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(c) 2014, Aaron Elson
Karnig Thomasian: At that moment in time it was too soon to interrogate us. They were too stupid. We were all in shock. When you’re in shock, I presume – and I’ve talked it over with a lot of psychiatrists, I said, "I don’t understand my attitude at that time. All I do know is, had they asked the same questions much later, who the hell cares what I say, I don’t know anything of any value, I would have told them." As my co-pilot had advised me later, he said, "Karnig. Just tell them, fabricate something. You know you can do that." So I did from that point on.
I’m trying to recollect which of the interrogations came first. They wanted to know where I’d come from, No. 1. Do I want to see my girlfriend. I said, "I don’t have a girlfriend."
"Oh, well, you want to see your mother and father?"
"Sure."
"Give me your address, where you from?"
"No, I’m not going to give you their address."
"Ohhhh, you may not live."
Aaron Elson: What kind of things would you make up?
Karnig Thomasian: I’m going to get to that. Because later on I was interrogated quite a number of times.
Aaron Elson: Did you know at that point that they didn’t go by the Geneva Convention?
Karnig Thomasian: Oh, yes. They said, "You must tell us everything." But I’ll show you how stupid they were. (Reading from a memoir he has written) "The interpreter asked me a whole battery of questions, how many planes were in our raid, who was the squadron leader, where we came from. I thought I’d try to reason with them. I pointed out the rules of war and that I was given certain orders, I couldn’t go back on them. I had many friends still fighting and anything I might say could cause them to be killed. I asked him if he were captured, would he talk? The interpreter translated all that I had said and came back to me saying that he wouldn’t be captured. They would fight and die."
There are some things that I had forgotten, but we can splice it in.
Aaron Elson: What was it you had forgotten?
Karnig Thomasian: All right, I’ll proceed. (Reading from the memoir) "My shoulders and arms were still" – this is going back to when we were first captured – "the undersides of my arms were numb and there was pain when I reached back or up, when I took my clothes off and on. It was at this time we saw Jim McGivern and Bert Parmalee. Bert was hurt. Something had gone clean through his bicep, breaking the bone. We were able to slip in a few words but they didn’t know any more than we did about the other men or what happened to our plane. The guards had Jim on the side of the room and were laughing at him. I had noticed earlier that one of the officers had taken out his sword and cut the shoulder straps to Jim’s jumpsuit, causing it to slip to the floor. Now we saw what the guards were laughing at. Jim had defecated in his pants. Later would we learn what really happened.
"When Jim jumped out of the nose wheel hatch he dived head-first and the next man lifted the hatch. Chet had already jumped along with Bert and Richard. Norm was next and he noticed a foot caught between the hatch cover and the floor. He lifted the hatch and the foot disappeared. Norm couldn’t pull the hatch fully open because of the effect of the centrifugal force which made it too heavy for him. Since he and Doc Triemer, our pilot, were the only ones left in the front compartment, they worked together to lift the hatch and got it hooked in the open position. They stood there on either side of the hatch. Norm said, ‘It’s time to go.’
"Doc said, ‘You first.’ Norm jumped and that was the last time any of us saw Doc. It was a great loss for all of us. I was the only one to make it out alive from the back of the plane. All these losses hit us at about the same time. Each day we would pray that by some miracle the rest of the guys made it and soon we would see them, even as prisoners, at least they would be alive."
So then they took us down into the main, the New Laws Court, they called it. New Laws Court was the court in the city, and we went in and they started to interrogate us and this is where we were before.
Aaron Elson: This is in Rangoon now?
Karnig Thomasian: In the city of Rangoon.
(Reading) "He laughed. ‘Where you come from?’
"I told him I could not tell him anything.
"He insisted I must tell him.
"I told him again that I could only tell him my name rank, and serial number.
"He laughed aloud and told me I must answer his questions. ‘What your age?’
"There was no harm in telling him that. I told him I was 20.
"They both smiled and the interpreter leaned towards me and said, ‘So young to die, isn’t it?’
"I told him that I wasn’t dead yet and I realized what he was driving at. He was really irritated and told me that I would die if I didn’t talk.
"And the interpreter asked me a bunch of questions that I told you before. He said that they would fight and die, you remember I told you I told him how well we treated our prisoners but I could see that all this talk made no impression at all. It was all a hopeless stab in the dark, and all I got was a beating with the teakwood club that most of the guards had as part of their equipment."
