Leslie John Audus was born on December 11th 1911 and was educated at Soham Grammar School, leaving, it is thought, in 1929. He went up to Downing College Cambridge where he was Exhibitioner, 1929–31. SGS records show he gained a Part I, Class 1, in the Natural Sciences Tripos and that he was appointed Frank Smart University Student in Botany, at Cambridge, 1934–35. In Summer 1937 it was reported that he was a lecturer at Cardiff University, and had proceeded MA (Cantab) and had obtained his PhD. Dr Leslie J Audus and Dr Rowena M Ferguson married at Sheffield in 1938, she died in 1987. They had two daughters.
| He was Lecturer in
Botany, University Coll., Cardiff, 1935–40.
During WW2 he was a Flight Lieutenant RAFVR, serving
in the Technical Branch as a Radar Officer,
1940–46. He was PoW of the Japanese 1942-45. SG
Spring 1943: Prisoner of War: F Bye (Egypt), LJ
Audus (Java). SG Autumn 1945: Following
POWs back in England: CF Tabeart (Singapore), LJ
Audus (Java), JR Cogbill (Hong Kong) His skills as a botanist enabled him to "save lives and the eyesight of many men" - see below |
 |
He was Scientific Officer at the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Soil Metabolism, Cardiff, 1946–47 and Monsanto Lecturer in Plant Physiology, University College, Cardiff, 1948.
In the same year he was appointed Professor at Bedford College, London University. The Botany Department at Bedford College had been destroyed during the bombing of London, and the Departments of Botany and Zoology were housed in the former mansion of a member of the gentry on the edge of Regents Park. Professor Nielson-Jones retired and Professor Leslie Audus was appointed in his place, and he started up his well-known researches on the hormonal control of root growth, geotropism, and other topics. He was Hildred Carlile Professor of Botany, Bedford College, University of London, 1948–79.
He was Recorder, 1961–65, and President 1967–68, of Section K of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: Visiting Professor of Botany, University of California, Berkeley, 1958 and University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1965.
He was Vice-President of the Linnean Society of London, 1959–60 and made Honorary Fellow in 1995: Life Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1961; Editor of the Journal of Experimental Botany, 1965–74.
Lesley Audus died on 5 May 2011.
from Death in the Spice
Islands, compiled by Amanda Johnston
http://www.cofepow.org.uk/pages/asia_haruku1.html
Heroes of Haruku There were many heroes in the Pelauw camp in Haruku whose day-to-day acts of brotherhood and compassion surely alleviated the suffering of their friends under these diabolical circumstances. The doctors, amongst them Dr. Buning, Dr. Springer, Dr. Philps and Dr. Bryan, saved many lives using the crudest of contrived instruments and effecting what cures they could in the absence of medicines or even vegetation to concoct alternative means of healing.
One of these heroes was not a doctor, but a botanist by training who went on to become a Professor of Botany at London University some years after the War (now an Emeritus Professor), and who was serving as a radio officer in the RAF when taken prisoner: Leslie Audus used his skills to manufacture yeast from 'next to nothing', providing the very sick, and eventually all the men, with a source of vitamin B, the absence of which in their scant diet was worsening their state of malnutrition and causing beriberi and pellagra as well as optic neurosis, the result of which could be irreversible blindness.
A good summary of his cultivation methods can be found in Dr. Richard Philps' book, Prisoner Doctor as well as in his own definitive work on the Moluccas drafts - Spice Island Slaves. Without a doubt he saved many lives and the eyesight of many of the men by developing his cultures, and they were most fortunate indeed that he was in the Haruku draft where conditions were so appalling. He was only permitted to continue with his yeast-making activities because one of the by-products was alcohol, which was then commandeered by the Japanese guards.
