Captain Bertie Hall Back
p. 18 · Read in the full issue
From Jap Prison Camps
rERE arrived in Sydney at the end of September Captain Bertie Hall, of the British Solomon Islands and New Guinea, who has just ended 48 years at sea (his ship was torpedoed in World War I), with 31 years in Jap prison camps.
Captain Hall commenced his career in New Guinea in 1921, when he became skipper of the Government vessel “Siar”; and he finished it in 1937, when he fell down a hold on the Carpenter ship “Rabaul,” and broke his back. After a long spell in hospital, he went to the East; and he was in the China coast trade when the Jap war started.
He was 18 months in a camp In Amoy, where prisoners were well treated; and then he had two years in Shanghai, where all sorts of ingenious tortures were practised—from the breaking of hands to forcing water up the nose. Thence the whole camp was moved in cattle trucks, through Manchuria and Korea, to a very verminous place in the north of Japan.
A cup of rice and a cup of seaweed per day was the usual ration.
Despite his years, and apparently slight physique, Captain Hall retained his health, and is putting on weight rapidly.
He reported having seen in Japan and Manila two or three Rabaulites—he especially mentioned Dr. Watch, Lieu tenant Kilner and Clarrie Archer But of the very large party of New Guinea civilians, now missing and feared to be dead, he heard no word whatever.
Mrs. M. A. Wilson, of the Child Welfare Division of the Fiji Medical Department, returned to the Colony in September, after leave spent in Australia.