Aaron Elson: Where did they beat you?
Karnig Thomasian: All over your body. In the back, and shirt. I had a leather jacket on, it really helped, believe it or not, boy.
Aaron Elson: What goes through your mind in a situation like that?
Karnig Thomasian: Well, they could kill me. They sure could do that. But being so close to the finality of it and with our friends having died already, their threats just bounced, is all I can say, really. They got angry and told me if I didn’t answer them I would be shot. (Reading) "At this point the interpreter picked up a teakwood club and went behind me. I didn’t take my eyes off of him and it probably saved the bone from being fractured. He began hitting me on my back and arms but I was able to ride with the blows. I still had my leather A-1 jacket on and it absorbed some of the hits. He told me that if I talked he would put me in a POW camp. After the war I would go home. A funny feeling came over me. I just didn’t care what he would do. I reasoned that he would kill me anyway whether I told him anything or not. The shock and excitement of this day had affected me in strange ways. I had always thought of life as a very precious thing, and at this moment I was willing to give it up. I had been brought up to respect principles and values. The war brought me face to face with the cost of maintaining those values. The cost may be my life. I wondered why these people were fighting so fiercely and why they were so cruel. How naive I was."
Aaron Elson: When they were threatening you like that, did you see them actually shoot anyone?
Karnig Thomasian: No. Eventually we found out that none of us got shot for what we did.
(Reading from his memoir) "And they suddenly asked me why I was fighting. I answered quickly that my country was attacked and I volunteered to fight and do my part, and I told them that we were fighting for the rights and freedoms of people and that his people were trying to destroy those rights and freedoms. The guards and interrogator snickered and got pretty mad at hearing all this. They reminded me that I would be shot, but they realized that I had made my decision. That was when the interrogator lost his control, took off his leather sandals, and started to beat me with them."
Aaron Elson: With the sandals?
Karnig Thomasian: He lost it. He just got so pissed off. With sandals it’s much better than a teakwood stick.
Aaron Elson: That had to be painful. Was there any humor in the situation?
Karnig Thomasian: No, it wasn’t humorous. The humorous part was how stupid this guy was, he had lost it, I had really gotten him pissed off, and that wasn’t my intention. (Reading) "I warded off most of the blows so he went back and got his chair, then quickly put it down and grabbed the teakwood club from the guard who was in the room. I quickly got up off the floor and he started swinging at me. He won and I couldn’t hit back. What kind of justice is that?"
Obviously, this is a kid talking. Oh, jeez, the naivete of the time. (Reading) "The interpreter said that it was all fair since I didn’t give any information. For some reason he finally stopped hitting me and put the club down. I had bruises all over. But thank God he didn’t hit me in the head. He sat down and motioned for me to sit on the floor again. He then asked an odd question: Who did I think would win the war?" Oh, brother!
"I told them that we would win because God was on our side and that we were right and that right would win. They had a great laugh at this as tears were welling in my eyes. Even then I was very emotional. I believed in what I had said.
"It was no use, they couldn’t get me. I must have fallen asleep standing up." All right, I told you about that. "Yes, the guard must have understood me because he came back and poured some water into my tin. I was so thirsty, I waited for water. I was purely baffled by his change of attitude. Yesterday the interrogator said that I would be shot. Today I was fed. I just didn’t understand and decided to sit tight to see what would happen next. Sitting alone in a cell gives a man a lot of time to think, and I did a lot of that. Christmas was just a couple of weeks away, and I prayed that they wouldn’t notify my folks until after the Holidays. I hoped that someone had seen our chutes. What did they know about us? Who survived it and who didn’t? I wondered if the Japs really intended to kill us. Looking around the cell walls I noticed names and dates and wondered about the fate of these prisoners before me.
"I told Chet of my interrogation the day before. He told me that if push comes to shove tell them certain things that they already know but to think, then speak. We had to stop talking because the guard was making his rounds again. It was getting close to the noon hour when another prisoner was put in" – that’s Stanley Dow, not Edward Dow – "Stanley Dow. I had never seen or heard of him before. Was this a plant? And then I talked to Chet and we cleared that up. So now the big question was, what was going to happen to us? Soon some more rice came around. This time there was some part of vegetable mixed with it. I decided to rip off my leather CBI patch from my jacket and I used it as a scooper with which to eat my food. It was good to have some food again. After eating we talked a bit when the guard wasn’t around. I guess we were all on edge. Something had to happen soon.