| Spice Island
Slaves by Leslie J Audus
The little-publicised story of Japanese
prisoner-of-war camps in the Moluccan Archipelago
(The Spice Islands) In Eastern Indonesia from May
1943 onwards is comprehensively recorded in this
book. This chronological history has been compiled
from contemporary diaries and records from a large
number of British and Dutch sources, including those
of the author. It is illustrated by 25 drawings of camp scenes and personalities, maps, camp lay-outs and graphs. In those slave-labour camps on the islands of HARUKU, AMBON (at Liang) and CERAM (at Amahai) and during the final disastrous attempts to return them to Java, half of the 4,110 servicemen (2,827 British and 1,283 Dutch) were to die from starvation, disease, brutal thrashings, execution and drownings. The multiplicity of the sources ensure that there are no significant gaps the story traced from from the initial assembly of the drafts in Java to the final piecemeal return of the living skeletons of survivors during the last year of the war. The tragic transit camp on the island of MUNA at the south-east corner of Sulawesi is fully covered. |
 |
ORDER FORM/CONTACT: Leslie J. Audus, c/o
Lesley J. Clark, 5 Barrons Close, Ongar, Essex, CM5 9BJ
E-mail address: Lesley Clark - lesleyclarkuk@yahoo.co.uk
PRICE: £10.25 per copy, plus UK postage & packing of
£1.70 per book
(for overseas postage & packing, please add £ 4.55 for
Air Mail or £ 2.15 for Surface Mail)
Audus, Leslie J, Spice Island Slaves, UK repr. 1998: Essential reading for Haruku Island, Liang, Ambon, etc. Interesting account of synthesising vital B vitamins from rice. Good maps and illustrations. Straightforward writing for general reader.
From RAF boy apprentice to prisoner of the
Japanese, by Amanda Johnston (WW2 People's War, BBC)
"Later, in April 1943, large numbers of men were
marshalled at Jaarmarkt Camp in Sourabaya, Java. Eric was one
of 2,070 sent on a draft to the Moluccan or ‘Spice’
Island of Haruku. Docking at Ambon in early May 1943, just
before his 23rd birthday, they arrived on the muddy shores in
the monsoon season to find that they were to build their huts
from bamboo and set up what meagre facilities they could. A
full account of this and the other Moluccan drafts is given
in accurate and stark detail in the excellent book, Spice
Island Slaves by Prof. Leslie Audus,
but I will continue with the bare details here.
The British commanding officer requested permission from the Japanese to build a latrine over the sea to avoid the spread of disease. The refusal of this request meant that the overflowing latrines and the generally cramped and foul conditions of the makeshift camp led to a general outbreak of dysentery, which along with the other diseases from which the men were suffering — malaria, beri beri and diphtheria to name a few — along with the general state of malnutrition, saw to it that of the 2,070 men who arrived on this draft, around one fifth died within the first few months. On top of all this, we have yet to mention their reason for being there. They were forced by the Japanese to hack an airstrip out of the coral of the island in order to build an airstrip (allegedly within range of Australia). The weakened state of the men meant that, six months into the draft, there were only around 300 to 400 anywhere near “fit” enough to go on the working parties to the airstrip.
When they were eventually allowed to build the sea latrine some months later, the dysentery epidemic was brought under greater control and the death rate slowed down. The Japanese sergeant responsible for this atrocity, Gunso Mori, was later held accountable for this and other war crimes at the post-war Far East War Crimes Tribunal and was hanged in Singapore in 1946, along with the camp commander, Lt. Col. Anami. It has been estimated by Prof. Audus that sadly only 40% of those sent to toil as slaves on Haruku would have returned to the shores of England in 1945, and Eric was fortunate enough to be one of them."
