
cat had turned half white. At Bingham. a rancher blamed the atom for grey
streaks in his beard.
Said the Rev. Francis J. Connell,
a professor at the Catholic University of Washington, D.C.: "The use of
the atomic bomb was simply murder."
The Aga Khan, spiritual leader
of tens of millions of Moslems, declared
in Calcutta that he favored the creation of a "supernational state"
to regulate bomb production. Barring that, he would feel safest if the U.S.
kept the secret to itself.
Moscow's New Times read the U.S. a history lesson implying that any
attempt on its part to gain world
domination via the atom would fail. At Sacramento, Calif., the aviators who dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki were
asked if they wanted it placed under
international control. Shouted the fivers: "Hell, no!"
In Oak Ridge, Tenn., cradle of the bomb, the Man in the Street was quoted
by a newspaper survey: "We spent two billion dollars and a lot of time on
it, so why give the secret away?"
Dorothy Thompson declared that the U.S. could not give the bomb away
because it did not own it: the world's scientists had given it to the
"western world" to keep in
sacred trust. Most scientists disagreed with her. Later, in a bit of
atomic whimsy, Columnist Thompson wrote:
"Scene: A ward in Bellevue. A screaming bearded gentleman is being hustled
into a straitjacket. Guard: 'Completely coo-coo. Found him trying to board a
ship. Yelled he was going to the Big Three meeting to save the world. Screamed
he represented all the people on earth. The nut said he had a teeny-weeny
atomic bomb and knew exactly where to drop it. Said he was commissioned by
God.' Patient falls heavily to floor. Headlines: .. . 'Mysterious Explosion
Destroys Bellevue. All Maniacs Missing.'"
Prophet H. G. Wells, 79, who foresaw the atom bomb 31 years ago,
predicted the imminent end of mankind. In his latest book, Mind at the End of
its Tether, written last year and serialized in British and U.S. newspapers
last week, he wrote: "Homo sapiens, as he has been pleased to call himself
is, in his present form, played out. The stars in their courses have turned
against man and he has to give place to some other animal, better adapted to
the fate that closes in. This new animal may be of an entirely alien strain, or
may arise as a new modification of the man species . . . but it will certainly
not be human."
(source: TIME
Magazine, New York, Nov. 19, 1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Time Magazine)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
There were no cheers in our
Mess at the news of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
One day, returning from the city
alone (she had stayed behind to wash her hair, a tedious process because of its
length), I came bearing gifts. A small bottle of 'Je Reviens' which I had
discovered by chance on Chowringhee, and a pair of lovebirds in a bamboo cage.
She was out on her veranda; no
one was. The mosquito nets were down, the lights on; wild dogs barked across the
compound. I went over to the Mess. It was full. Silent. Only the fans
clickety-clacking and a faint voice through heavy static from the bakelite
radio behind the bar. I saw her standing motionless, hair in a towel, hand to
her face. Evelyn in a chair, head bowed. The faces round the bar taut. There
were no cheers in our Mess at the news of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Dirk Bogarde, Air
photographic intelligence officer. Calcutta, Sept. 1945
(source: pages 138-145, Dirk
Bogarde: Snakes and Ladders London; Chatto & Windus, 1978.)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Dirk Bogarde)
The event I recall most
vividly is the Hiroshima bomb
The event I recall most vividly is the Hiroshima bomb. That day a very good American family friend - Harold Leventhal, author and impressario - called on us and received the scorn and outrage we felt. Harold was left-wing himself but was not given a chance to defend his stand. He beat a hasty retreat, and passing a Royal Air Force officer on the stairs said "hey - don't go in there - it's dangerous". "That's alright old chap" was the reply, "I'm safe enough - I'm not American".
Nandita Sen, Schoolgirl,
Calcutta. August 1945
(Source: Nandita's story at: http://timewitnesses.org/english/%7Enandita.html,
Nandita Sen Hyderabad - January 2005, seen 18th November 2005)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Nandita Sen)
That justified to me the
second atomic bomb.
Now,
V.E. Day, the war in Europe had finished. We were glad to hear of course, that
it had finished, but our war hadn’t. We were still fighting the Japs. They were
the rottenest enemy anybody could fight. All the atrocities that were done by
the Germans were done by the Japs. People had hidden many of the things that
the Japs did. The Germans have had to live with their past, but not the Japs.
However, it took an atomic bomb to end our war. Now, when the atomic bomb fell,
people had said to me that it was immoral. But I don’t see it as any worse to
be killed by an atomic bomb than by torture, and the treatment that the Japs
dealt out to our prisoners. They say, “Was it necessary to drop two bombs?”
Well, the Japs were a people very difficult to vanquish because of their
ideology. Whether one would have been enough, I do not know, but, they had a
documentary on television: when Hitler was losing the war, he sent a submarine
with his uranium, and all the details of how far the Germans had got with an
atomic bomb. We knew the submarine was going to Japan, and we did not want to
sink it. We wanted to capture it, which we did. With that, we realised how near
the Japs were to an atomic bomb and how near the Germans were. So it wasn’t a
matter of whether it was right to drop it, it was a question of who was first to
drop it. That justified to me the second atomic bomb.
Dr. Ivy Oates, doctor, Calcutta, 1945
(source: A3890225 A Woman Doctor (Part Three) Edited at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
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14 August
1945 - Japan surrenders VJ Day
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
Gracious lord has saved our Emperor dear
R.P. Ghosh, Calcutta, 1945
(source: personal
scrapbook kept by Malcolm
Moncrieff Stuart O.B.E., I.C.S. seen on 20-Dec-2005 /
Reproduced by courtesy of Mrs. Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart)
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
The Surrender
BOWING to the inevitable the Japanese Government has offered to
capitulate, making but one proviso. The Allied people will be glad not only for
their own sakes, but for the sake of the Japanese themselves. Bitter and
treacherous enemies though they have been, it was becoming an intolerable
burden on conscience that cities should be obliterated and thousands of
innocent people killed in order to prove to their militarist leaders the folly
of fighting on. The atom bomb raids have shocked all but the unthinking or the
heartless.
(source: The
Statesman. Calcutta/Delhi, August 11,1945)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with The Statesman)
VJ Day
August 15,1945
My darling Ritter:
And so it finally came, that day for which we have been waiting, that preliminary day, the one that had to dawn before we could anticipate our reunion, our rebirth. The enemy gave up, and perhaps gave us several more months of joy. Yet much depends on what move is made by those who control the hospital. I am not sure that I would have been better off in the 12th. Our safest outlet would be to stay here for several months, then ship home when the theater is cleared. I look forward to that as a solution.
I can hope.
