The efforts of one remarkable man to keep Egremont tidy by gathering litter from the paths
and even from the river were rather belatedly recognised by Egremont Town Council when
they honoured him with the award of Citizenship of the Year.  Dr Courtney Willey
is now 91 years old, and he has been assiduous in his duties for more years than anyone
can remember.
Dr Willey was one of the two original physicians appointed to West
Cumberland Hospital, arriving in December 1951 with his wife, Muriel, to join his friend
and colleague, Dr John Simpson. He spoke to Egremont Today about the years when he and
John had served in a tiny team of three British doctors attending prisoners of war in
Japanese camps from the fall of Singapore until the end of the war.
After the Dutch capitulation he was at first allowed to continue
working in the field hospital, where he served under Lt. Colonel Dunlop. The Japanese were
terrified of a possible outbreak of plague, and readily accepted advice from British
doctors. Later they moved him to Chunkai Prisoner of War camp where he joined the Japanese
anti-cholera and malaria unit.
His report on conditions at the camps, ordered by British authorities
immediately after his liberation, make fascinating reading. He gives precise detail of the
food rations which, he warned the Japanese commanders, would lead to deficiency syndrome
diseases if followed for more than a few weeks, and he attributes the high death rate to
this inadequacy. The diet consisted of polished rice supplemented by thin vegetable stew,
and normal daily rations consisted of 400 grams of rice, 250 grams of vegetables, 50 grams
of meat, 50 grams of flour, a small quantity of salt and coconut oil, with a total value
of 2,200 calories. Beri Beri & Pellagra would inevitably follow, he warned.
The majority made change “without much trouble or pleasure,”
he reports, and he tried to encourage his fellow prisoners to supplement their diet by
gardening, producing tomatoes, sweet potatoes and high protein hijau beans. Their quarters
at this time included safe water and latrines, and fewer deaths would have occurred if
standards had remained at this level.
Standards collapsed during the construction of the Burma - Thailand
railway between August 1942 and October 1943. The task which normally would have taken
five years was forced through, by the slave labour of prisoners of war, in a little over
one year. The advice which Dr Willey and Dr Simpson gave as medical officers was
constantly overruled by ignorant guards, and sick and dying men were driven out to work.
At Chunkai Hospital Camp already inadequate rations were further reduced for the sick, and
they and one colleague had responsibility for 1,200 seriously ill prisoners with
inadequate medicines. Out of a prison camp population of 4,500, the death rate was three
to seven a day, later doubling as the unremitting labour took its toll. Incredibly, Dr
Willey survived with not a single day’s illness, but Dr Simpson had a dangerous
attack of dysentery and altogether more than 16,000 died in the construction of the
railway line, out of approximately 100,000. For the Tamils and Indians the death rate was
far higher and the suffering far more acute.
After the completion of the railway survivors were brought out of the
jungle into camps, where rations improved, morale was good, and men remained optimistic,
hoping for revenge. Letters and photographs from home sustained their sanity. There were
very few suicides, but men with chronic diarrhoea often faded very quickly. He reported
that appendicostomy sometimes produced a dramatic improvement for patients not too weak to
undergo the operation.
The really dangerous diseases had been malaria, both amoebic and
bacillary dysentery, tropical ulcers and diphtheria, much harder to fight because no
antitoxins were available. Convalescent human serum produced some benefits, he found.
Remarkably few deaths had been caused by heat effects, typhoid or tetanus, plague
(although endemic in the region) or snake bite, though there were cobras in the jungle.
His report recommended immunisation against diphtheria and cholera and the use of native
diets, including rice, and vegetables, supplemented by eggs, which was more suited to life
in the tropics than a European diet
Scrupulously fair, he reported the conduct of Japanese officers who had
been considerate as well as those who had been tyrants. Up to 1943 sport and plays had
been permitted, and he describes a cricket match eagerly watched by a Japanese Sergeant in
charge. His successor stopped that.
The Japanese could not accept the disgrace of surrender and could not
understand how we could return home. They would rather commit suicide in expiation for
their disgrace, and they paid little attention to the sickness of their own troops.
“In fairness it should be stated that the condition of their own sick and wounded
evacuated out of Burma was said by our own medical officers to be worse than ours had ever
been,” he reported. It was their arrogant, brutal and rapacious dealings with Asiatic
people that brought about their downfall, making enemies of people who could have been
allies.
(Inset, portrait of Dr Willey in 1941.
Dr Willey has agreed to speak to us in our next issue about the early days of West
Cumberland Hospital.)
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