| Prisoners in
Java - Accounts by Allied Prisoners of War in the Far
East (1942-1945): Foreword by Leslie J
Audus http://thejavafepowclub42.org/pdfs/IntroPages.pdf "And now, 65 years after our incarceration,
we have a single book representing the quintessence
of nearly twenty years of the quarterly [Java Club]
journal, a true memorial to all those who suffered
and died under the Nips in those distant lands". First published in Great Britain by Hamwic
Publishers, 116 Woodlands Road, Ashurst, Southampton,
SO40 7AL http://www.hamwic.co.uk
email: enquiries@hamwic.co.uk
|
 |
| Leslie Audus
is also referred to several times in Brian
MacArthur's book - in this link the author talks
briefly about it Surviving the Sword:
Prisoners of the Japanese 1942-45
. The following extracts are reproduced by kind permission of the author: The book is available in the UK - Amazon. p266 - Entertainment When he returned to Batavia in July 1945, he heard a familiar sound - the scratchy strains of the Brahms Piano Concerto in B Flat Major - and was able to claim the record as his. Thirty-six records had survived in total, and Audus still had them in 2004 in their original paper sleeves - a tribute, as he says, to the loving care with which they had been preserved by an emaciated young radar officer. |
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p283-286 - Ingenuity
One of the most remarkable examples of ingenuity
occurred in 1944 on the Spice Island of Haruku. The men were
working in blinding sunlight to build an airfield from coral,
and optical neuritis was causing partial and even complete
blindness. (See Chapter 23 for a full account of the horrors
of Haruku.) Flt. Lt. Leslie Audus, who had
just emerged from hospital partially blind himself, was urged
by Flt. Lt. Dick Philps, one of the medical officers, to
start producing yeast to provide the vitamins that were
missing from the men's diet. Audus had performed the same
function earlier in Jaarmarkt camp at Surabaya on Java.
Two Dutch prisoners, Dr van Papenrecht (who had helped Audus in Jaarmarkt, supplying him with raw materials) and Dr ten Houten (who had used Audus's methods on Ceram), were asked to join him. Van Papenrecht provided his microscope, haemocytometer and a supply of reagents for testing for sugar, and allowed Audus and ten Houten to use his `dispensary' for experimenting.
But there was a major problem to be solved. Maize grain had previously been the raw material in the process. But on Haruku no maize was available. Audus's thoughts turned to his preliminary experiments in Surabaya on the use of mould enzymes to produce a nutrient medium from steamed rice. Picking up where he had left off in Java, he soon isolated a mould fungus that was extremely efficient in converting starch into sugar. This mould turned out to be Rhizopus oryzae, the species used in the production of tempeh kedelai.
Audus described how he finally succeeded:
Kedelai is the soya bean which we were sometimes given to eat but long boiling did nothing to make it digestible in the stomach. Dr Pieters, an Indonesian prisoner arriving with the Amahaiers [Dutch prisoners who had been previously been held at Amahai on Ceram], instructed me in the method the natives use to make it digestible by growing a fungus on it producing tempeh kedelai, a cheese-like material which was then fried in oil. It is an acquired taste but very nutritious. After we had acquired the technique we regularly made the product whenever the beans were provided. The prisoners undoubtedly profited from this protein-rich product.
Then followed weeks of crude but intensive tests to determine the growth conditions for the mould on steamed rice and the optimum temperature for the subsequent killing of the mould with release of the effective enzymes. In this, fate and my dormant optimism had played a crucial part since I still had the thermometer I had made in the Jaarmarkt. The optimum temperature for sugar production determined thereby turned out to be 55 degrees C. Thus encouraged we turned our attention to finding the source of the yeast and following that deciding the final method of bulk production and the assembling and construction of equipment for it.
Yeast was easily isolated from the surface skin of a ripe banana by putting a small piece in some rice digest fortified with cane sugar. The fermentation which followed yielded a healthy suspension of yeast cells.
Bulk production started about Christmastime. For the mass production of the essential rice/fungus mixture we simply `stole' the tempeh kedelai technique. Wooden trays, with sacking bottoms, were filled with inch-thick layers of steamed rice inoculated with the tempeh kedelai fungal spores and sandwiched between layers of large leaves to keep them moist. The fungus was left to grow for 38 to 40 hours, when it had turned the rice layer into a grey, spore-covered 'blanket' which could be lifted entire from a tray. A small portion with its spore content was retained, dried and powdered to provide inoculum for subsequent trays.