Assorted celebrating is in progress (11:30 p.m.) in our area and the club held open house. I had expected to dress and go over about 10:00, but Gus had started drinking early in the afternoon and passed out about 7:45, just outside the door of our room. We dragged him inside but he kicked the furniture and swore, so we let him go.
He promptly lurched through the door, vomited, and lay down on the ramp. Shirtless, the mosquitoes could get at him. I tried to cover him, but he knocked everything off. I got assistance from the guard at 10:00, to get him inside, but he was truculent, wanted to go to the Club.
I told him "No Club," but it wouldn't have made any difference; he couldn't have walked 50 feet. He stumbled out the back way and was gone for an hour" so, being my brother's keeper served a useful purpose. It kept me from the club.
My drinking has been confined to a minimum - a little at noon, at 4:30, and at 6:00, Then, I quit. The stew tonight was atrocious, but I bribed the bearer to bring me 3 dishes of delicious ice cream-with chocolate syrup.
Obviously, since the surrender announcement came at 8:00 a.m., little was accomplished today, and we gave our patients permission to stay in the wards – a pretty concession, since normally they have to be out from 8:30 -11:00; 2:00 - 4:00. Despite the splendid activities program built up for them, they don't do much. My people were sicker today than before -- Imagine?! (Illness carries a shipping priority.)
The Col. was very rough in the section meeting today. Stressed saluting and making applications for regular army (God forbid!) All of us civilians think the R.A. boys are afraid we will leave them with all the work to do. Ha!!!! Gladly. Incidentally, I was 15 ninutes late, but the Col. didn't snap at me. We had a victory retreat this afternoon.
My everlasting love, precious sweetheart.
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, August 15,
1945.
(Source: p.183 of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
Neither of our opponents had
a chance once we got into the fight
First, a letter in each of the day's mail deliveries pleased me immensely. August 11 and 12. You were at Russell's Point when you wrote the 12th, and you and the kids had just returned from an abortive peace celebration. If you stayed there until Wednesday, you had a real opportunity to celebrate. One thing about this rejoicing. I have never had the slightest doubt at any time that we would win, and I just haven't felt like yelling and shouting,
When one goes to a football game, there is usually a good chance that the other team might win, but in this little game, neither of our opponents had a chance once we got into the fight. If they hadn't been blinded by their own stupidity, they would have known that as well as I.
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, August 23,1945
(Source: page 187 of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
The Japanese have surrendered
When
we were in Calcutta in a restaurant eating roast duck, there was a loud noise
at the door.
Corporal
came in and shouted "War is over. The Americans have dropped a bomb and
the Japanese have surrendered."
Victor Blease, Royal
Air Force, Calcutta, 1945
(source: A5007296 The War from Beginning to End at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
Convalescing by VJ night
Monday, 14 August: Moira and I have become firm friends. We finally
waved goodbye to Harrington Street and travelled up to Lebong a week ago.
We arrived on VJ night, and, although very tired, we unpacked our
evening dresses and joined in the celebrations at the convalescent depot. These
were rather hectic, especially for Moira and me, as we were the only two girls
under 30. There were two others over 40 — and at least 80 officers!
Henrietta Susan Isabella Burness, V.A.D., Calcutta, 14th August 1945
(source: A1940870 Life in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment), 1945at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
… allied forces and their
friends, hooting wildly as they drove around
On that particular day the streets were filled with trucks full of allied forces and their friends, hooting wildly as they drove around. A small gang of us youngsters piled onto a tram and crossed and re-crossed the Howrah Bridge, whooping and shouting encouragement to all and sundry. The only people not looking happy were the black-marketeers. They had done well out of the extraordinary wealth of goods shipped in to feed American troops.
Nandita Sen, Schoolgirl,
Calcutta. August 1945
(Source: Nandita's story at: http://timewitnesses.org/english/%7Enandita.html,
Nandita Sen Hyderabad - January 2005, seen 18th November 2005)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Nandita Sen)
'But you do grow to loathe
Them, don't you!'
It was still raining on V.J.
Night. We drove into the Club and dined and danced to celebrate the end, for
ever we all thought, of our war. There was great euphoria in the dining room,
people cheered and sang as if it was New Year's Eve.
At the next table to ours a party
of six wore funny hats, and a mem-sahib in a crepe paper wimple hit a silver
salver, offered by a bearer, high into the air. 'I said mashed potatoes' Not
boiled!' she shouted. The little white balls scattered about our feet.
'Christ!' she said. 'But you do grow to loathe Them, don't you!'
Dirk Bogarde, Air
photographic intelligence officer. Calcutta, Sept. 1945
(source: pages 138-145, Dirk
Bogarde: Snakes and Ladders London; Chatto & Windus, 1978.)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Dirk Bogarde)
The Yellow Dragon was so
tired with fighting and so weak, he could'nt go on any more
There
is a very important thing I've forgotten all about a few pages back, and that
is that while I was in Calcutta some very wonderful news
came on the wireless, and later in the papers. This said that the Yellow Dragon
was so tired with fighting and so weak, he could'nt go on any more. Now this
was the Yellow Dragon Daddy mentioned before, and which he had come with many
others, lots of fireworks, aeroplanes, ships, guns and all sorts of things, to
help Saint George in his fight, and how it was all over and there was much
rejoicing in every land except Japan — which is the home of the Yellow Dragon.
In these great matters, the Eagle of America with a great many ships, fireworks
and men had also striven mightily at the side of Saint George, and very lately
the Russian Bear had helped too. Long before any of this though, the Chinese
people — who are also yellow — had been carrying all the burden of this fight
with the Yellow Dragon, and they were weary indeed. Although they were many,
they had very few fireworks to bring against all the evil things of the Yellow
Dragon. Now there are no more dragons to fight, so all the King's soldiers,
sailors and airmen can go and rest with their families at home. Perhaps — we
hope so — never to go away again because there will be Peace and Goodwill
everywhere. We must all strive mightily, always for the right, against all evil
things, and remember the teaching of Christ that we should love one another. If
we do this, then the dragons will die out, and all will be fair in every land.
Leonard Charles Irvine, 4393843, Royal Air Force
Flt Sgt Nav, Calcutta, 1945
(source: Leonard Charles Irvine "A LETTER TO MY SON" at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
who was the orderly officer
on V.J. night?
However,
who was the orderly officer on V.J. night? You can have three guesses and be
right the first time, I was. Everybody was celebrating, the men were all drunk,
and fireworks were going off all over the place. I was in Casualty, one soldier
came in, drunk as a coot, slipped over on….well, he wouldn’t do anything that
anybody said. He slipped on the floor, so I said to the orderlies, “Sit on
him,” which they did very readily; they descended on him, and so, I got on my knees
and stitched up his hand. I learned something that I wasn’t quite sure of
before, namely, what a wonderful anaesthetic alcohol is. He got up, very
merrily, and said, “I’ll come and take you out tomorrow,” which of course,
delighted the orderlies very much.
