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By Al Zdon
No, they did not whistle on their way to work.
No, the Bridge spanning the River Kwai was not engineered by a British officer.
No, the bridge
was not destroyed by commandoes, but by Allied bombers.
Despite those slight historical discrepancies, Jim Whittaker still enjoyed "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and has seen it several times. He is
okay with the fact that the Oscar-winning motion picture bears little resemblance in some areas to the real construction of that bridge or of the Burma-Siam Railroad.
And he should know. He was there.
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Brooklyn Center resident James Whittaker grew up in
Manchester, England, and life was no bed of roses for him. His father, a double-decker bus driver, left the family, and when his mother got sick and was no longer able to work, Whittaker spent several
years in an orphanage.
On his 14th birthday, he quit school and went to work making deliveries on a bicycle for $2 for a 60-hour week. He also worked as a wall and floor tiler and then as a roller
polisher for a fabric company.
When he was old enough to join the Army in 1938 at age 17, he jumped at the chance. "The Army sounded pretty good to me."
After basic training, Whittaker joined the
Royal Corps of Signals, similar to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The transfer meant he had to sign up for a full eight-year enlistment. He did training as a radio operator, but also learned more primitive
methods of getting the message across including flags, lamps, heliograph (mirror) and sounder (telegraph key).
While war for the United States still seemed far away in 1938, in England the threat of
war was much more imminent. Whittaker joined at about the same time that British Prime Minister Chamberlain uttered his famous "Peace in our time" statement.
Germany invaded Poland and France in 1939
and war broke out all across Europe. Germany began heavy bombing of English cities. Whittaker's class was hurried through radio school. "They cut out all the theory and just gave us the basics."
He
was assigned to London as a radio operator, and his duty included manning a radio on the London docks during the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. "We would listen to the pilots talking on our radios. The
docks were the prime target for the Germans and so there were bombs going off all around us."
Whittaker kept asking to be transferred overseas, and in September of 1941 he got his wish. He arrived in
Singapore just 10 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese attacks across the Pacific. He was attached to the No. Six Close Support Bomber Control.
The unit was supposed to provide
British bomber pilots with accurate information from the ground. "But nobody ever really figured out how we were supposed to do that. I don't think a pilot had time read Morse Code at 300 miles an hour."
Singapore was a major target of the Japanese Army and Navy, and the Japanese forces moved quickly down the Malay Peninsula toward the island fortress of Singapore at its tip.
Whittaker had one
close brush with the invaders. His small unit was sent up the coast to help out at a town, "but nobody had anything for us to do." They were sent out of the town and told to get a good night's sleep and
come back in the morning.
When they came back, they found that the Japanese had bypassed the town during the night. The British office was empty and a food dump in the town was on fire. The men loaded
what can goods they could on their truck and headed back to Singapore in a hurry.
That was as close as Whittaker came to the action during the campaign. "I never fired a shot in anger. The only thing
I did that remotely helped the war effort was when they ordered us to go to a Naval base on the north end of the island and remove radar equipment." It turned out later that the equipment the men brought
back may have included one of the "purple machines," top-secret Japanese code breakers on loan from the Americans.
Though the British and Australians fought valiantly, it was clear that Singapore was
doomed. The Allies tried to evacuate, but few ships were available. "My group of nine sat on the dock for three days waiting for a ship, but it never came." In the end, one of the members of the group
managed to obtain a Royal Air Force launch. Gasoline was appropriated, and the unit headed off toward the large island of Sumatra to the south.
"We only had a vague idea of where Sumatra was, and we
had no map and no compass. Somehow we went right through the mines in the harbor. It was just dumb luck."
They made their way to Sumatra, controlled by the Dutch, and crossed the island to the city of
Padang where the British had made prior arrangements for rescue. Unfortunately, the last rescue boat had been there three days before. "We waited every night for another boat, but it didn't happen."
The Dutch were not happy to see the British troops. They had enough trouble as the Japanese were quickly taking over Sumatra as well.
As the Japanese took over Padang, Whittaker and four others went
down the coast south of Padang where they were told rescue might be at hand if they made it out to an island off the coast. Natives helped them get to an island, accurately called "Mosquito Island," and
left them there. They lived on turtle eggs and coconuts and battled the mosquitoes, day and night.
"All five of us came down with malaria," Whittaker said.
One day a Dutch patrol boat showed up,
and the captain began talking to the British soldiers, but as he did so, troops snuck behind the Brits and captured them. "I can't blame the Dutch. They had to obey the Japs."
They were taken back to
the mainland and put in a barracks with 1,100 other British and Australian prisoners of war. "At first, we thought the Japanese were funny, little guys in scruffy uniforms." That opinion quickly changed
when the men were ordered to bow and salute any Japanese who came through their area. "One guy didn't, and they beat the crap out of him."
The real problem at that point, Whittaker said, was that the
Japanese had no provision for taking prisoners and no facilities had been prepared. "It wasn't part of their military code. They didn't believe in them."
In May, 500 men of what was called the
British-Sumatra Battalion were sent to Burma, and Whittaker was among them. Conditions on the ship were appalling and many of the men were already sick with malaria. As the trip continued, dysentery was
common. "They ship was pretty smelly, as you can imagine."
When they arrived, they were joined by 1,000 Australians and crowded into a small high school compound. "There were no provisions, no
quarters, and there were two faucets to serve all those men. We started to lose a lot of guys."
The railroad, from Bangkok, Siam, to Burma was deemed necessary by the Japanese in order to supply their
troops there and also as part of a long-range plan to invade India. The 230 miles of rail line would have to go through some of the worst jungle in the world, and it was estimated to be a four-year
project. The Japanese demanded it be done in one year.