'Blankets' were mashed up with a small quantity of water in a large wooden tub and the resultant `porridge' put in 25-litre earthenware carboys originally containing soya sauce for the guards. To this porridge was added boiling rice-washings to dilute it and bring the temperature up to 60 degrees C. The carboys, closed with sterilised wooden bungs, were incubated for 22 hours in 'hot-boxes', old tea chests lined with layers of empty rice sacks, after which up to 80% of the starch had been turned into sugar by the fungal enzymes. The digest, strained through mosquito netting to remove fungal threads and rice cell debris, was diluted with three times its volume of water and sterilised by boiling. After cooling for 22 hours in large steel drums covered with sterile sacks it was inoculated with the yeast culture. The supply of that inoculum had been the province of Dr ten Houten who had maintained it on a concentrated rice digest fortified with cane sugar.
The final drum fermentation lasted 48 hours and was virtually complete by then, thanks to a massive inoculum. That milky suspension of yeast cells was sterilized by heating to 70 degrees C for about 15 minutes in a wajang [large iron wok], cooled and issued in 100 ml doses to the hospital patients and, ultimately, to the whole camp. At that time my central retinal scotomata [blind spots] had become so extensive that all microscopic observations and cell counts had to be done by ten Houten ... The final yield for the bulk production was 50 to 75 million yeast cells per millilitre. That `medicine' was received with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the prisoners since it was not particularly palatable but, as far as I know, no one rejected it.
When the Japanese discovered his secret activity, Audus was hauled up before Lt. Kurashima, the camp commandant, to explain why rice was being wasted to make alcohol. When Audus explained, tongue in cheek, that sterilisation by boiling removed all the alcohol and that the sole aim was to combat avitaminosis, he was excused, on condition that six bottles of the yeast suspension were provided every day for the guards. 'This we did for some days until no empty bottles were forthcoming and the Nips had either forgotten their proviso or lost faith in the efficacy of our product,' said Audus.
According to Dick Philps, Audus achieved a triumph against seemingly insuperable odds. Almost single-handedly, he saved the eyesight of hundreds of men. No cases of optic neuritis occurred after the men went on the yeast ration. The remarkable story of how Audus, ten Houten and van Papenrecht created yeast is an inspiring example of how prisoners in Japanese prison camps used their scientific knowledge and ingenuity to triumph over the most squalid and primitive conditions. Audus went on to become a professor of botany at London University after the war.
p358 Haruku
Flt. Lt. Leslie Audus described how Mori used a
cudgel of split bamboo to beat his victims unmercifully.
Kasiyama used a doubled-up length of rope for the same
purposes, 'like a crazy man'. At the first tenko after Mori
was told that his quota of prisoners could not be met because
so many men were ill, the officers were lined up alongside
the men and slapped about the head. James Home explained
precisely what this entailed: Being slapped by the Japs
should not be confused with the playful slaps that may be
exchanged by Westerners ...
p360 - Haruku
Work on the airfield was hard, especially for men
who weren't used to manual labour, said Leslie Audus.
The shadowless, shimmering surface of the projected airfield
was baking hot when scorched by the tropical sun but
unpleasantly bleak when it rained.
p365-372 Haruku
The number of fatalities continued to mount. By the beginning
of July 200 had died. When Mori was feeling generous, he
would allow purchases for the hospital. But when one doctor
got some eggs, Mori distributed one egg to ten patients. Dr
Shimada told the medical officers that if they had no
medicines, they must treat the sick with `spirit'. In Japan
nobody died of dysentery, he said. So the misery - 'filth,
disease, emaciation and death', as Audus put
it - continued. By the end of July 243 men were dead.