"After nightfall, they got us all out of there. The guards batted their gun butts on the wooden bars and ordered us out of our cells. We crawled out of the small door of the cell and quickly put on our shoes. The guards then ordered us along a hallway which led to a small open courtyard. It was about 18 feet by 22 feet and a hard dirt ground. That’s when I first saw Richard Brooks. It was good to see that Brooksie was all right. His face looked very worn. I could see that he was frightened about something. I looked around and all I saw were Japanese officers with their swords. They ordered us to kneel down in a row and not talk. My mind really started to race over all the possibilities. Was this the way it was going to end? I just couldn’t believe this scene.
"The door we came through opened again. I recognized the rest of my crew, six in all. I saw Norman, my navigator, for the first time. I was so happy to see him, but we couldn’t talk. We winked at one another as he knelt down beside me. Parmalee was suffering with his shattered arm. He needed medical attention but at this moment that was not uppermost in our minds. A large Jap soldier entered the courtyard and walked around waving his sword over his head like he was exercising for what I wondered. The guards ordered us to place our hands behind us as they handcuffed us together. They then all came around in front of us and the chief officer held out a sheet of paper and started to read it in Japanese. Was this our notice of execution? The interpreter was there and he translated the message to us. It was the most surprising thing I could have heard. He told us that we were to be transferred to a prisoner of war camp. I almost passed out right there. This could well have been our death sentence.
"We were led out into the street and to an old truck. Piled into the back of the truck. We were warned not to try any funny business. Two guards stood on the back of the truck with their rifles ready. It was a cool night and it felt eerie riding slowly through the ill-lit streets. There was no cover for the back of the truck so we could look and see all the bombed buildings. I actually could see, you could look right through what was left of them up to the moonlit skies above. I had never seen the destruction of our bombs firsthand. It was awesome.
"After a short ride we arrived at our destination. The guards motioned for us to follow. We helped Parmalee off as gently as we could. Among the men in the other crews in the truck with us was a man in great pain. His wrist and hand were hanging from his arm. Later we found out that he was Master Sergeant Richard Montgomery of Captain Meyers’ crew. The Japanese couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything for him. It was awful." This goes on about 60 pages, I’m only on Page 22.
Aaron Elson: Did he survive?
Karnig Thomasian: Yes. And I talk to him, in fact I’ve got to call him soon.
Aaron Elson: What things stand out that happened at the camp?
Karnig Thomasian: The continuous thing was the beatings. And we were in solitary for about a month or so, and there was a guard there called Tarzan, he was a crazy man. He just beat us for no reason. He’d just come in and take us out and beat us. One time he pulled me out and put his gun to my head, and he was short so I’m looking down at him, this monkey, he had a gold tooth, he’s smiling, and he says, "Oka-do," which means, "You’re okay?"
I say, "Okay." What am I gonna say, I don’t know. And I’m standing at attention. My co-pilot’s standing here and my other guys are standing there. There’s the wall splitting the two cells. They’re watching all this, and he goes, "Oka-do," so he goes, "click." Empty chamber. Ohh, he laughs, and he gets me and he shoves me into the cell, I almost, Jesus Christ. Well, the long and short of it was, at the close of the war, somehow they found him and they tried him and they hung him. I have all the literature on it.
Aaron Elson: Were there any instances where you actually saw them shoot someone?
Karnig Thomasian: No, I never saw them shoot anybody. Beatings, yes. Shooting, no.
Our day-to-day routine was miserable in solitary, and we had a binjo box that we’d have to take out – binjo is the toilet, it’s an ammunition box. That was our only chance to get out, so we’d all take turns carrying it out, and we’d grab leaves off the trees to wipe ourselves. Crazy. You know, you wonder how the hell you did some of these things. And you couldn’t wash; there was no way to wash. The only time was when we got out into the regular compound. After we were there for a month and a half, one of the big compounds emptied out – the Indian national army was housed in there, and they were collaborating with the Japs, so they went out, who knows where they were going. I was interrogated by them, too, that was another thing. So we got into that compound, because the solitary was overloaded. They shoved us all into there, all Air Force guys.
Aaron Elson: How did you survive in solitary?
Karnig Thomasian: Well, you survive. We weren’t a single person, don’t forget. Because it was crowded it was two or three people in each cell. So it helps. And at night you talk to each other; the guards aren’t there at night. It’s that you’re just confined in a little area. And there was a little window, from which we could signal information from the British in the next compound. It was unbelievable. It was a way of life.