Dr. Ivy Oates, doctor, Calcutta, August 1945
(source: A3890225 A Woman Doctor (Part Three) Edited at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5
September 1945 - British troops land in Singapore
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13
September 1945 - The last Japanese troops in Burma and the Andamans surrender
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
POWS of the Japanese are
freed
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
POWs of the Japanese
September 1, 1945
Dearest Ritter:
So beginneth a new month.
Last year I was still in Bombay.
The year before I was in Washington, Pa.
Next year - in your arms, and the place won't count! Well, that is something!
We have one more month of this rather uncomfortable weather to endure, then the season will become nice. If our work lets up sufficiently, life shouldn't be too onerous, especially if I can get out to the golf course several times a week. I will begin golfing this Wednesday, unless something interferes.
Today, Saturday, I went to the general meeting which is held weekly in the conference room. This morning, after an incredible interlude of an hour in which the RA doctors, with the exception of Peterson, proved that they couldn't read English in attempting to interpret a directive, an English lieutenant, who had been a war prisoner in Siam since January 1942, spoke to us.
He told of the general bad conditions under which they worked, the lack and poor quality of the food, positively no medical supplies except what they bought themselves, etc. Since he was an officer he probably fared better than average, but he had it rough. Fourth-grade rice twice a day, with a little salt. That did it, and there was no more.
Punishment for officers was usually to stand at attention for an incredible length of time - usually one, two, or three days...continuously. If the guard didn't like your expression, he slapped you hard. Two of their officers were beaten to death with bamboo sticks; two others whipped until they would be crippled for life, but they were taken away and never seen again.
Since they were given no medicine, when working in the jungle, the prisoners died like flies. From what little pay they were able to get out of the Japs, they shared in the expense of buying what drugs they could find to purchase. I believe the officer said that he had had malaria 36 times in three years. Still, he looked fairly healthy when I first saw him. One of the sabotage tricks used by the British while building the railroad for the Japs was to carry the queen white ant and several others wrapped in mud to the pilings of the trestles, plant them near the uprights so the termites could eat.
But as harshly as the Japs treated the prisoners, in a sense they treated their own soldiers worse. A Jap officer or noncom thought nothing of knocking another soldier down, beating him with anything he had in his hand. In Jap hospitals the Jap patients were given few drugs, little medication, two thirds of an ordinary food ration, permitted to talk only occasionally at stated times, and not permitted to read or write at all. Since they were no longer of use to the army, they were not worth wasting much time on.
This applied to the honorably wounded as well as to others who sickened from malaria, dysentery, etc.
The Lt. told of seeing trains of wounded Japs with ugly, dirty, bloody dressings;
unkempt; unfed. One man with an arm-and-leg amputation had two bloody bandaged stumps, clutched a handful of raw rice in his remaining hand (his ration for a five-day trip), begged a cigarette from the hated enemy prisoner of war. He got it.
I am amazed at the equanimity which not only the British but our own American POW's show toward the Jap when discussing the hardships they underwent while in a Jap camp. I do not think that they consider the Jap quite human. I am sure that they I pity him.
I finished a book this evening before dressing. Talked with Pilgrim and Dols for awhile in the former's room. Axtmeyer, Hines, McKinley, and Fischer came along on their way to the club. I joined them for a rather careless late evening but left before they did. Gus had returned from the Chinese consul's party at which he had met a Red Cross girl. While we were talking, the gang mentioned above came roaring along headed by Dols, who was more than three sheets to the wind. We got them out of our room, and then they went down to serenade Whit, ended by squirting the fire extinguisher on both Whit and Napper, which made both boys exceedingly angry.
Everyone thought it funny but they. By 2 a.m. all had quieted down.
So much in love with you,
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, September 1,
1945.
(Source: pp.197 ff. of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
these men were so thin and
wasted
I
was part of the 267 Squadron who were charged with flying these sick, emaciated
men to Akyab Island from where they joined a ship home, or if very sick, were
sent to hospital in Calcutta. Normally a Dakota would take 25 passengers, but
these men were so thin and wasted that we were able to fly them out 60 on board
at a time. The planes flew missions whatever the weather, and were even flown
through torrential rain and thunderstorms. One day the ground crew at the
airfield saw a Dakota land with parts of a Bailey Bridge sticking out of it!
The Dakota had been caught in severe turbulence and the plane suddenly dropped
500 feet. There were no doors on the delivery planes, and cargo was just
strapped down. The incredible drop had dislodged the cargo so that parts were
sticking out of the plane. The pilot had to do a very amazing landing.
Derrick Hull , Royal
Air Force, Calcutta, Aug/Sept1945
(source: A4380671 Flying out P.O.W.s and Flying in Bailey Bridges at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
Missing in Action
Another
month or passed when the atomic bomb was dropped on to Japan, this bringing the
far eastern hostilities to a close. There were a number of us girls that were
married to young men of the Suffolk Regt, and soon after V J. day had passed
some of these girls were getting a card from their husbands stating that they
would soon be getting home, also receiving official conformation that their
loved ones were safe and would very soon be returning home .I was not one of
the lucky ones to receive this information, Soon after this some of the lads
were arriving home, by plane, ship or train. There was going to be a homecoming
party. The girls at work were so discreet, and were unable to confide in me as
to what was happening as they knew that I had not yet heard of any news of my
husband tried to adapt myself to the situation as best I could. I still have pictures
of some of the lads arriving at the station, As the days passed the lads
gradually left to take their wives to their own homes, leaving me still without
any further news at this point.
I
did visit the doctor and he did advise me to try to get out and socialise more,
if not I would likely be around, when eventually my husband was able to return.
He more or less advised me not to give up entirely. I took his advise, although
my health began to suffer due to the long hours that I was doing, and my mother
having had a serious accident, plus four children to be looked after (we have
two evacuee children staying with us now) I was obliged to leave the factory.
But believe it or not, after a short period I took on another, job also an
exempt job, this time I was working for the government with the Forestry
commission. This job was more suitable to me because of the shorter workday; it
gave me more time to help out at home as my mother was more handicapped now. My
job was to receive the cut wood from the saw and to gate tally it as it came
through the mill. I was taught to do gate tally and other various work with
wood. I still love the trees and always have, (even when they are cut up)
By
this time my thoughts were well into my work but out of working hours my
prayers and thoughts would be of my husband and in my heart I knew that God
would spare and send him back to me if at all possible. And low and behold at
the end of September 1945, in the evening at about 7 0’clock,we had just
finished, tea and was getting the children ready for bed, when the door bell
rang, one child was in the bath the other one was ready, mother was sitting in
her arm chair, I answered the door, and to my horror there stood a policeman on
the door step. I was amazed, and my first thoughts were, have the children been
up to mischief anywhere?
