Scars of war: Missing toenails<\/p>\n
By Carole Biniasch<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): When we were growing up, one thing about our
\nfather puzzled us greatly... his toes simply looked different.
\nLike most Chinese fathers, ours was a man of few words, and one
\nwould not broach a subject as delicate as ten toes that looked
\nrather odd.<\/p>\n
Curiosity did get the better of my reserve, however, and one
\nday I asked him. That was over thirty years ago, but his image
\nand his words are still etched indelibly into my memory.<\/p>\n
He touched each of his toes gingerly, looked at me with eyes
\nmisty with unshed tears and said, \"The Japanese took them... all
\nmy toenails.\"<\/p>\n
He said it with great sadness, but I could not detect any
\nrancor in his voice.<\/p>\n
My teenage self boiled over with anger, with a hatred more
\nintense than any I had ever felt, and my whole being screamed for
\nrevenge.<\/p>\n
I could not for the world imagine that I could forcibly
\nremoved someone's toenails with a pair of pliers. The image
\nhorrified me then, and still haunts me today.<\/p>\n
As a young lad, my father had trekked his way down to Canton.
\nTogether with his older brother, they had sold themselves as
\ncoolies to a ship captain in return for free passage to
\nSingapore. There, he worked off his debt, taught himself to read
\nand write, married my mother and started life as a trader in
\nmedicinal goods. He had never bore arms against anyone, he had
\nnever been remotely connected to a soldier's lot.<\/p>\n
When Singapore fell, he fell captive to the Japanese for the
\nsole reason that he was Chinese, male and he was aged between 18
\nand 36 years old. He spent the next two years in a prison camp
\nand to the day he died seven years ago, he could not figure out
\nwhy his Japanese jailers tortured him. He had no secrets to tell;
\nno military intelligence to impart. Yet, they subjected him to
\nthe whole gamut of inhuman tortures. Removing his toenails was
\njust one of the many.<\/p>\n
What awaited him at home in Penang was worse. His first-born
\nson, died of a middle ear infection when six months old because
\nthere wasn't a doctor left on the island to treat him. I never
\nknew how he took the news, because I had never talked with him
\nabout the dead child. In fact, I knew nothing of the existence of
\nthis brother until an aunt told me about him six years ago.<\/p>\n
My mother had never ever mentioned him, but after I found out
\nI asked her. She could not tell me where he was interred as she
\ndid not know herself. Someone took him away when he died, that
\nwas all she said.<\/p>\n
Growing up in the 1950s, most of the physical scars of war,
\nlike bombed buildings and charred corpses, had long disappeared
\n-- except in the memories of those who lived through the horrors.
\nWhat I knew of the Japanese occupation, I learned through books,
\ndocumentary films and, lately, questioning older friends and
\nrelatives whose tongues and memories have been somewhat unlocked
\nby the passage of some 50 years.<\/p>\n
The sights and sounds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki being
\nvaporized made me wonder about the fragility of human lives. But
\nmy conscience has never been burdened by the question of the
\nnecessity of this course of action. Perhaps among those Japanese
\ncasualties, there were some who had the nasty habit of removing
\ntoenails with pliers; perhaps among the children who died, some
\nwould have grown up to continue the practice.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a few thousand men got out of the war with their
\ntoenails intact because the Japanese surrendered when they did.
\nFor a folk as circumspect and polite as the Japanese, I find it
\ndifficult to understand why they find it impossible to say a
\nsimple sorry for starting a war of expansion and then subjecting
\nthe conquered to some of the cruelest treatment ever meted out to
\nprisoners of war.<\/p>\n
Each time I see a Japanese man over 70, I wonder if he could
\nhave been one of my father torturers.<\/p>",
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