[Milsurplus] Kuching Camp

[Hue Miller]

I watched the video again. You'll note the former guards are not armed, and 
second, THEY are doing manual labor.
The situation in the camps in days following liberation could be kind of 
fluid. In Japan itself, the guards just quit showing up for
work one day. In the territories, the mostly just withdrew from inside the 
camp and from guarding it, to their own encampments
wherever. I read recently a book by a prisoner who was a child in a camp in 
Indonesia.  The guards retained their weapons until
the British were present in enough strength to disarm them and to maintain 
some kind of order. Before that, while the guards
were certainly hated by the camp inmates,  the still-armed Japanese guards 
drove off Indonesian radicals who were travelling to
the camp to kill its residents - - who represented to them the former 
resented colonial regime.

Looking at the radio again, I did see the tube I missed first time. It's 
shaped like a #42 or #53 or something like that, but must
have been a British tube.

Funny thing, I recall listening to the British SW broadcast station from 
Kuching, Malaysia, in the early 1970s, I think I was using
an ARR-15 at that time, and I seem to recall it was on a 60-meter band freq, 
something like 5030 kcs.

The Australian troops, wearing shorts, floppy hats - no helmets - and armed 
with the can't-break-it Owens gun - now that is one
seriously impressive bunch.
-Hue

> I mostly lurk here as I've got an old TCS-12 rec./tx. set and look for any 
> posts in ref. to that unit.  I'm confused by the video you posted, Mr. Hue 
> Miller.  Had that POW camp been recently liberated?  If so, what were the 
> japs doing still guarding the camp?  All those smiling faces, so I figured 
> the war was recently over and the camp was free.  I appreciate your 
> comment on the USMC.  '68-'72. Semper Fi.
Garrett Fulton