CHILD'S PLAY IN THE SHADOW OF THE SUN
XXIII
Furtherwords
In the camp, over the years of internment, while the Japanese guards were an everpresent cause for worry and uncertainty with their absolute, alien, hostile, and erratic authority over our lives; while our days were consumed by hunger and burdened with the threat of disease, and crippled with tenuous futures; time itself was a constant burden, especially for adults, for all these reasons, but especially because of their isolation from news of the war and their impotence over the daily activities of their lives. Survival was of course a pressing daily concern, but diversion offers both an escape from the oppressive futility of captive lives and, illusory and temporary though it may be, a sense of purpose. And so it was that some in the camp undertook to prepare and provide occasional theatrical events by putting on a play in one of the buildings that offered the space for a stage and an audience.
For most of my time in the camp, I was too young even to be aware of these; however, I do remember attending one. It was probably 1945 when I was five years old. The room was full. The performance area at the front must have been raised, for I had a clear view of events on stage. What I remember clearly, and even yet visually, was a pantomime performed and back lit behind a large hanging sheet. The figures of the piece were clearly silhouetted against the sheet: a person lying on a table or raised bed, several people gathered around the prostrate person, and a visible "clothesline" behind the ensemble, horizontal to the audience. What appeared to unfold was a surgery of sorts in which various items were removed from the body and hung with a flourish on the "clothesline". These "organs" were larger than life and in various shapes that suggested the particular item, such as an oversized butterfly for lungs. All the while this was going on, some music was playing. I am sure the adults found it an amusing parody of the medical attention provided in the camp and was offered in good humoured jest to the many nurses and doctors interned with us. But the whole thing shocked and disturbed me to such an extent that all these years later, even though much of the detail has faded, I still can recall it. In fact, even though I had no idea what the music was that was playing, some time after the war and our liberation, I recognized the melody on radio. I heard it often enough as it was a popular song: "Camptown Ladies".
The music had a strange effect whenever I heard the song. I would get this unpleasant feeling that sounds were accelerating, speeding up, but not shifting in pitch, just that time was going faster and faster. That feeling would also come over me at other times. Sometimes unexpectedly. Sometimes when I was overtired or had gone too long without sleep. After some years, the sensation occurred less frequently until it eventually ceased to happen unexpectedly. Still, even writing about it makes me uneasy.
That may or may not have been a relic of Internment; however, I was missing my back bottom teeth for some years. By the time I was twelve, my adult teeth had grown in. Curiously, I was plagued with boils, mostly on my bottom or back, but sometimes on my legs and arms. They too eased up by the time I was twelve. Perhaps these changes were a consequence of the changing hormones as adolescence approached. Perhaps they were the effect of the vitamins my mother poured into me to counteract those years of malnutrition. Perhaps it was none of that but merely coincidence and the passing of time. In any case, in my experience with the war, I was one of the fortunate ones. So many had suffered horribly. So many had died terrible deaths. So many had died.
And for what?
War's Offspring
(remembering the rubble in London, England - early 1946)
Children hide
Among the ruins...
I remember...
Crouched behind broken walls,
Squeezed beside gasping doorways,
Empty windows,
Huddled beneath stairs ascending to zero,
Sheltered by the shells of bombed out
Architecture,
Waiting for dreams to rebuild
Meaning
From the bones of destruction
As if vision were a phoenix
That could draw flesh from dust,
As if hope could breathe
Form from fantasy,
But these ashes merely grow cold with time,
And desolation marks like a memorial
The graveyards of murdered innocence
While fear, hunched in shadow,
Lurks among the images, whispering
That madness is the child of madness...
But the child hides
In the ruin.
