8 ms·

I'm only part into the story, but I already love it. The prisoners-of-war were tired hiding their lathe every time they might be searched, that they hung up a

by navane 2y ago

I'm only part into the story, but I already love it. The prisoners-of-war were tired hiding their lathe every time they might be searched, that they hung up a sign "workshop" above one of their huts, and timed it so that the new round of guards thought it had always been there.

BlueUmarell 2y ago
As I understood, one of the japanese officer's hut - which is even bolder! Hence why they tricked the translator to have the japanese character for "workshop". A lot of smart and bold moves all along. Especially as the japanese were known for their "harsh" treatments (humiliations, beatings, torture, slow death, brutal death etc etc) toward prisoners, anything that would lead to a cue that they were doing something hidden would have had a radical and definitive answer...
- dan-robertson 2y ago
  I assumed it was the hut used by the PoW officers. Japan did not treat PoWs particularly well (though British PoWs were treated much better than Chinese) and did not follow the 1929 Geneva Convention on the treatment of PoWs. Under that convention, officers are to be treated with due regard to their rank and part of that means being quartered separately from the other ranks (as well as not being made to work). I think officers would also be separated in PoW camps in Japan.
  - darkwater 2y ago
    I don't fully understand why a convention that allegedly tries to protect human rights makes a so bold difference just based on job positions (aka ranks). I mean, I do understand where it comes from, and especially when it applies to prisoners of war, so military forces. They basically can only think in hierarchies so designing a system that works with hierarchies will have more chances to be actually followed. But still, I find it weird.
    - avar 2y ago
      Because it was written and enacted primarily by recently warring western nation states, not a group of detached philosophical monks living on a mountaintop. The elites in those societies had a clear interest in carving out special privileges for themselves, which is why officers receive preferential treatment. The 1929 Geneva convention has other things you may find objectionable, such as Section II, article 9 (paragraph 3)[1]: Belligerents shall, so far as possible, avoid assembling in a single camp prisoners of different races or nationalities. Which is there for obvious reasons. Can you imagine the horror of being housed in a racially unhomogenous camp? People in 1929 sure could. 1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp#art9 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp#art9
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        > Can you imagine the horror of being housed in a racially unhomogenous camp? People in 1929 sure could. That's still the case today. Here in Germany, after 2015 there were often issues in temporary housing (e.g. sports halls converted to improptu shelters) when refugees from different backgrounds collided. Say you had two ethnic groups fighting a civil war, and members of both would flee to Germany, and continue their conflict here. Or religion - shiite and sunni muslims each view the other groups as infidels. Or go back two decades prior, to the aftermaths of the Yugoslavian wars and their refugees that mostly came to Germany (due to a strong diaspora tradition), with the only thing anybody would have agreed upon is that beating a Serb takes precedence over any other internal fight. Balkan ethnic conflicts can even be confusing for people living there, it's madness - but thankfully it has (mostly - excluding BiH/Kosovo...) died down by now. That Geneva Convention rule makes sense in the end, it aims to prevent conflict from stirring up in camps.
        avar 2y ago
        What you're saying here isn't relevant. The 1929 Geneva convention is talking about the segregation of POW's who before capture would have been part of the same organized armed forces. The only reason to specify that POW camps should be divided by nationality and race is to e.g. ensure that black French colonial troops aren't going to be using the same proverbial bathrooms as white continental French troops. In the 1949 version of the Geneva convention this clause was eliminated, and replaced by wording which presupposes racially integrated armed forces, or alternatively makes it deliberately ambiguous as part of "customs". From Article 22[1]. The Detaining Power shall assemble prisoners of war in camps or camp compounds according to their nationality, language and customs. [...], except with their consent. 1. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-treatment-prisoners-war https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
- canadianfella 2y ago
  [dead]
MeteorMarc 2y ago
Yeah, social engineering for establishing a workshop!
paulgerhardt 2y ago
For an extended read, you may try "King Rat" by James Clavell - same author of the current hit show "Shogun". The book is set in the same Changi PoW camp where the author was held during WWII. The character Lieutenant-Colonel Larkin is based off Lieutenant-Colonel E. E. "Weary" Dunlop who was the real life surgeon using these tools for creating artificial limbs amongst other things and whom Clavell knew and presumably Bradley too. It's not exactly a cheery read but very much an inspiring one in terms of survival, ingenuity, and moral complexity.
- navane 2y ago
  Thanks, I've read it, don't remember the lathe in it. Awesome book. So much better than shogun or any of his other works from his "trader series". I recommend King Rat to people who need to get back in to reading books.
  - wddkcs 2y ago
    How dare you slander The Noble House. I love most of his works, but Straung is peak Clavell.
    - sifar 2y ago
      Joss !
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- satiric 2y ago
  It's not specifically about Changi, but you might also be interested in the book "Rats of Rangoon" by Lionel Hudson which is all about the author's experiences during WWII in the Rangoon prison camps (also run by the Japanese of course)
teshigahara 2y ago
I find it hard to believe that they copied the word for workshop (presumably 工房) convincingly enough that it wasn't obviously written by someone without any understanding of how to actually write the language. It's extremely obvious when someone tries to copy Chinese characters without any understanding of stroke order, stroke pressure, etc. The way that someone would show how a character looks to someone without any knowledge (ie textbook form) and how they would naturally write such a sign is also different. You would be able to tell instantly that a non-native prisoner wrote it. Actually, signs were also written right-to-left horizontally during that period but it's likely that someone showing them how to write on a piece of paper would have written vertically, so they would probably not even have the knowledge to know the correct order of the text.
- iaseiadit 2y ago
  If all signs in the prison camp were written right-to-left instead of vertically, they probably would have noted that before creating the sign. Especially considering their lives depended on it.
  - teshigahara 2y ago
    If you can't read the signs how would you know it's right-to-left? You are only seeing two unknown characters, you don't know which comes first. It's not about vertical vs horizontal. It's that someone who speaks English would assume that all of these signs they can't read are written left-to-right, and write the vertical characters they are copying in the wrong order.
    - j16sdiz 2y ago
      You knew it is rtl when you see a paragraph is aligned to right
      - teshigahara 2y ago
        No, this doesn't make sense in the context of Japanese. One of these signs is written right to left: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdiwLYNl2CfqsQuFSXXSYMyo_hfAVWT3cJpQ3aOQTs_g&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdiwLY... https://auctions.afimg.jp/h1085974646/ya/image/h1085974646.2.jpg https://auctions.afimg.jp/h1085974646/ya/image/h1085974646.2... Which one is it? There is no way to tell unless you already know the characters. Unless someone could read the existing signs they would almost certainly assume they were left-to-right and make any new sign like that if they only had the characters to copy.
snickerbockers 2y ago
that sounds like something out of hogan's heroes.