The
policeman said, “Good evening, is Mrs Stebbeds in?” .I said “yes I am Mrs
Stebbeds, is any thing the matter”. He said “May I come in” I replied “please
do “, He entered our house and after offering him a seat addressed me and said
that a phone call had been received from the War office stating that my husband
was alive and safe and was in a military hospital in Calcutta and that I would receive official notification from the
war office in the morning. This I did receive next morning with an address to
which I could write to .The children cried, mother fainted, and I am sorry to
say that I cannot describe to you the way I felt .All I knew was that my
prayers to God had been answered and that he was sending him back to me .A week
after these events I did receive a letter from my beloved husband himself. But
it was not until the end of November that I heard from him to say that he hoped
to be home before Christmas .The last few months had been a living nightmare,
then came the final letter from Sid to say he would be arriving home on the
7-30 p-m train from Norwich to North Walsham
Please
don’t ask me to explain my feelings to this news, as they are so vivid.
Babs Stebbeds
, housewife, Norfolk & Calcutta, 1945
(source: A3240424 My Husband Was Missing at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1945/46 – The long wait for
Repatriation
_____Pictures of 1940s Calcutta________________________
Problems going on Leave
Letter from Writers’ Building to Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart, I.C.S.
(Indian Civil Service) District Magistrate 24 Parganas, Calcutta
(source: personal
scrapbook kept by Malcolm
Moncrieff Stuart O.B.E., I.C.S. seen on 20-Dec-2005 /
Reproduced by courtesy of Mrs. Malcolm Moncrieff Stuart)
_____Contemporary
Records of or about 1940s Calcutta___
Hopes of retreat
September 7, 1945
Dearest Ritter:
Your letters of August 25, 28, and 29 came today and very welcome they were, but it will mean a famine for me for the next few days, I know. Nevertheless, it is such a thrill to look at your beloved handwriting that I hunger for it and gulp down the life-giving spirit you infuse me with.
Today it proved to be a little cooler than before with the first cool breezes that I have felt since coming to Calcutta. They have held until tonight...and sleeping should be good. (At the moment, Rosenthal is in here trying to talk with me while I keep on typing in his face.) Gus hasn't showed up since this noon, when he wouldn't talk again...he wouldn't talk this morning either. If he is sick, I wish he would admit it; this business of acting as though he were angry is getting me down. When he does not talk, I don't, and it makes for a Quakers' Meeting.
(Later handwritten note in the margin: "He came in drunk a few moments ago.")
Rosenthal finally left, crying about the personnel situation, which he says is all snafued because no one tells him anything.)
There seem to be a lot of new officers running around, so I presume that some of the up-country outfits are beginning to shut down. I just heard the announcement of points for officers over the radio. All I need is 85. Well, I have half that many. That rather tickles me...the brass is holding on for dear life. Incidentally, at the moment I am not so much concerned with getting out of the army as I am in getting home.
Why the hell don't they devote a little energy to getting us back, then worry about the other while we are on the high seas? Of course, that would be the sensible way of doing a thing, and the god damned army has never given any reason yet, so probably will not begin to at this late hour.
Once again I got little accomplished today, but have long since quit worrying about it, for the Col. simply won't see my patients and that is all there is to it. He has a stack of charts on his desk that have been there for over a week. His nurse told me that he comes in, looks at them idly, then walks out again. So be it.
This morning Gerber and I went to the Col's famous N-P class for the new nurses. There were about 15 nurses there, Gerber, Pilgram, and myself. The Col did a good job of teaching, but he didn't try any demonstration of hypnotism, which is the reason we went. We now learn that Pilgram is sold on it and wished to see it for ourselves. So Monday morning will find me Johnny on the spot. Gerber and Ellen Diemer apparently hit it off well, for they are having dinner together tonight. They came around to ask Clare and me to go, but she and I decided against it. Golf, yes, but the other, no. Besides, I thought you would prefer it that way, not that one is apt to fall for Clare, who is not very pretty...her fair, blond face is angular, and she inclines to a sharp tongue with a shrill voice. I am sorry for her. She is 32, single, and a Catholic.
It is now approaching 11:00 and no Gus. Rosy suggested that maybe he had turned in to the hospital. More likely he is out on a bender.
One year ago today, we set out from Bombay for Calcutta.
Goodnight, precious little wife,
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, September 7,
1945
(Source: page 197 of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
Farewells
September 20, 1945
Dearest Ritter:
Unfortunately, no mail from you today, sweetheart, but that only means that we will get some tomorrow, maybe.
Today, the following:
Worked fairly hard all morning on interviewing and dictating. This afternoon was in conference with the Col. and Major until 5:30. Dottie Howe showed up with her husband-to-be and introduced him to us. He is a nice fellow.
Gus went to the movie tonight while I joined the Col. and others at a sort of farewell party for Clare Sprangers who finished her work at the 142nd Neuro-Psychological section tonight at 7:30. She will sail within a week.
Our table was outside under the moon, stars and palms. How nice it would have been to have had lovely you there, sweetheart. There are times when Calcutta isn't so bad, if it just weren't for our loved ones not being with us. The rains have made it cooler, so that it is much pleasanter sleeping lately -- so much so that I use a sheet.
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, September 20,
1945
(Source: page 208 of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
We are optimistic for a rapid
shifting of troops in the theater
September 21, 1945
Dearest Ritter:
Another day nearer you, my dearest, and from all that I can gather, I feel that I shall surely be on my way home by January The gossip has this hospital losing its general status as of one month from today, when it will become a station hospital. I am not sure that will happen within a month, but it is sure to occur soon, for the character of a hospital is determined by the number of beds. The latest information which we have from Delhi seems to indicate that evacuation is to be from Karachi because of the difficulty of getting ships into the Calcutta harbor. Someone was telling me that the clearance is often only a few inches. No matter how that turns out, we are optimistic for a rapid shifting of troops in the theater.
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, September 21,
1945
(Source: page 209 of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
Preparing for return home
October 14, 1945
[...]
I was talking with an ATC flier this afternoon who told me that most of their installations up the valley were closed and that the pilots were just lying around, with nothing to do. He was of the opinion that we would have to get out soon. The hospital equipment has all been sold to the British, we learned recently.
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, October 14,
1945
(Source: page 217 of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
we must wear smiles on our
faces, a laugh on our lips
Today your letters of October 11 and 12 arrived. In the
Columbus Day letter, you are very despondent for several reasons, one being
McConkie's estimate of how long we will be here. The only thing that will make
his guess true is the fact that we don't have the transportation. We have
officers stacked up here in huge numbers, so that it is frustrating to try to
do anything because of the crowd.