When Mori had sent all the men who transported food and
water to the hospital to work on the airfield in August, one
doctor wrote eloquently in his diary:
Now even more difficulties have been placed in our way,
notwithstanding the fact that the state of the sick is
becoming simply frightful. Extreme emaciation down to skin
and bone, numerous infected wounds, skin parasites; pellagra,
mental disturbances, gross filthiness, chronic diarrhoea,
impaired movement even to the extent of complete paralysis,
swollen stomachs and legs due to the enormous accumulation of
water, that is the human suffering here, the like of which
beggars description. Many howl with pain and abject misery
under these hopeless conditions. The fact that there is still
a young British soldier who begs me shortly before his death
to tell his mother that he `died like a soldier' testifies to
the strength of spirit which exceeds all comprehension.
We have nowhere near enough ordinary bandaging material and we experience increasing difficulties in treating innumerable tropical ulcers, infected sores, fungal infections and skin lesions. We just have available a little iodoform, a mixture of tooth powder, aspirin, boric acid and ichthyol and also a little dermatol. The tropical ulcers have gradually become so extensive that we have to admit men to hospital for treatment. Then for a few days they can be tended with bandages soaked in a solution of rivanol, chloramine or potassium permanganate. The only salves, which we sometimes receive in the form of boric and ichthyol ointments [used to treat skin complaints] are presumably made up in unpurified lard so that when we use them eczema is often the result.
The doctors improvised. One 'concoction', used to coat ulcers, was made from Japanese tooth powder, coconut oil and chalk. It formed a hard seal but it was sometimes necessary to keep the patient off his feet. Surgery was often then possible, using a deep incision near the ulcer to drain off stagnant blood; borassic powder was used as an antiseptic. Some men had to have this treatment ten times, but once the battle against infection was won, recovery, as with appendicitis and war wounds, was often rapid. Nonetheless, by 5 September, the death toll was 284.
But it was also in September that Mori finally authorised the building of a bamboo jetty out to sea to serve as a latrine - a request first made by Pitts when they had arrived four months earlier. The 'superloo' was a major landmark in the history of Haruku, said Leslie Audus: its effect on morale could not be overstressed: 'Compare the pleasure of squatting over gently lapping water and gazing out over the blue sea to the beautiful, jungle-covered island of Ceram, with the revulsion and misery of similarly squatting over a trench filled with a stinging writhing soup of yellow faeces and fly maggots.'
Don Peacock was another satisfied customer: The opening of this masterpiece was a great occasion for the Gunzo. He looked on with pride as the first customers arrived and crouched on their haunches over the holes like a troop of bare-bottomed monkeys. The British clutched bunches of leaves; the more practical Dutch each carried a bottle of water suspended from a finger with a piece of string. The Gunzo appeared to consider for a moment these primitive Western ideas of hygiene, then he strolled benignly along the line of squatting men presenting each with a square of Nip toilet paper. As he stood back to see his gifts put to good use, each man, British and Dutch alike, carefully folded up the precious piece of paper and stowed it carefully away. The British used their leaves, the Dutch their water. The Gunzo scratched his head and walked away. Every scrap of paper on the camp, including even the odd Bible, had been used to roll the local tobacco into cigarettes. Toilet paper was certainly much too valuable to be used on backsides.
As Audus observed, if it hadn't been for the 'short-sighted bloodymindedness' of the Japanese, the dysentery epidemic could have been averted and the airfield finished earlier.
The arrival of a party of mostly Dutch prisoners from Amahai in Ceram in October had several effects on Haruku. It also had an effect on the men from Amahai, who were shocked by what they saw, as one naval officer recorded: When we came into the camp through the dank steaming jungle a clammy fear gripped us. There was something indefinably cruel in all the trees and climbing plants which grew over them ... threatening to engulf the damp palm-frond huts of the camp to form a green hell. It was forbidden for the healthy to go into the dysentery huts; a sort of parody of a rule of hygiene, but one day a sailor came and asked me, 'Will you go to visit our big marine sergeant for a while? He would be so happy to see you before he goes.' I slipped into the hut of the `serious dysentery cases' and there, naked, lay a man I once knew as a strong robust chap. Only the eyes were still alive. Maggots crawled over the immeasurably befouled baleh-baleh [bamboo sleeping-platform] and over his dying body. It was impossible for the two orderlies to clean those Augean stables, and it was no use contemplating more orderlies. Everyone had to go to the airfield. Mori took good care of that.
