King Rat

KING RAT

by

James Clavell

There was a war. Changi and Utram Road jails in Singapore do — or did

— exist. Obviously the rest of this story is fiction, and no similarity to anyone living or dead exists or is intended.

Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.

Closer, Changi lost its beauty and became what it was — an obscene forbidding prison. Cellblocks surrounded by sunbaked courtyards surrounded by towering walls.

Inside the walls, inside the cellblocks, story on story, were cells for two thousand prisoners at capacity. Now, in the cells and in the passageways and in every nook and cranny lived some eight thousand men. English and Australian mostly — a few New Zealanders and Canadians — the remnants of the armed forces of the Far East campaign.

These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war.

And they had lived.

The cell doors were open and the cellblock doors were open and the monstrous gate which slashed the walls was open and the men could move in and out — almost freely. But still there was a closeness, a claustrophobic smell.

Outside the gate was a skirting tarmac road. A hundred yards west this road was crossed by a tangle of barbed gates, and outside these gates was a guardhouse peopled with the armed offal of the conquering hordes.

Past the barrier the road ran merrily onward, and in the course of time lost itself in the sprawling city of Singapore. But for the men, the road west ended a hundred yards from the main gate.

East, the road followed the wall, then turned south and again followed the wall. On either side of the road were banks of long "godowns" as the rough sheds were called. They were all the same — sixty paces long with walls made from plaited coconut fronds roughly nailed to posts, and thatch roofs also made from coconut fronds, layer on mildewed layer. Every year a new layer was added, or should have been added. For the sun and the rain and the insects tortured the thatch and broke it down. There were simple openings for windows and doors. The sheds had long thatch overhangs to keep out the sun and the rain, and they were set on concrete stilts to escape floods and the snakes and frogs and slugs and snails, the scorpions, centipedes, beetles, bugs — all manner of crawling things.

Officers lived in these sheds.

South and east of the road were four rows of concrete bungalows, twenty to a row, back to back. Senior officers — majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels — lived in these.

The road turned west, again following the wall, and met another bank of atap sheds. Here was quartered the overflow from the jail.

And in one of these, smaller than most, lived the American contingent of twenty-five enlisted men.

Where the road turned north once more, hugging the wall, was part of the vegetable gardens. The remainder — which supplied most of the camp food — lay farther to the north, across the road, opposite the prison gate.

The road continued through the lesser garden for two hundred yards and ended in front of the guardhouse.

Surrounding the whole sweating area, perhaps half a mile by half a mile, was a barbed fence. Easy to cut. Easy to get through. Scarcely guarded.

No searchlights. No machine gun posts. But once outside, what then?

Home was across the seas, beyond the horizon, beyond a limitless sea or hostile jungle. Outside was disaster, for those who went and for those who remained.

By now, 1945, the Japanese had learned to leave the control of the camp to the prisoners. The Japanese gave orders and the officers were responsible for enforcing them. If the camp gave no trouble, it got none.

To ask for food was trouble. To ask for medicine was trouble. To ask for anything was trouble. That they were alive was trouble.

For the men, Changi was more than a prison. Changi was genesis, the place of beginning again.