by navane 2y ago

BlueUmarell 2y ago

As I understood, one of the japanese officer's hut - which is even bolder! Hence why they tricked the translator to have the japanese character for "workshop". A lot of smart and bold moves all along. Especially as the japanese were known for their "harsh" treatments (humiliations, beatings, torture, slow death, brutal death etc etc) toward prisoners, anything that would lead to a cue that they were doing something hidden would have had a radical and definitive answer...

dan-robertson 2y ago
I assumed it was the hut used by the PoW officers. Japan did not treat PoWs particularly well (though British PoWs were treated much better than Chinese) and did not follow the 1929 Geneva Convention on the treatment of PoWs. Under that convention, officers are to be treated with due regard to their rank and part of that means being quartered separately from the other ranks (as well as not being made to work). I think officers would also be separated in PoW camps in Japan.
- darkwater 2y ago
  I don't fully understand why a convention that allegedly tries to protect human rights makes a so bold difference just based on job positions (aka ranks). I mean, I do understand where it comes from, and especially when it applies to prisoners of war, so military forces. They basically can only think in hierarchies so designing a system that works with hierarchies will have more chances to be actually followed. But still, I find it weird.
  - avar 2y ago
    Because it was written and enacted primarily by recently warring western nation states, not a group of detached philosophical monks living on a mountaintop. The elites in those societies had a clear interest in carving out special privileges for themselves, which is why officers receive preferential treatment. The 1929 Geneva convention has other things you may find objectionable, such as Section II, article 9 (paragraph 3)[1]: Belligerents shall, so far as possible, avoid assembling in a single camp prisoners of different races or nationalities. Which is there for obvious reasons. Can you imagine the horror of being housed in a racially unhomogenous camp? People in 1929 sure could. 1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp#art9 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/geneva02.asp#art9
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      > Can you imagine the horror of being housed in a racially unhomogenous camp? People in 1929 sure could. That's still the case today. Here in Germany, after 2015 there were often issues in temporary housing (e.g. sports halls converted to improptu shelters) when refugees from different backgrounds collided. Say you had two ethnic groups fighting a civil war, and members of both would flee to Germany, and continue their conflict here. Or religion - shiite and sunni muslims each view the other groups as infidels. Or go back two decades prior, to the aftermaths of the Yugoslavian wars and their refugees that mostly came to Germany (due to a strong diaspora tradition), with the only thing anybody would have agreed upon is that beating a Serb takes precedence over any other internal fight. Balkan ethnic conflicts can even be confusing for people living there, it's madness - but thankfully it has (mostly - excluding BiH/Kosovo...) died down by now. That Geneva Convention rule makes sense in the end, it aims to prevent conflict from stirring up in camps.
      - avar 2y ago
        What you're saying here isn't relevant. The 1929 Geneva convention is talking about the segregation of POW's who before capture would have been part of the same organized armed forces. The only reason to specify that POW camps should be divided by nationality and race is to e.g. ensure that black French colonial troops aren't going to be using the same proverbial bathrooms as white continental French troops. In the 1949 version of the Geneva convention this clause was eliminated, and replaced by wording which presupposes racially integrated armed forces, or alternatively makes it deliberately ambiguous as part of "customs". From Article 22[1]. The Detaining Power shall assemble prisoners of war in camps or camp compounds according to their nationality, language and customs. [...], except with their consent. 1. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/geneva-convention-relative-treatment-prisoners-war https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...
canadianfella 2y ago
[dead]