Since I have been living a retired life recently, that
hasn't bothered me except in the mess hall. I try not to let how unhappy I am
creep into my letters...but in truth, darling Reva, I get desperate with
sadness and have to fight myself as I have never fought before. Since it will
neither get me home sooner nor help either of us in any way, I simply must not
let down. Nor must you.
Even if our hearts are breaking for one another, we must
wear smiles on our faces, a laugh on our lips. I am looking at the thin gold
band I wear on my left hand's third finger. It symbolizes us, the beginning and
the end, the complete cycle, a lifetime of love, kindness, and joy.
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, October 22,
1945.
(Source: pp. 223 ff. of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
"Getting out of
India."
January 13, 1946
Dearest:
I don't have much to report for today, now that I sit here thinking it over. There was another two o'clock mass meeting today of Gl's downtown, in which our India-Burma mission was stated as "Getting out of India." Cards were distributed to the men to send to their congressmen and friends. I was shown two of them, but they were poorly written and poorly stated the India-Burma situation. They should have had someone like myself help them. There is no other subject of conversation anymore, and it looks as though the authorities will have to quit stalling.
In my own case, I tried to get Pete and Powers to give me an approximate date, but this they wouldn't do, or couldn't. I'll put continuous pressure on Powers, he's the key man from now on. I doubt if much can be done for 30 days, though, until they ship out what is called the "Immediate Division" - about 8,000 enlisted men and 2,000 officers. Once they have cleared out about 16,000 men and officers already at Kanchrapara plus the Intermediate 10,000, they will be ready to move. But. we have just one more ship coming in this month - isn't that a shame? And there positively can't be much done until the ships arrive in February. I suspect that "good" General Terry has ordered a few more than he expected since this rumpus started.
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, January 13,
1946.
(Source: pp. 265 ff. of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
The shipping situation
Jan 14 1946
Orders were sent that the ships were to go to their original destination, Calcutta, but three ships had already reached China, and thus had several extra thousand miles to travel to make it. The fourth ship, the replacement for the McRae, was sent directly here. However, so much time had been lost that none of the four will make it in January.
The shipping situation looks like this: there are 41,000 troops still in India, with 15,000 at replacement depots, and 10,000 from the Intermediate section slated to ship to the depots. There is at least one ship yet to go out of Karachi this month.
An optimistic estimate would range up to 25,000 troops that will go out on these ships, but at least 21,000 will be shipped, leaving about 20,000 here the middle of February. Now, everything depends on getting enough ships in here the last of February. If they do, most of us will get out then; if not, we should make it the first part of March.
The damned mail situation is stymied again. Apparently they are shipping mail only once or twice a week. What can one do? Only remember that I love you very much, and always will. Forever in devotion,
Love and kisses,
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, January 14,
1946.
(Source: pp. 266 ff. of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
Packing up
March 11, 1946
Dearest Ritter:
This has been a very busy day for me...too busy, and after about one more of these, I expect to take it easy from now on. Odds and ends at the office until about 10:30, then to Hindusthan with the Message Center boys. From Hindusthan I walked slowly along Chowringhee carefully looking over the motley scene that won't be a part of my life much longer. Down by the Lighthouse movie theater, seven coolies were carrying an upright piano on their heads. Irresistible. Well, not irresistible exactly, for I didn't do it, but I did have the impulse to trip one of them, say the corner one, to see what would have happened.
At Hogg's market, better known as New Market, but more apropos in its correct appellation, I paused for awhile in one of the shops that I have dealt with before, and lo and behold, I bought more and more, until I had completed my Indian buying right then and there. I now have your May 16, 29 and July 3rd gifts, as well as a variety of objects that the folks have expressed a desire for. Incidentally, dearest, don't open your July 3rd gift, though I hope to be there to keep a watchful eye on you. They are closing out some of their ivory, or say they are, so I ended by buying Mom and Dad a whole menagerie instead of the big ebony elephant that I originally had in mind.
After my shopping spree, I walked to the Cathay and had a quiet little lunch by myself, consisting of sherry, egg and vegetable soup, and egg too yong. By taxi back to the hospital. The assistant driver had to get out and push to get it started and when we stopped at the entrance to the hospital (for taxis still are not permitted inside, for good and sufficient reason), I asked the driver if it would go. He looked around and grinned, his head wrapped in an absurdly long dishrag, his regular features stamping him a warlike Sikh (there are some races that look out of place in a taxi!), then bowed his head, placed his fingers together in an attitude of prayer, glancing my way to make sure I was enjoying the spectacle. But it was to no avail, for when he pressed the starter, there was only a whirrr.
This afternoon was spent writing my report, a history for the month of January. Casey, my bearer, and I packed most of my things, borrowed from AOD (Acting Officer on Duty) Munsen's jeep, and took them to Dahkuria, where Casey made my bed and
deposited my huge new bag under the bed. Incidentally, I can just lift it, and that is all.
Whereupon came a disappointment: Parrish and I did not find our names on the shipping list for the Jumper. Now don't get upset, for if we miss it, we will make the Cardinal. Nevertheless, after all the rushing around, it would be sort of like the army to not have meant it at all.
As I have said before, if you should not hear by cable from me again, you may be sure that I made the Jumper, otherwise I will cable you exact information as to what and when. But this time I will wait until I know for sure.
I hope that your next letter assures me that you are in excellent health, and that all is well.
Much love, darling. You will get all the attention you can bear one of these days, and there will be no letting my darling do without whatever her heart desires. My kisses on your lips,
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Calcutta, March 11,
1946.
(Source: pp. 296 ff of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
On the ship home
Bay of Bengal
March 27, 1946
Dearest Ritter;
I love you, precious, and wish that I could write more encouraging news, but we will have to take comfort in the fact that I am on my way home, even though I am stuck on a tub that is travelling only 10 miles an hour. If luck is with us, this letter should reach you by airmail from Singapore, but the mail situation is bad here, and there is a good chance that I may beat this particular message home. I am writing the folks, also, hoping that at least one letter will reach home in time to constitute news.
The way things have turned out, I have continued regularly to supply you with false information, but you must know that I believed it at the time. This ship never had a chance to get to San Francisco in 21 days. On its last trip, when its engines were functioning properly, it took twenty days to go from Singapore to Frisco. Here is the trouble. A bearing has been overheating, and they have cut out one engine, reducing our speed almost in half, so that we make out less than ten miles an hour, or only 250 miles a day. Since this is a ten thousand mile trip, it is easy to see how much time will be required unless the repairs, which are to be made in Singapore, are successful. No matter what, I doubt if I get home before the first of May.