Aaron Elson: Was it all American and British prisoners, or were there other nationalities?
Karnig Thomasian: Chinese. There was one whole compound of Chinese.
Aaron Elson: Did they treat the Chinese even worse?
Karnig Thomasian: Same thing. Now, besides the beatings and all that crap that went on, I volunteered when we got into the big compound to help with the cooking. Well, cooking, what are you cooking? Rice. I just volunteered for anything. I knew that I had to keep busy. Had to be active. So we devised games. In solitary we played word games. Geographic games. Anything to keep your mind going, and we’d just do this all day long. And then finally we’d get tired and go to sleep, and someone – you’d have to be aware when the guard was coming, you’d better not be on the ground sleeping, so someone was always awake to shake up the guys. Once I was in solitary and I was dreaming it was at Christmastime and we were home having dinner and my grandmother was there, and my mother and father and some friends were there and we were sitting having a nice dinner. Oh, it was just, and I said, gee, and then "wh-wh-wh...Tommy!"
"Yeah?"
"Guard’s coming!"
I didn’t know what happened. I was in total shock. I didn’t know what was coming off. Where was I? You know, I had to first orient myself, and I just got up in time. Thank God. Whew! Oh, man, that was something. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was something.
Then there would be fellows that would, you’d see them just give up, and you’d say, "Jesus, you’ve got to shake them," you’d do everything you could to keep the guy from regressing into himself, and sometimes you’d help, sometimes you wouldn’t, and they’d die. They’d just die. They weren’t weakies. It was just, that’s how the situation hit them.
There was another time – this was near Easter, and this compound that we were in, the new one, right in one corner of the compound was a sprig of green coming up. I said, "Geez, look at that! It’s not a weed, it’s too broad-leafed." So we got some water from the trough and watered it. Soon it’s going to bud. And come Easter, would you believe it was a white lily at Easter. Well, I tell you, I showed it to a chaplain – we called him a chaplain, a very nice gentleman, he took over that part – and he says, "How are we going to have a service? We can’t have a service. If you congregate, then forget it, they’ll come in and beat you all up."
So we said, "How are we gonna do this?"
Well, we had a Jewish population, too. Chet Paul, my co-pilot, he’s Jewish. And Norman Levine, he was Jewish, he was another Levine. So many Levines I know. Anyway, they got a whole bunch of them, and they said, "Not to worry. We’ll take care of it. You have your service."
What they did – at great risk to themselves – they milled around, and slowly, slowly we all went up into the second floor of this building, and we had the lily in a little cup, and these guys went up and down the stairs and milled around, went to the cook shack, they kept busy, moving, moving, all this time. We kept it short, naturally, maybe 20 minutes, then we slowly, slowly dispersed. But I’ll never forget that.
Aaron Elson: And the chaplain, what was he in civilian life?
Karnig Thomasian: Oh, I don’t know. He was one of the pilots. He just was very religious and he took over that part.
Aaron Elson: Do you remember what he said in the service?
Karnig Thomasian: No, I don’t. Well, yes, I do, actually. I do some part of it. And the only part I remember was, you know, we should look upon this flower as a sign that we’re going to be liberated. And three or four weeks later, we were. You know, it’s just, I don’t know, coincidence.
Aaron Elson: I’ll bet you think of that every Easter then.
Karnig Thomasian: Oh, yes.
Aaron Elson: That was Easter of 1945?
Karnig Thomasian: Yes. Because we were freed in May of ’45.
Aaron Elson: So you were freed before the Japanese surrendered?
Karnig Thomasian: Yes, because they had departed, and they took a lot of guys with them as hostages and then they let them go.
Aaron Elson: Did anything humorous happen in the camp?
Karnig Thomasian: Yes. There was always humor. You know, get Americans together and there’s always humor. We would play chess tournaments, and make up our chess sets, carve them. And I made – I found a piece of barrel hoop in the yard, and I made a handle with some wood and tied it, I forget what I tied it with. And then I walked up and down the concrete wall for a week, until finally I got it to a point where it needed a honing stone, and Brooksie had found, on one of the ledges, the Indian national army must have left it behind; they shaved their beards, and he found a honing stone. And man, I shaved these guys. "Hey, you going out this week?"
"Yeah, I got a heavy date this weekend."