Whittaker, in November, 1942, was sent to the northern end of the construction at Thanbyuzayat in Burma where the prisoners were working south on
the line. Called the "Death Railway," the construction used over 61,000 prisoners of war and 250,000 native workers. By the time it was completed on Oct. 25, 1943, over a third of the prisoners of war
were dead along with an estimated 100,000 natives, many of them from cholera.
Whittaker had the kind of malaria that would recur about every 10 days, and when he was sent out to work on the railroad,
he was soon sent back to Thanbyuzayat to stay in a hospital. As he recovered, he would be sent back to work.
"We were like a bunch of ants. There was no heavy equipment, so it was all built by hand.
We used hoes called "chunkels" to dig up the dirt and baskets to haul it away. There were trees to be cut down and bridges to be built."
In all, over 700 bridges were built across the many rivers in
the jungle.
Another threat was Allied bombing, and many troops were killed over the course of time by the friendly fire.
Conditions along the line were lethal for many. The troops were reduced to
wearing shorts or G-strings as no clothing was available. Meals consisted of rice three times a day. Those who had boots saved them for the marching they had to do when they had to change camps, and most
of the POWs worked in bare feet.
One of the real hardships, early in the morning and late in the day after work, was standing at quarters when the Japanese guards had to carefully count the prisoners.
"I know the Japanese are considered technically brilliant, but all we knew then was that they didn't know how to count. The process went on forever every day."
The men were assigned a quota of work
each day, and were paid a small amount per day for their efforts. The meager wages were used to buy fruit and other food to supplement their diets. As they worked deeper into the jungle, there were few
local merchants to buy extras from.
The quota system was inefficient, Whittaker said. "For instance, I worked for a time on cutting wood for the train engines. The best wood was very hard to cut up
with our primitive tools. And so we would cut the lousiest wood for burning in the engines, but the Japanese didn't care as long as we met our quota. They didn't care about the next guy down the line
that was going to have to use that wood."
If you got out of line, the response was sure and swift. "The Japanese didn't believe in using KP or something like that for discipline. They just beat the
hell out of you."
When a Japanese officer reached into a POW's pack one time and found a snake (kept for a future meal), he jumped back. The men laughed, and the officer was embarrassed. Because there
were too many for him to beat, he had the men line up facing each other and beat each other up. Guards stood by to make sure nobody was pulling any punches.
At one point Whittaker was disciplined for
being late by having 50 of his fellow prisoners strike him on the head as they marched by. "I could hear bells for a week."
As the rail project moved into May, 1943, the Japanese accelerated the work
to meet their schedule. Known as "speedo" to the POWs, this new and harsher existence coincided with the advent of the monsoon season and life became precarious for many of the prisoners. Men often
worked from before dawn until past dark.
Hundreds died of sickness, overwork and poor nutrition.
One rest day was scheduled every 10 days. Red Cross packages arrived rarely and were shared by up to
ten men. There was virtually no mail for the British troops because they were no longer part of their original units.
One of the projects Whittaker worked on as the rail line moved south was the
famous bridge over the River Kwai.
The reality of the project was much different than the Hollywood version, which was filmed in Ceylon. There were, in fact, two bridges over the River Kwai: A steel
girder bridge and a wooden bypass bridge. Whittaker worked on the wooden bridge, which did not in any way resemble the soaring bamboo structure of the movie.
Another fiction was that the Japanese camp
commander controlled the building of the bridge. In reality, camp commanders only oversaw the camps themselves and Japanese engineers oversaw the construction of the bridges and rail lines.
There was
some truth in the portrayal of the British commander, Col. Philip Toosey, who kept his troops from harm by invoking strict discipline and by arguing with the Japanese commanders — similar to the officer
in the movie version.
In the end, the bridge was attacked eight times — never by commandos— and the steel bridge was finally destroyed in February 1945 by Allied bombers. The wooden bridge was
continuously repaired after Allied attacks until the Japanese gave up the effort in late June of that year.
The Bridge over the River Kwai still stands today and is in daily use.
Whittaker's last
camp was in Thailand at Mount Kachu. The POWs had built an airstrip for the Japanese there, and when the war ended on Aug. 15, the Japanese still were in full control of the camp with their guns. "But
they didn't bother us after that."
Later, papers discovered by the Allies showed that there were contingency plans for the Japanese to kill everyone in the camp, but the plan was never carried out.
On Sept. 2, American C-46s arrived at the airstrip bringing in food and clothing. This last camp had been reasonably well run with no shortage of food or extreme working conditions, and so most of the
men were in relatively good health.
That was in sharp contrast to the earlier days, working on the railroad. In the end, of the 500 men in the British-Sumatra Battalion, 150 had died in Burma and
other camps along the way.
The survivors were taken to Rangoon for a short hospital stay, and most were then moved to a troop ship for the long voyage home through the Suez Canal. After his leave was
over, Whittaker went back into the Royal Corps of Signals where he met his wife. He volunteered for more overseas duty, but never got it. He ended his service in 1947.
England was in shambles
following the war with severe rationing and few jobs.
While in the prison camp, Whittaker had become close friends with a Marine named Lloyd V. Willey from Montana. At one point, Whittaker had been
able to bring food to Willey, who had been placed in an area for those expected to die, and had probably saved his life.
Willey convinced Whittaker to come to America, and Whittaker used all of his
savings to book passage on the Queen Mary in 1948. "I came home from driving the taxi and told my wife we were leaving for America in two days."
The Whittakers, with their two children ended up in
Montana where Jim drove a truck for some time. Eventually, he got a job as a radio operator for a railroad, and he was transferred to Minnesota in 1958.
He retired in 1980, and he has been an active
ham radio operator for many years.
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