How did The Japanese treated me. (Elizabeth Choy)(1942-1943)

I was imagining me being this lady, Elizabeth Choy, that was being tortured terribly, standing at her point of view. Imagining about things that have happened to her has happened to me. How the Japanese treated me.

"It's like 200 days in hell, suffering so much as the Japanese captured me, suspecting that I have help the British internees.

What they did to me was that they put in a prison cell that is only 10 by 12 feet (4m by 5m) big and there were more than 20 people suffocate inside. The whole room was so packed that we could only knelt from morning to night. Some of us even suffered serious sores on our knees. I was the only female among them Inside the cell was a tap and underneath it, a hole meant for toilet purposes. There was no privacy to speak of -- our daily business was conducted there in full view of everyone.

The stench coming from our perspiration, human waste and stagnant water fouled up the small cell and was extremely suffocating.

We had to crawl out through a small trap door at the side for interrogation. Our captors beat us up, subjected us to electric shocks and pumped us up with water as part of the interrogation routine. The feeling of having one’s belly pumped full of water and then seeing the water gushing out of the body was hardly bearable.
When my interrogators could not get any information out of me, they dragged my husband from Outram Prison, tied him up and made him kneel beside me. Then, in his full view, they stripped me to the waist and applied electric currents to me.
The electric shocks sent my whole body into spasms. My tears and mucus flowed uncontrollably.
Even now, anything with electricity, like microwave ovens and the television, puts me off.
I cannot describe the pain, but it must have been thousands of times worse for my husband who had to see me being tortured.
I was detained in the centre for more than 200 days. I wore the same outfit for that period of time. Getting a decent shower was wishful thinking; we considered ourselves very lucky to have a little water to wash our faces.
I was finally released after more than 200 days in the cell.
Not having seen sunlight during my imprisonment, my eyes could hardly open as I stood directly under the sun. My mind was a complete blank.
The clothes that I had been wearing for 200 days smelt foul.
My body ached from my injuries.
For a long while, I felt I had just returned from death." 

Elizabeth Choy

(1910-2006)

Rachel

1943

Website citation
http://ourstory.asia1.com.sg/war/headline/ec200.html  (Date assessed: 11 February 2013)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Choy (Date assessed: 11 February 2013)