But you had to be very careful. I boiled water and kept it right next to me all the time, because if you get a cut in that situation, you’re in big trouble. It would get infected right away. So you had to be very careful. And this Aussie, he wanted a complete [razor haircut]. I said, "Aw, Geez, Ozzie, I’m telling you, I’ll do it, but I’ve got to be very careful. Don’t move." And I did. And he didn’t get one cut. I don’t know how.
Aaron Elson: What would have happened if they had found the razor?
Karnig Thomasian: I don’t know. Didn’t it occur to them, how did some of these guys get their beards off, or how did they get haircuts? This is a thing that I wonder about. Beats the hell out of me. It was just a little blade. It did the job, though. And then I lost it; when we were freed, someone copped it. I don’t know who. Dammit. I wanted that so much, because it was such a symbol of my sanity.
Aaron Elson: Was there a time where there was so little food available that it was starvation?
Karnig Thomasian: Oh yes. We were losing people from lack of food, lack of nourishment. Now, there was a shack, a brick building on the corner of our compound, and it was the warehouse, small as it was, of food. Like eggs. It had a door in the brick wall, and the guys had slowly taken the cement from the bricks to the point where the whole housing of the lock assembly came out with the door and the door just opened. But you can’t go in and just ransack the place, you’d do it one time and that’s it. So whenever somebody was really ill to the point that they need the nourishment of an egg, they’d go in and get one or two eggs, period, and that’s it. And then only by the direction of the commandant of our group, whoever was the highest officer there.
And this is, we’ll get to this, we haven’t gotten to this stage yet where they were dropping food containers. They bombed us by mistake. We said, "Japs gone." The British fighter planes thought they were joking so they bombed us. They missed and hit one of the outer walls over here somewhere. So the British prisoners got up and wrote this, "Extract Digit."
Aaron Elson: And what does that mean?
Karnig Thomasian: In British terms? Take the finger out of your ass. So right away they came back and they waved their wings. Then they came back and they dropped food containers. I mean, would you believe? It’s just wild. What brilliance to come up with that. "No, they’re really gone!" No, "Extract Digit."
Aaron Elson: How much did you weigh when you were liberated?
Karnig Thomasian: I forget, 115, 120, something like that. Not much.
Aaron Elson: And what did you weigh when you were captured?
Karnig Thomasian: I imagine then I was around 165.
Aaron Elson: Was there any contact with the Red Cross when you were a prisoner, or was that only in Europe?
Karnig Thomasian: No contact whatsoever. We had no contact with anybody.
Aaron Elson: Had your parents been notified that you were a prisoner?
Karnig Thomasian: That’s another story. Mom wrote a diary, in one of these little school composition books. I still have it. It’s one of those notebooks the kids used to have that looks like a cow’s skin, only smaller. So she wrote, "Oh, I don’t know where you are but I know you’re going to be all right, and we miss you." She’d write to me every now and then. Not every day. On the day that we were – I call it liberated because that’s when the Ghurkas came in, the Japs had gone and the Ghurkas came in and this one newspaperman, an American newspaperman, he was the first one in there. He was fabulous. On that day, she said, "Karnig, I know you’re alive." It’s phenomenal. And the date’s there and everything. I could not believe it when I read it, when I got back, she showed it to me some time later.
Aaron Elson: What day was it you were liberated?
Karnig Thomasian: May something. Let’s see if I have it here. Six Ghurkas. May 3rd. (Reading) "I woke up at the crack of dawn, helped prepare the breakfast for our compound. We still had some condiments from the food containers that were parachuted by the British. We all started to gather what little we had so that when the time came to leave, we’d be ready. Later that morning an American officer entered our prison with his aide." That was General Stroudemeyer. I’ve got a picture with him.
Aaron Elson: How did you readjust after being a prisoner?
Karnig Thomasian: Well, I was in the hospital for a month in Calcutta, and they just fed us and they took care of our sores. I mean, these sores, the jungle sores that I got on my ankles, that’s why I didn’t go on the march. I had a choice, am I well enough to go on the march? They said, "Those that are able to walk, we take." Then you’d wear their fatigues, the Japanese fatigue uniforms.
Aaron Elson: What was the march?
Karnig Thomasian: The Japanese contingents were leaving and they used them as hostages, in their minds. Later on what happened was they left them, they just ran for their lives. The guys were lucky, but along the way they killed some people because they slacked back and that’s what I was afraid of. I said, gee whiz, if I can’t walk, what’s gonna happen? So I flipped a coin to myself and I said, I’ll stay back and I’ll be able to help the guys that are really bad off here, and hopefully they’re not gonna kill us all. Why would they? So that’s what we did.
