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News article from Reynolds News and Sunday Citizen Sunday 2 Dec 1945
Ronald Searle, with two of his pictures seen holding the tin containing the colours he used in the Jap prison camp. ( Picture) CAPTIVE ARTIST BAFFLED JAPS By A STAFF REPORTER SAPPER RONALD SEARLE, R.E., Cambridge artist and cartoonist, using paints smuggled to him by Korean guards and brushes made from hairs from a cat's tail while a prisoner of the Japanese, painted a complete record of the scenes of horror and brutality on the Thailand "Death Railway," and the Changhi prison camp. When he was drafted from Britain to Mombasa in 1941, he decided to keep a day-to-day picture diary of life in the forces. He was captured at Singapore and was a prisoner for four years. “We were so hungry in the Japanese camps that we ate cats,,” he told me in London yesterday, “The tails were always saved to make my brushes.” Searle showed me hundreds of drawings he brought out of captivity. They are an astonishing record of cruelty, suffered by British prisoners. Men being whipped for trivial offences . . . men dying of hunger and thirst . . . Jap Gestapo grinning derision as men were suffering indignities . . . Joyous scenes when the camp was liberated. “I had to do something to preserve my sanity, and so I painted.” said Searle. Life in Changi In Siam, and sick from Malaria, Searle was so severely beaten with a pickaxe for his inability to work, that he was evacuated to Singapore. He continued to record events while in hospital and later was transferred to Changi Jail. An exibition of Searle’s line drawings and paintings is being held at the Cambridge School of Art this week. Mr J Scupham, a well known Cambridge critic, told me:- “The sketches are an astonishing record of Searle’s Odyssey. My impression of them is of their compelling unity: of horror, boredom, and beauty flowering in strange places.” |
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Ronald Searle left England with the 18th Division. After training in India and equipped with English winter uniforms they landed at Singapore on January 29th 1942. On February 15th Singapore surrendered to the Japanese. He consistently drew and was very self-critical about his work. He worked on the Death Railway in Thailand and became seriously ill at Kamburi with a skin disease that left his hand covered in ulcers, when conscious he would draw but as his drawing hand was now useless, he used his right hand. He recovered and kept up his work with the same enthusiasm as before. After the railway was finished he was taken to Changi jail where his fellow prisoners were treated to many a cartoon about life in the camps, drew on the back off prewar prison records, still improving his skill as an artist. The sets for the Playhouse shows in Changi were designed by him, after the war he was a popular cartoonist back in Britain. |
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News article sent in by Martin Percival |