Life for an officer aboard the ship is easy, by comparison with the enlisted men. I share a cabin with eight officers. Our beds are comfortable, mattressed, sheeted, pillowed, and we are supplied with free towels. We share a bathroom with another group of men from an adjoining cabin. The officers have the best space on deck reserved for them, and I have been doing a lot of sunbathing. My work is light, having been assigned as a compartment officer in C-3 hold (which is similar to the one I came over in).
The meals are out of this world. We are served by civilians on table-clothed surfaces, in plenty of dishes, with three courses usually constituting the meal. The food is very good, and I should fill out my cheeks a little. So far no poker, and I doubt very much if I play at all, since the only game going is financed by the merchant marines, and is crooked.
A number of 142nd enlisted men are aboard, as well as Just, Parrish, and eleven nurses. Of the 70 women on the ship, 42 are Red Cross, 16 war brides. I haven't seen any attractive ones yet...suspect that there is only one attractive woman in the world for me anymore, and you should know her very well. It is hard waiting to hold you in my arms, but with each day my ardor grows, and darling, that will be a wonderful moment...all moments will be wonderful from then on.
Your loving husband,
Dick
Richard Beard, US Army
Lieutenant Psychologist with 142 US military hospital. Bay of Bengal, March 27,
1946.
(Source: page 297 ff of Elaine Pinkerton (ed.): “From Calcutta With Love: The World War II Letters of Richard and Reva Beard” Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2002 / Reproduced by courtesy of Texas Tech University Press)
_____Memories
of 1940s Calcutta_______________________
It became a case of marking
time until your draft number for repatriation came up
With
the collapse of the war in Japan our time in Calcutta became almost a holiday.
We were billeted in sea front hotels and bungalows and had very few duties. It
became a case of marking time until your draft number for repatriation came up.
My number was 50 so I had a wait of about nine months for shipment back to the
UK.
Eric Cowham,
Royal Navy, Calcutta, 1945
(source: A7229856 HMS Tyne, Burma and India at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
Demobed away from Eunice
At
the end of the war huge numbers of servicemen were applying for and being
granted their demob whilst still stationed abroad, having found employment or
girlfriends there. This situation was becoming such a problem that in the UK
the parents, and in some cases the wives, of servicemen were complaining to the
War Office that their men folk were not coming home. As a young man I had no
dependants at home and had met and become attached to Eunice, the daughter of a
local Police Inspector, who had been born in Calcutta. I had also been offered
employment on a local plantation which I had accepted and intended to take up
after my demob. I think my romantic letters to Eunice hastened my end in
Calcutta. It was at about this time that it became orders that servicemen had
to return to the UK for their demob, brought in, no doubt, in response to the
many complaints the War Office had received. Anyone wishing to return abroad
like myself would then have to pay their own passage and accommodation. My life
could have taken a very different turn if my demob had been a few weeks
earlier.
As
it was three of us picked up our rail vouchers for the three-day rail journey
from Calcutta to Bombay, eating and sleeping on the train. We stayed for about
two months in Bombay in 1946. I remember the city appeared cleaner than
Calcutta and there were fewer beggars, and whilst there we became involved in
the Indian Navy mutiny. One day we were detailed to block all the roads leading
from the harbour to the town. This would have been fine had we been armed but
our only defence against mutineers carrying weapons were pickaxe handles. The
officer in charge waved his about so wildly we felt we were more in danger of
being wounded by him than by the mutineers.
Eric Cowham,
Royal Navy, Calcutta & Bombay, 1946
(source: A7229856 HMS Tyne, Burma and India at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
Street
fighting in Charringhee
"..........as
my thoughts are mainly about demob nowadays, these few lines are just to let
you know how much I am looking forward to seeing Cath and Sandy and you.
I
have just been awarded the 1939-43 Star and the Burma Star. I got the 1939-43
Star for being in Calcutta - Street fighting in Charringhee - it being the main
shopping centre of Calcutta where, when you walk along there, you are either
being blinded with Indians spitting Betel Nut or being chased by Sikh Taxi
drivers who have a knack of just missing you by a hair breadth. Being in Burma
got me the other, but as I have never fired a shot in anger, or even heard one
and I have had an easier a better time here than I did at Calcutta, I think
their system of awarding these things is unfair to the infantrymen and the many
other front troops who I know have had a tough time of it.
I
don't know whether you voted Labour but I hope you weren't one of the majority
who put that old B...... Murdoch MacDonald back in Parliament. We had some good
fun and arguments here during that time, when the results came through. If
Labour was defeated in your home town, you got personally blamed for it, but I
think we were all glad to see the last of Jimmie Grigg as War Minister - he was
no favourite with SEAC Troops..................
John Allen (Jack) MacLean, or No 2346510 Sigmn J
MacLean, 144 W/T Section, Assam and East Bengal Signals, SEAC, Calcutta, 1945
(source: A3249696 No Burma Star at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
"Harold Leventhal is
going: that means the war is really over"
I had so many mixed feelings about the end of the war against Japan. We were all relieved and jubilant of course, but it also meant that the world we knew - uniforms everywhere, planes taking off, good friends of many nations, would completely disappear. No more war, no more noise, but also fewer cosmopolitan friends. Harold left - we saw him off at the station and I remember remarking "Harold Leventhal is going: that means the war is really over".
Nandita Sen, Schoolgirl,
Calcutta. August 1945
(Source: Nandita's story at: http://timewitnesses.org/english/%7Enandita.html,
Nandita Sen Hyderabad - January 2005, seen 18th November 2005)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Nandita Sen)
the celebrations were even
more pronounced than they had been when greeting the formal statement that the
war was over
on June 7,1945 the Secretary of State announced that the period of service in the Far East was to be reduced to three years and four months as far as repatriation was concerned, and that any man who had exceeded this was to be sent home at once. With this news came wild excitement, and the celebrations were even more pronounced than they had been when greeting the formal statement that the war was over. Those who failed to meet the requirements for immediate repatriation were frantic; they did everything in their power to persuade the authorities that their service in the East had started earlier than the records showed, but it was to no avail. and they were reduced to calculating how much longer they must serve before their turn came.
William
Pennington, Captain 134 Field Regiment Royal Artillery, Calcutta, Summer 1945
(source: page 383 of William Pennington: Pick up you Parrots and Monkeys and fall in facing the boat. The life of a boy soldier in India. London: Cassell, 2003)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with William Pennington)
Winding down
Rallying after a second refusal
Monday, 17 November: Despite the P. matron’s words of hope, a second
refusal has arrived from GHQ regarding my release. Were it not for the comfort
and efforts of matron and the colonel, I think I would not have tried again —
my spirits were much too low for that. But they have insisted on trying a third
time and have sent up a special appeal stating compassionate grounds.
