Thread: Mary Thomas RIP

Mary Thomas: former internee of the Japanese and author | Times Online Obituary

Mary Thomas was one of the longest-lived survivors of internment by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore. She wrote a book about her experiences, In the Shadow of the Rising Sun, a factual and unbiased account, which was published in 1983.

Most of her internment was spent in Changi jail, which was intended to hold 1,200 prisoners. Early in March 1942 it held more than 3,000 men, women and children. By 1944 their numbers exceeded 4,000 and the regime had become harsher because the Kempatai, the Japanese military police, had taken over.

Mary Thomas was born in 1906, the eldest of six children; the other five were all boys. Her father was the rector of Church Westcote in Gloucestershire. As they grew up, all but one of the six children were sent to boarding schools and Mary subsequently took a degree in history at St Anne’s College, Oxford.

As a child she had become aware of how hard life could be for farm workers. Failure to work unpaid overtime during the harvest could mean the loss of a tied cottage. The bread oven at the rectory was kept hot after the household baking so that others could make use of it. It is hardly surprising that Thomas’s politics were of the Left.

After coming down from Oxford she spent two years on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where she did some teaching. She then returned home via the Pacific, spending time in Hong Kong, Ceylon and Bengal, where there had been family connections on her mother’s side.

Her great-grandfather was General Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence, who was killed defending Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny. This period in the Far East had an important influence on her later life.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Thomas, aged 32, accompanied her brother Francis to Singapore, where he was an assistant master at St Andrew’s School. As the Japanese invaders drew closer, teaching duties were superseded by voluntary work that led to her becoming assistant superintendent at a first-aid post in the school. As events unfolded, some managed to leave the island by ship (many were lost at sea because of enemy action). Those who stayed and who were able to help with nursing were transferred to Singapore General Hospital where civilian and military wounded were being treated. Circumstances for everybody rapidly became worse when MacRitchie Reservoir was captured and the water supply was cut.

Then on February 15, 1942, came the news of surrender. It was followed by a period of uncertainty that came to an end for Thomas in March when she was interned, at first in Katong and then in Changi until May 1944, when she was transferred to another camp at Sime Road. Prisoners were required to bow low from the hips when confronted by a Japanese. For a woman, failure to do so meant a slap in the face.

In common with prisoners of war and internees elsewhere, there was considerable ingenuity in making the best of things. Notwithstanding that Changi was comparatively new, the concrete used in its construction was damp and dusty. A typical cell for two women measured 7ft x 6½ft with a concrete slab in the middle to act as a bed. Food was scant. A camp magazine POW-WOW was circulated. On one occasion it got Thomas into trouble. She had written a poem, Changi Lullaby, which included a reference to “the clash of a chain”. The Japanese authorities thought this was a reference to fetters. In fact, the chains were lavatory chains, which were pulled more or less continuously through the night as a result of the diuretic effects of the prison diet. Thomas read the poem in a deadpan voice to the Japanese commandant. She escaped with a telling-off to confine her remarks to topics not connected with internment.

No fewer than 20 babies were born in Changi. Someone started a Froebel class for the younger children and others taught the older ones. Inevitably there were disputes between women, and even fights, but many subsequently said that they received more acts of kindness while interned than they ever did subsequently.

Not all the guards were harsh, but the usual outcome for any who were found performing acts of kindness was a firing squad. The turning point came on October 10, 1943, “the double tenth” as it came to be known, when the Kempetai took over Changi. Their training was similar to that practised by the Gestapo.

After her release Thomas made her way back to England and became a teacher once more. Her youngest brother, Christopher, was missing, presumed killed in action in Burma, and Francis, having been a prisoner of war in Changi, Thailand and Japan, resumed his teaching duties in Singapore before becoming Minister of Works and Communications, 1955-58.

Thomas became closely connected with the Society of the Sacred Cross, a contemplative Anglican order based at Tymawr Convent near Monmouth. At the time of her death she was a long-standing associate of the community.

For many years she lived in Monmouthshire and became a supporter of Plaid Cymru. In her nineties she wrote a letter to the Monmouthshire Beacon in a controversy over an initiative to associate Monmouth with a Japanese town, Ishikawa Machi. Thomas’s letter described briefly her own treatment at the hands of the Japanese and suggested that it was now time to move on. The dispute came to an abrupt end. As her eyesight failed she moved into residential care. She never married.

Mary Thomas, former internee of the Japanese, 1942-45, was born on December 13, 1906. She died on February 9, 2009, aged 102

welcome to the forum balloon. Can you tell us some stories about the lady herself?