Aaron Elson: Tell me more about the sores.
Karnig Thomasian: I got jungle sores. Because my GI shoes had heels, and there were corners, and at night I’d itch, and pretty soon I opened the wound and sure enough, they became deep sores. And the only way I could clean it – there was no medication – was to boil water and tear a piece of my suntans, which I didn’t wear, I wore a little loincloth, and just laboriously clean it out. Each time. Oh, Jesus.
Aaron Elson: That must have been painful.
Karnig Thomasian: Oh, yes. But you had to do it. And then you’d walk around with a flap on the top because flies were all over the place, so you don’t want them to hone in on it.
Aaron Elson: And what about bruises from the beatings?
Karnig Thomasian: Well, they heal.
Aaron Elson: Did you ever get any broken bones?
Karnig Thomasian: No, thank God.
Aaron Elson: And what about the guys who were in worse shape than you were?
Karnig Thomasian: Well, they had problems. There’s this Montgomery, who I told you about. I have a whole story on him, it’s all in there, where they had to, his hand was hanging by a thread, you see, and they had to cut it off. They severed that. But then it started to get gangrene, so they had to cut it below the elbow. Well, now this doctor, Dr. McKenzie was his name, a British doctor, he performed the operation. First the Japanese tried, and they gave him a shot of something which was the wrong thing and it drove him nuts, and they stopped. And the Japanese were just brutal, they were ridiculing him, "Ah, you, shut up!" Not shut up, whatever they said. So finally the British commandant appealed to the commandant of the Japanese, Look, let this man do the operation. He knows how to do it. Still, they had no anaesthetic, no nothing. Boy, we heard his screams, I hear them today. I tell you, it is absolutely profound. He passed out. How he went through it I’ll never know. A nice young man. So Dr. McKenzie did the operation, and by God, it held. And don’t ask me how he didn’t get infected. We don’t know. You know, we need the stories, they’re so unexplainable. In that humid climate, there were no bandages, there was cloth. Oh, jeez, I don’t even like to think about it. And Parmalee was another one. He had that shattered [bicep], and they had to squeeze the pus out all the time, my friend did that.
So then we got out of Rangoon. We went to a hospital ship, and they deloused us and we threw all our clothes out the hatch. In the shower room there was a hatch, we threw the clothes out into the Indian Ocean. But I kept my leather jacket. And I kept the big gun, the rifle that I had been able to bring on board.
Aaron Elson: How did you get a rifle?
Karnig Thomasian: When the Japs had left, finally, we took over the place. My friend and I were, my New Zealand friend and I were sitting on the steps of the compound, and I was smoking tea leaves; I never smoked in my life, but I started there. So we’re looking out over the city and we see Boom! Boom! Boom! They’re blasting things. And it’s late at night, and we’re saying, "Hey, I haven’t seen a guard come around, have you?"
"No."
We walked around, and we went into this hut again, took the brick out, walked to the front and looked, and we could see from there that the main gates were open. When I say gates, they were these big teakwood doors, ten feet high. They were open, and I didn’t see any movement. We stayed there about ten minutes. So he said, "Something’s going on, let’s go back."
We talked to the wing commander, and he said, "All right. Don’t tell anybody because it’ll be a riot here." So we hopped over the wall – it’s only about eight feet, you hike a guy up and he gets up and over. We hopped over and went down there. Now we’re taking a risk. Now we’re in dead man’s land, about seven of us. And some of the guys went to the gate and they saw a note. I have a copy of the note. "We meet you on future battlefields, and now you are free to go." Bullshit.
Now we’re afraid to go further, maybe it’s boobytrapped. So, back in the fields there are cows. The British guys went and got a couple of cows and they made them walk around. The cows meander, they don’t go straight, so oh boy, they’re screening it real good. I expected one of them to blow up, but no. They went out the front door and we ran for the front door and closed it. This was late at night. And we put the planks down and blocked it, because we had all the piles of rice and stuff and cows, and Rangoon was starving.