I hold little hope of this succeeding really. I’ve been out to see the
APM (assistant principal matron) at eastern HQ, and she thinks that my
compassionate grounds are strong enough to melt Delhi, and therefore I stand a
99-per-cent chance. I wish I could think so.
I don’t think I’m going to be posted until the last moment, and matron
has hinted that I’m going to Barrackpore. Don’t know whether I’m pleased or
not!! However, I’ve felt a little more cheerful as a result, and so now that
the Confined to Barracks order has been lifted, I’ve been out dancing again.
Kicking my heels
Monday, 24 November: We have stopped admitting patients since the 18th
and are gradually evacuating those now with us to other hospitals. My ward has
closed, and I’m roaming around with nothing particular to do except to be
matron’s stooge!
Time weighs very heavily these days, not having anything much to do and
having too much time to brood over my troubles. Packing up the hospital is a
most depressing occupation.
Plenty of off duty and dancing
Monday, 1 December: Matron has been so keen on getting things packed up
this week that she has hardly left us a thing to eat, cook on or sleep on. We
are reduced to six in the mess now. My main occupation has been shopping and
doing odd jobs for matron. Have had plenty of off duty and so plenty of time
for dancing.
Moira has moved off to Ranchi with a much lighter heart as it now
appears that she has not got TB, and so I should think she will be home very
soon. I went along to Howrah Station to wave her off on the ambulance train.
Henrietta Susan Isabella Burness, V.A.D., Calcutta, early December 1945
(source: A1940870 Life in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment), 1945at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
This led to a great deal of
ill feeling.
By
this time the war in Europe was over and the Americans had dropped the Atom
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese capitulated, a fact that we
celebrated in Calcutta in the usual way. The demobilisation programme was put
into being and we all expected to hear when we were to be sent home. But there
was no news on this front, although the troops in Europe were being repatriated.
In addition, the Airport was opened to civilian Aircraft and the Airlines were
receiving the benefit of RAF facilities and personnel. This led to a great deal
of ill feeling.
Ken Armstrong, Royal
Air Force, Calcutta, late 1945
(source: A4499508 An Airman in South East Asia Command Part Three at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
so we called a strike
We
felt that the war was now coming to a close with the Japs being driven to the
south . The atom bombs had now been dropped on Japan and this was the final surrender
. I heard that the Japs were coming to Rangoon to surrender at Government House
just up the road from my Billet , so went to see them and got a photograph of
the truck which had the curtains drawn .
It
was now time to move out and return home, but the Army had control of all force
movements at sea and they were taking all ships for the army. The RAF thought
they would fly all RAF troops home so I got my ticket for 19 December 1945 and
flew from Rangoon to Dum Dum Aerodrome in Calcutta, a three hour
journey by Dakota. We were put into Nissen Huts in Victoria Park in the centre
of Calcutta, but the aircraft flying us to the UK were all breaking
down so it was not possible to move a large number of personnel. The army used
the Queen Mary to take G I’s back to the USA, so we called a strike.
Major
Woodrow Wyatt came out and fought valiantly on our behalf in Parliament and we
eventually got HMS Gorgick and sailed for home through the Suez canal .
Dennis Bell,
Royal Air Force, Calcutta, 1945
(source: A4169199 The Burma Campaign-Part 2-Life in Burma Edited at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
The RAF goes on strike
On May 7th 1945 the war in Europe ended and we celebrated VE day with a bottle of beer and a bonfire. On September 2nd 1945 the Japanese formally surrendered in Tokyo Bay, our war was at last over and we waited patiently eager to return home to Britain.
Throughout South-East Asia Command, camp debating societies flourished, becoming lively centers of discussion about the new post-war world. At home a new Labour government was elected and in Europe, American forces stationed in Germany were holding parades for speedier demobilization.
Then in January 1946, some five months after VJ-Day, the airmen of RAF Bamhrauli, in India, were preparing for their morning parade. The station warrant officer, looking out from his office across the parade ground, watched the Indian pipe band begin to form up. Outside the huts 2,000 British airmen began to assemble, and then moved off towards the parade ground.
The station warrant officer noted that the airmen looked smart and well disciplined as their marching columns converged on the parade square. Then the unthinkable happened. As each contingent arrived at the periphery of the parade ground they veered away, marching determinedly towards the huge camp cinema. The RAF station had gone on strike!
Inside the cinema, which was a vast converted hanger, the airmen sat quietly. They heard the sound of the pipe band play the officers onto the parade ground, and the bugle sounding the general salute as the RAF Ensign was raised. They watched and sat silently as the CO and his staff walked onto the cinema stage. At the Station Warrant-Officer's command the airmen came smartly to their feet. The CO stepped forward; clearly shaken by the event, he told the men to sit and asked for their explanation.
Speaker after speaker from all parts of the cinema stood up in turn. They said that their action was directed against neither the officers or the RAF. They wanted to go home now that the war had ended. Demobilization was painfully slow for men who had been away from their families for three or four years without any home leave. They were civilians who had willingly done their duty for their country while it was at war, but they were not prepared to now have their return delayed for reasons of imperial policy.
The airmen's demands had been drawn up the previous evening in the camp canteen. All the lights had been extinguished and one airman, disguising his voice with a pencil held in his mouth, had acted as organizer. It had been agreed that there would be no obvious strike leaders. Delegates from every section would serve on the strike committee; discipline was to be firmly maintained, and officers would be saluted but otherwise ignored. All essential services would be kept running under committee instructions, and there would be close control of the armoury. The main aim of the strike, it was agreed, would be to obtain a firm statement from the government of a speedy demobilization.
On airfield after airfield across the Middle East and the Far East a similar pattern of events was taking place. The strikes appeared to follow a course from Cairo in Egypt through Palestine and India to Singapore.
The
first news about the strikes reached the British public on January 24th 1946
when The Times reported that 2,000 airmen at Mauripur, in India, had began a
"stay in strike". Not reported was that the airmen had addressed a
petition to the new Prime Minister, Mr. Attlee, saying: "We have done the
job we joined up to do. Now we want to get back home, both for personal reasons
and because we think it is by work that we can best help Britain. No indication
has been given of when we will see our families again.
Two
days later, on January 26th an Air Ministry statement admitted that
"airmen at several overseas stations have recently staged a so-called
"strike" on account of grievances, real or imaginary, about the rate
of demobilization".
At
Dum Dum, the Calcutta airfield, 1,200 men stopped work. Four thousand airmen at
Singapore held parades demanding the presence of the Supreme Allied Commander
South East Asia. They were eventually addressed by Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith
Park, Comander-in-Chief, SEAC. The Times reported on January 27th: "Twelve
hundred men at Dum Dum, Calcutta, have been on strike since midnight on Friday.
