We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2022
It was not until March that the rainy season began to end. Daily squalls became shorter and because there was no heavy rain it was low water in the River Kwae Noi. Even the water running down from small mountain streams dried up. The temperature fell morning and evening, and at night before dawn the warmth of a blazing bonfire felt good to us. It felt like Autumn in Japan. However, as the sun climbed so did the temperature, and the atmosphere grew dry as in a hot midsummer with us. As the day proceeded the cold and the night-dew ceased, but our ‘bedroom’, the mosquito-net, got damper and damper before dawn. The changes from Autumn to Summer and from Summer to Autumn were like daily seasonal changes and we had difficulty in getting used to them. From the year before the Japanese unit billets had become extensive and presented a lively scene. On Thai-side the jungle was cut back and cleared for 9 Regiment's HQ and a level clearing created, the buildings being mainly of timber and appropriately thatched with atap.
Okamoto Unit had a change of command, becoming Imanaka Unit. Under Lt-Col. Imanaka the Unit advanced to Thā Khanun. At Wanyai, the base for rush-construction was consolidated bit-by-bit: for this central HQ each unit had been building numerous billets and godowns for storing machine parts and provisions. Meanwhile the new earth works, on which the line had opened to traffic in the previous Autumn, were completed and the highway from Kamburi took oneway traffic. Lorries loaded with food and fodder for the engineers, coolies and prisoners came up and down the road, and cars loaded with supplies and machinery came and went one after another. Everyone's work in the jungle depths grew busily active and overflowed with liveliness. Thus there was a deep Spring flavour, it seemed, about rushconstruction in the jungle. On a newly-erected gatepost a sign-board was hung out, written in sumi with bold brush strokes, saying, ‘Imai Unit HQ’, and within the gate a guardroom was proudly set up.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