(Leslie Shatokin (before internment) - Parkin (during internment) - Bowie (after 1945))
Regarding names, I did not know my true paternity until recently (2020), eighty years after my birth. DNA testing has revealed him to be Leslie Edward Buckler, a submarine warrant officer in the British Navy. He was killed along with all on board in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily on June 30, 1940. My mother married William Parkin on her birthday, October 8, 1940. William Parkin was killed Christmas morning that same year. I carried his name when we sailed to Britain on the Empress of Australia after liberation in 1945. Regarding names, I became Leslie Bowie in 1946 when my mother married David Sinclair Bowie in Scotland, after our arrival in Britain. I came to Canada as Leslie Parkin Bowie. What's in a name, eh?
For most of my time in the camp, I was too young even to be aware of these; however, I do remember attending one. It was probably 1945 when I was five years old. The room was full. The performance area at the front must have been raised, for I had a clear view of events on stage. What I remember clearly, and even yet visually, was a pantomime performed and back lit behind a large hanging sheet. The figures of the piece were clearly silhouetted against the sheet: a person lying on a table or raised bed, several people gathered around the prostrate person, and a visible "clothesline" behind the ensemble, horizontal to the audience. What appeared to unfold was a surgery of sorts in which various items were removed from the body and hung with a flourish on the "clothesline". These "organs" were larger than life and in various shapes that suggested the particular item, such as an oversized butterfly for lungs. All the while this was going on, some music was playing. I am sure the adults found it an amusing parody of the medical attention provided in the camp and was offered in good humoured jest to the many nurses and doctors interned with us. But the whole thing shocked and disturbed me to such an extent that all these years later, even though much of the detail has faded, I still can recall it. In fact, even though I had no idea what the music was that was playing, some time after the war and our liberation, I recognized the melody on radio. I heard it often enough as it was a popular song: "Camptown Ladies".
The music had a strange effect whenever I heard the song. I would get this unpleasant feeling that sounds were accelerating, speeding up, but not shifting in pitch, just that time was going faster and faster. That feeling would also come over me at other times. Sometimes unexpectedly. Sometimes when I was overtired or had gone too long without sleep. After some years, the sensation occurred less frequently until it eventually ceased to happen unexpectedly. Still, even writing about it makes me uneasy.
That may or may not have been a relic of Internment; however, I was missing my back bottom teeth for some years. By the time I was twelve, my adult teeth had grown in. Curiously, I was plagued with boils, mostly on my bottom or back, but sometimes on my legs and arms. They too eased up by the time I was twelve. Perhaps these changes were a consequence of the changing hormones as adolescence approached. Perhaps they were the effect of the vitamins my mother poured into me to counteract those years of malnutrition. Perhaps it was none of that but merely coincidence and the passing of time. In any case, in my experience with the war, I was one of the fortunate ones. So many had suffered horribly. So many had died terrible deaths. So many had died.
And for what?
War's Offspring
(remembering the rubble in London, England - early 1946)
Children hide
Among the ruins...
I remember...
Crouched behind broken walls,
Squeezed beside gasping doorways,
Empty windows,
Huddled beneath stairs ascending to zero,
Sheltered by the shells of bombed out
Architecture,
Waiting for dreams to rebuild
Meaning
From the bones of destruction
As if vision were a phoenix
That could draw flesh from dust,
As if hope could breathe
Form from fantasy,
But these ashes merely grow cold with time,
And desolation marks like a memorial
The graveyards of murdered innocence
While fear, hunched in shadow,
Lurks among the images, whispering
That madness is the child of madness...
But the child hides
In the ruin.
(Leslie Shatokin (before internment) - Parkin (during internment) - Bowie (after 1945))
Regarding names, I did not know my true paternity until recently (2020), eighty years after my birth. DNA testing has revealed him to be Leslie Edward Buckler, a submarine warrant officer in the British Navy. He was killed along with all on board in the Mediterranean off the coast of Sicily on June 30, 1940. My mother married William Parkin on her birthday, October 8, 1940. William Parkin was killed Christmas morning that same year. I carried his name when we sailed to Britain on the Empress of Australia after liberation in 1945. Regarding names, I became Leslie Bowie in 1946 when my mother married David Sinclair Bowie in Scotland, after our arrival in Britain. I came to Canada as Leslie Parkin Bowie. What's in a name, eh?