Then we went and ransacked the Japanese area. And then we gathered the guns and ammunition, and we found a few hand grenades, and I found a carved ivory cigarette holder that I kept. So now we had to negotiate with the townspeople, and finally we found one guy who was going to help us round up the people who owned boats and gather all the boats so that when the army landed on the other side, they’d have the little boats and could bring them over to this side. So myself and Dow, that fellow Dow, and Cliff Emony and this Burmese fellow, we went over to the other side of the river and went to the huts; they offered us food but we wouldn’t dare take any, or water – you’d get sick, you’d die. We’re not used to their food. It’s not clean, anyway. It’s just terrible. They’re used to it. Their bodies assimilate it. And so we got all our negotiations done, and we had our rifles as if, what was gonna happen I don’t know, and then we came back. That’s when this newspaper man came and the Ghurkas landed the next day.
Aaron Elson: Those Ghurkas must have been awesome.
Karnig Thomasian: Oh, they are. They’re little fellows, but I’m glad they’re on our side. Boy, I’ll tell you what they did. We were ready to go, and this fellow looked so beautiful, he was 6-foot-4, broad, rosy – apples for cheeks – and when we looked and saw our pale faces, we realized really how sick we were because before that we didn’t have anything to relate to. The Japanese have a different coloring altogether, so we thought everything was all right.
We helped all the guys; there were some we had to carry out of their hospital-like situation, and we brought them in to the tender that was there. Oh, I was telling you about this Ghurka. We gathered around him like Gulliver, you know, with the little people, it was a scene. Oh, if they do a film I could just direct this scene, it was so precious. I remember every moment of it.
Then the next morning we gather our things, we’re going to have a last breakfast, and then pretty soon it’s time to go to the tender that takes us out to the hospital ship, because the hospital ship can’t get in there. We’re ready to leave, and then we see these Ghurkas, they’re waving, waving, and then they’ve got one Japanese on a rope with his head bandaged, and there’s three or four of the Ghurkas holding a box between them, and the other Ghurkas are following up. And they’re all running like crazy trying to meet us.
They brought us a gift. What was this gift? This was this Japanese soldier which they threw in the brig – they have a brig there – he was a young fellow – and they opened the box.
It was full of ears. I was mortified. If you can believe it, I felt sorry for this guy, because he had never done anything to me. Oh, my God, how could they do this? It’s terrible. This is a present? I don’t know what they did with it. I couldn’t look at it anymore. Then they got us out to the ship. They deloused us.
Aaron Elson: You hadn’t mentioned the lice before.
Karnig Thomasian: Oh, lice, yeah, in the seams of our loincloths and everything, because we didn’t wear clothes, you didn’t have to wear clothes, but they get into the seams, so you’d have to get them out. The best way is to put the clothing out in the sun, and you see them starting to crawl out, and then you squash them. That’s the way it is.
Aaron Elson: And they had no delousing facility in the camp?
Karnig Thomasian: No, they didn’t have anything. All that stuff, they didn’t have delousing, they didn’t have Mercurochrome. They didn’t have nothing.
Aaron Elson: Were there rats or mice?
Karnig Thomasian: There were big cockroaches. Big ones. You went "POW!" But I wouldn’t do it in my bare feet – I was always barefooted, so I said, "Does someone have a shoe?" Oh, God. Oh, jeez, I tell you, I sometimes wonder how I…
So we get there, and then we’re in the ship. And now it’s time to get off the ship. And they tell us, "No arms. Leave your firearms or anything else that you’ve gotten, swords and everything. …"
So I dismantled the gun and put it in my blanket. We each got a blanket issued to us. So now it was a shorter thing. I managed to smuggle it off the ship that way.
Then we got to the hospital, and they started feeding us. The first thing they did was clean our wounds. They put that sulfa powder in, and I tell you, in no time – almost in minutes, but it wasn’t, it was a couple of days, but the sores filled up and started to heal, it was a miracle. That’s a miracle drug as far as I was concerned. It healed it so fast. And that’s all we needed. From that to suffering like that.
Oh, there was a general who visited us in the camp along with the American newsman. I never got his name. And he said, "We will wire news ahead that you people have been freed."
Then when we got to the hospital, we met General Stroudemeyer, and I’ve got a picture with him. With my beard. I’m the only one that had a beard, I shaved everybody else. The wing commander wanted me to shave. He said, "Why don’t you shave?"
I said, "No."
He said, "Do you want to be the only one with a beard?"
Oh, in the hospital, so they had bowls of pills. You just grabbed pills and at them by the handful. It’s unreal. And ice cream.
Aaron Elson: What were the pills?
