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Tom Dowling
If ever we were asked to say anything in favour of the Japs, it would most likely relate to their intense loyalty to their emperor. They carried out his wishes with blind faith. They certainly accepted it as an honour to die for him.
When fighting on the island of Singapore, many of our positions were strongly fortified with high coils of 'impenetrable' concertina barbed wire. These defences were heavily backed with machine gun fire.
As the Japs drew nearer to these fortifications, a wave of their infantry would charge forward screaming "Banzai, Banzai, Banzai," and throw themselves onto the barrier of barbed wire, to be machine gunned down. The next wave would repeat the manoeuvre making a little further headway across the wire. So their advances would continue, wave after wave, sacrificing themselves with their "Banzai, Banzai," until the barbed wire coils were flattened, covered with a mat of their bodies. Then the forces that had remained back, would charge across the opening over the bodies of their own men, defying the intense machine gun fire with their "Banzais," in a suicidal rush to attack their emperor's enemies.
And all this in the name of their emperor.
The Japs certainly revered their emperor, so it was natural to expect that come his birthday, there would be a flurry of excitement and festivity.
The first time we encountered his birthday, came shortly after the fall of Singapore, when at Changi we were called on parade and ordered to bring our drinking mugs. We wondered what on earth we were going to do with the mugs. Nevertheless we did as we were told.
Along came a Jap officer, resplendent with gold braid and campaign ribbons, sword swinging by his side, and stepped onto a well-raised platform specially placed in front of the parade so that he could address us 'eye to eye'.
"Today it is emperor of Japan's birthday and we are to celebrate."
Having said that, the guards accompanying him, armed with flagons, moved down our lines and half filled our mugs with saki.
When the last of the mugs had been charged, the Jap officer said: "Now we drink to emperor."
We were in a bit of a dilemma, he had us by the 'short and curlies', the idea of drinking his saki was appealing, but to drink to his emperor's health was quite a different matter.
"You will all drink to health of emperor," the officer repeated sternly.
There was no way the boys could bring themselves to drink the emperor's health, so we just stood there blankly, carefully holding on to our half-filled mugs of saki.
Then out stepped Vern Rae, our rugged 15th Battery Intelligence Officer, hailing from the tall cedar country of Tasmania. In his big booming voice he thundered out: "Boys, we will drink to the emperor - faaaaARK the Emperor."
A great roar went up.
"The emperor - faaaaARK the emperor," and the boys quaffed down their half-filled pannikins of saki.
The Jap officer dutifully completed his toast, "Ahso! - the emperor - faaaaARK the emperor." No doubt feeling pretty chuffed that his emperor would be mighty pleased with his efforts at eliciting such an enthusiastic response from his vanquished foes.
The boys enjoyed their first encounter with saki, also feeling smugly satisfied that in the course of its enjoyment they too had paid their rightful dues to his imperial highness on this, his birthday.
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