Overcoming their sense of shock, the Amahaiers determined to improve the morale of the Haruku men. So they decided to work hard on the airfield so that it was completed quickly, encouraging the Haruku men to hold on in the hope of returning to Java. They sang and whistled as they marched to the airfield and their attitude impressed the guards as well as the Haruku old-stagers. The guards saw the work accelerating and behaved somewhat more reasonably, said Audus, while the original Haruku men felt themselves challenged and uplifted.
At the time of the Amahaiers' arrival the dysentery epidemic on Haruku was largely over and the main killers were now the vitamindeficiency diseases beri-beri and pellagra. Optical neuritis was also still causing partial or even complete blindness. On 25 November a party of sick men, 'emaciated, naked and several unable to speak or see properly', and 'in rags', left Haruku for Java. The Japanese had at last taken notice of Pitts's appeals to evacuate them from the island. They travelled to Ambon, where many were transferred to the 4600-ton Suez Maru, which sailed on 25 November with about 550 British and Dutch prisoners from Haruku and Ambon. Four days later the American submarine Bone Fish torpedoed the ship. Seven Japanese were rescued; everyone else died, some machine-gunned in the sea by an escorting Japanese corvette. Another 280 sick Haruku men, who sailed the same day, arrived in Java on 21 December. Twenty died on the journey.
Meanwhile, the arrival of the Amahaiers with their determination to work had spurred Mori to improve the camp. New roads with storm gullies, new huts, a parade ground, a new hospital with three wards, and a parade ground were built by officers and men classified as 'sick-in-quarters'. Nursing became easier. The men were also allowed to build fires in their huts and could cook food. There were about eight acres of gardens which grew tomatoes, maize, katella (manioc), sweet potatoes, lambok and other vegetables. The Japanese took the vegetables; the men were given the katella leaves. The men also dug a 20-foot well which then had to be lined with stones and boulders brought back from every visit to the river. If they failed to bring a load back, they were made to return and as a punishment to hold the boulder over their heads. ....
By mid-January 1944, there was no more dysentery and only one or two men were now dying each week. However, on 5 May, a year and a day after their arrival on Haruku, the bombers were the only 'bringers of hope', said Audus. There had been no fruit or fish in the shop for a week and avitaminosis was increasing again. There were no medicines. Most of the men wore only a Jap-happy. ...
During their first five months on Haruku 334 men died. After the seriously ill men left, the sea latrine was constructed, yeast was produced (using the techniques described in Chapter 18) and the gardens started, 'only' 52 died in the last nine months. If only the Japanese had listened. Haruku was gradually closed down in July and August 1944. As the prisoners left the camp, beside the road, hidden in the bushes in the half light, the local population of Haruku had turned out and were playing a tune on bamboo pipes. It was the tune to When this bloody war is over / Oh! How happy I shall be.
Leslie Audus recalled the scene: One will never know whether they chose this tune because of the singularly appropriate words or whether it was a happy chance because the tune is also that of the delightful Salvation Army hymn, Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and they had clearly been visited by Dutch missionaries. As they understood almost no English, it is probable that it was a happy accident, possibly the happiest accident of a lifetime. Or perhaps - engaging thought - they had heard the men singing it as they marched to work and thought we went to work singing hymns. It was clearly an act of sympathy, of solidarity, because they too had had their share of maltreatment by the Japanese. It was a touching and moving experience.
The last party of half a dozen men, commanded by Audus, departed for Ambon on 1 August, and the gate of the Haruku camp was closed for ever. Had all the sweat, pain, beatings and death been in vain? Audus wondered after the war. It was unlikely that the airfield played any significant role in the Japanese war effort.
Sources: the Internet, Who's Who, The Soham Grammarian, The Times, FE POW Association, The Java Club, BBC, Brian MacArthur
If you can add to this page or correct it, please contact
the editor web@sohamgrammar.org.uk
page last updated 7 May 2011.