Karnig Thomasian: All kinds of vitamin things, who knows? I have no idea. All colors. Rainbow. But there was a bowl, on every table. I don’t know, it sounds ridiculous, you’d take one of this, and one of that. I guess we were lacking in so many things they said it can’t hurt.
Then I went over to the Chinese compound, and I met this fellow. I can’t remember his name now, but he was the one that doled out the rice when we were in solitary. He had a black skullcap, a white, flowing shirt, short black pants, and sandals. That’s how he came around. And he’d always look to see if he could give us a little more, if the Jap wasn’t over his shoulder; we couldn’t converse. But I always remembered him. So I went over to where the Chinese were and I found him, and I said, "Does anybody speak English?" One of the fellows could speak a little English. I said, "Tell him that I want to thank him for his kindness."
He told him, and then I said, "He made life more bearable for us, and he was such a nice man."
Then the guy who was interpreting said, "Could he give you his father’s address, and you write to him, tell him that you saw his son and he’s all right?"
I said, "Oh, sure."
He gave me the address. And then the Chinese fellow got a coin, and he broke the coin. And he said, "When we meet again, we will match the coins."
So I wrote to his parents. His father had a pharmacy in some town in China.
Along comes a letter back, all in Chinese. I was going to art school then; this is when I was back in the States. There was a letter to me, and a letter to his son. So I showed it to my friend – I had a friend in school, the Art Students League in New York, a Chinese guy – and I said, "Do you know how to read Chinese?"
"Oh, yeah."
"I wonder if you could please translate these letters, so I could understand what it is and send it to his son?"
He said, "Sure." So he gave me the translation in the next couple of days. He said, "I didn’t translate his son’s letter because that’s private."
I said, "That’s okay."
The father said he hadn’t seen his son all those years. That was the first time he’d heard anything about him. And it was so nice of me to write, and his mother is happy to hear that he’s okay.
And he said, "Do you think you could send him a letter?" I don’t remember what he wanted to say. He wanted to get in touch with him, basically, that’s what it was. So I said, All right. Let me find out.
I called up the 142nd General Hospital, they’re not anymore in there but they have an office in America. To make a long story short, I found out that these Chinese were released from the hospital, and they walked back to China.
Aaron Elson: He walked from Rangoon to China?
Karnig Thomasian: Yeah, that means over the Hump, well, they’d probably go to the Burma Road; that’s not a very good place, there are a lot of pirates there. It’s not safe just because the Japs are gone. They’ve got a lot of other things, problems. God knows if he ever got back.
I wrote it back and said he is walking back. I mean, you’re talking about thousands of miles. That’s how they must have gotten there in the first place. Can you imagine?
Anyway, that was a sad thing for me, I couldn’t come to peace with it somehow.
So then I came home. First they told us, you can either fly home by the Army, or you can go to Kashmir and stay for a month on a houseboat and have a vacation. All paid. Boy, that was a temptation, but no way. Then you come back by boat, via the Pacific. That finished it. I said, "No, I think I want to go home."
So that’s what we did. No parachutes. I was already shellshocked by that. Oh, shit, I’ve got to fly without a parachute!
We got in there, and we went to the Azores, and then, lo and behold – this was a C-47 or a C-46, a cargo plane, they had metal bucket seats along the edges. There were civilians on there, too. And this one guy, he looked Armenian, he noticed my name, Thomasian, when they called us out. He said, "Hi, you. Thomasian? Are you Sophie Thomasian’s son?"
I said, "Yes."
"Ohhhh" They knew each other. Because my mother used to write for the Mirror-Spectator, which was an Armenian newspaper, and he wrote for it.
"Ohhh, my goodness! What a coincidence!"
Then, after we went to the Azores, we were heading toward America, and we’re getting close to Idlewild. And so I’m wondering, Oh, my God, how are they going to look at me? And the pilot then said, "If you want to see a sight, look out your right side window" – and he went down lower, he must have gotten permission to do this, he dove down, way down, and went around the Statue of Liberty.
I can’t tell you what went through my head. Oh, Jesus. I’d think by this time I’d be able [to talk about that without crying]. It was so profound. You know, I was home.
So then I hopped the subway, when I got released, I hopped the subway and came up, and I got off at 191st Street and I went around my corner and a ball came bouncing to me. I dropped my duffel bag and I picked up the ball and a little kid comes up to me and says, "Hey, Gimme the ball, you want I’ll waltz one up your snotbox!"
I was home!
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