The men have no complaints against the authorities at the camp, with whom they
are on the best of terms. The commanding officer, Air Commodore Slee, had a
friendly discussion with them and a delegation of the strikers also talked with
Major Wyatt of the Parliamentary delegation visiting India.
With the strike now spread over a wide area Air Vice Marshal Sir Roderick Carr, AOC, BAFSEA, signaled the Air Ministry: "I deplore the action of the airmen, but owing to the widespread nature of the incidents I cannot suggest any alternative to a general Government statement."
Although the Air Ministry believed the strikes were the work of professional agitators, remarkably few arrests were made. RAF Special Investigation Branch men were infiltrated into a number of camps but the deeply suntanned airmen took delight in spotting the newcomers' by their white knees.
The full weight of military discipline fell on LAC Norris Harold Cymbalist, a radar operator at RAF Singapore. Cymbalist was charged with incitement to mutiny and with insubordination. Evidence was given at his court marshal that he had called on three hundred airmen to strike in sympathy with others and had used insubordinate language to a squadron leader. He was sentenced to 10 years and given a dishonorable discharged.
A substantial volume of protest built up in Britain when news of the arrests reached the general public. As a result of public pressure two airmen were released after serving two months of their imprisonment and another subsequently released on medical grounds, having suffered a breakdown. In the House of Commons, The Air Minister announced that the sentence on Cymbalist would be reduced to 5 years.
By the end of January 1946 the striking airmen began to return to normal duties in response to assurances of speedier demobilization. The first strike in the history of the RAF was over. In February 1946 a court of inquiry was set up It found that the airmen's complaints had not been directed against their own officers or RAF authorities. The strikes had followed a similar pattern and had common demands. There was no evidence of intimidation or violence against regular or loyal airmen. The court noted that the overwhelming majority of men were merely civilians in uniform. Years later this was all reported in an article in "The Aeroplane" a British magazine.
As a driver at Cawnpore, I had the job of taking section delegates to meetings that were held in a darkened hanger, and at which a spokesman advised us of the proposed strike and why it was thought necessary and when it would start. Delegates relayed this information to the men.
It was all about the slow rate of demobilization. Instead of coming to pick us up, the two largest British ships "Queen Mary" and "Queen Elizabeth" were being used to ferry GI brides from England to the USA and this inflamed our discontent. Each year some airmen died from the 120 degree heat that Cawnpore experienced in the summer so our desire to get out of India and return home now that the war was over was very strong indeed. All the officers and NCOs were in favour of it, they felt exactly the same as we did.
During the strike all our essential services at Cawnpore were maintained, guard duties, hospital and medical facilities, cookhouses, etc. but all flying and work on aircraft was curtailed. Any services other than those considered essential could only be undertaken with the consent of the airman who was in charge of the station strike. We at Cawnpore had no idea that the strike was so widespread. Until I read that article in "The Aeroplane" I thought it was confined to just the RAF stations in India.
There is no doubt in my mind that as a result of that strike the rate of demobilization quickened considerably. I was delighted when, about two months after it ended I made the train journey back to Bombay and after a couple of weeks waiting, was able to see what all of us had been longing to see - the sight of India disappearing over the stern of our homeward bound ship!
The return journey in 1946 followed the same route as going out, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, Suez Canal, Mediterranean and the Atlantic but this time not in convoy. The "S.S. Otranto" an Orient Line troopship was at full speed ahead and we docked at Southampton after about 20 days.
As we neared England the ship's loudspeaker system announced that on the port bow the most southerly part of England, "Start Point" could be seen. Wow - what a moment that was, the ship leaned to port as 5,000 men rushed to the rails to have their first look at England after years away.
David van Vlymen.
David Van Vlymen, Royal
Air Force, Calcutta, January 1946
(source: A7205906 India - There and Back the Hard Way at BBC WW2 People's War' on http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/ Oct 2006)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with the original submitter/author)
… my mother was given a
10-pound tin of carrots by a friendly American
I recall that my mother was given a 10-pound tin of carrots by a friendly American. We never opened it - in fact after about ten years it suddenly opened itself with a horrid squelching explosive noise. Thus, the war ended, not with a bang, but a splat.
Nandita Sen, Schoolgirl,
Calcutta. August 1945
(Source: Nandita's story at: http://timewitnesses.org/english/%7Enandita.html,
Nandita Sen Hyderabad - January 2005, seen 18th November 2005)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Nandita Sen)
Farewell Address to Stanley
E. Sparks
Farewell Address to Stanley E. Sparks
Major, O.D. U.S. Army
Dear Sir:
We have assembled here this morning to give you a hearty farewell. More expression in terms of language will be simply insignificant In comparison with the thoughts which we have In our mind to tell you. But the time and space don't allow us to say more than what we are going to tell you. With your departure we will certainly feel that we have parted with one of our men under whom we worked diligently for the common cause.
We all rejoice that the Second World War has ended with the victory of the allies. We are glad that we have contributed our utmost in bringing the victory so soon. But when we think of those who have sacrificed their lives in fighting the enemies of democracy and who are crushed under the wheels of imperialism wherever exists, we cannot check our emotion. We pay our heartiest tribute to these Immortal souls.
We know that you people who have come from America will go back at the secession of hostilities. We are all happy at your happiness that you are going to re-unite with beloveds after a long separation.
You have come to our country at a time when it is passing through the greatest crisis of Indian history such as famine, mal-administration, political up-heavels, etc., which are the inevitable outcomes, where there exists a government in name but purely irresponsible in character, sponsored by aliens, who try to force the unwilling people to subjection. In such a state of time we could not give our hands to care for you as a guest in spite of our ardent desire to do so. We are ashamed that we have failed to perform the traditions of our ancient civilization, for which our country Is so great.
With your coming to India, we have got the chance to associate with a people who are modern in, all aspects. We invite you to come once again to this same land of ours after it is liberated from the yoke of Imperialism. We will then request you to contribute your best wishes which will help us to build up a new India.
We bid good-bye to you and hope you will have a very good time In the company of your beloveds back In America.
Yours faithfully,
CIVILIAN PERSONNEL
U.S. Army Ordnance Depot
Brooklyn Siding
Calcutta, India
Civilian Personnel, U.S. Army
Ordnance Depot Brooklyn Siding. Calcutta, late 1945
(source: CBI Sound-off.Vol.49, No 2 Spring
2003)
(COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Reproduced under 'fair dealing' terms as part of a non commercial educational research project. The copyright remains with Arthur W. Sprankel & CBI Sound Off)
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