MeteorMarc 2y ago

Yeah, social engineering for establishing a workshop!

paulgerhardt 2y ago

For an extended read, you may try "King Rat" by James Clavell - same author of the current hit show "Shogun". The book is set in the same Changi PoW camp where the author was held during WWII. The character Lieutenant-Colonel Larkin is based off Lieutenant-Colonel E. E. "Weary" Dunlop who was the real life surgeon using these tools for creating artificial limbs amongst other things and whom Clavell knew and presumably Bradley too. It's not exactly a cheery read but very much an inspiring one in terms of survival, ingenuity, and moral complexity.

navane 2y ago
Thanks, I've read it, don't remember the lathe in it. Awesome book. So much better than shogun or any of his other works from his "trader series". I recommend King Rat to people who need to get back in to reading books.
- wddkcs 2y ago
  How dare you slander The Noble House. I love most of his works, but Straung is peak Clavell.
  - sifar 2y ago
    Joss !
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
satiric 2y ago
It's not specifically about Changi, but you might also be interested in the book "Rats of Rangoon" by Lionel Hudson which is all about the author's experiences during WWII in the Rangoon prison camps (also run by the Japanese of course)

teshigahara 2y ago

I find it hard to believe that they copied the word for workshop (presumably 工房) convincingly enough that it wasn't obviously written by someone without any understanding of how to actually write the language. It's extremely obvious when someone tries to copy Chinese characters without any understanding of stroke order, stroke pressure, etc. The way that someone would show how a character looks to someone without any knowledge (ie textbook form) and how they would naturally write such a sign is also different. You would be able to tell instantly that a non-native prisoner wrote it. Actually, signs were also written right-to-left horizontally during that period but it's likely that someone showing them how to write on a piece of paper would have written vertically, so they would probably not even have the knowledge to know the correct order of the text.

iaseiadit 2y ago
If all signs in the prison camp were written right-to-left instead of vertically, they probably would have noted that before creating the sign. Especially considering their lives depended on it.
- teshigahara 2y ago
  If you can't read the signs how would you know it's right-to-left? You are only seeing two unknown characters, you don't know which comes first. It's not about vertical vs horizontal. It's that someone who speaks English would assume that all of these signs they can't read are written left-to-right, and write the vertical characters they are copying in the wrong order.
  - j16sdiz 2y ago
    You knew it is rtl when you see a paragraph is aligned to right
    - teshigahara 2y ago
      No, this doesn't make sense in the context of Japanese. One of these signs is written right to left: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdiwLYNl2CfqsQuFSXXSYMyo_hfAVWT3cJpQ3aOQTs_g&s https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQdiwLY... https://auctions.afimg.jp/h1085974646/ya/image/h1085974646.2.jpg https://auctions.afimg.jp/h1085974646/ya/image/h1085974646.2... Which one is it? There is no way to tell unless you already know the characters. Unless someone could read the existing signs they would almost certainly assume they were left-to-right and make any new sign like that if they only had the characters to copy.

snickerbockers 2y ago

that sounds like something out of hogan's heroes.