By Sears Eldredge

Over in the Selarang Area, John Wood wowed audiences by singing and dancing a 1930’s revue song, “Get Yourself A Geisha,” “dressed beautifully as a geisha in kimono and obi.”^[i] 

Get yourself a Geisha

A gay little Geisha

A Geisha girl’s the purest,

The sweetest and demurest.

And she’s top hole for the tourist.

Get yourself a Geisha girl.

(Doing what you want to do in Tokyo.)^[ii]

Another daring turn on a playbill in a British show was a song entitled “Axis Trio,” performed by three men made up to represent their characters: 

 I’m Hitler the Nazi Fuhrer.

I’m Musso the organ grinder chief.

I’m Tojo the Nip, whose navy made a slip,

In ever going near the Barrier Reef.^[iii]

Oliver Thomas believed the lyrics to this song “were written by a Major Bowen (Brig. Major 54 Brig.) who thought we were becoming defeatist and needed to sing a song which would reawaken our aggressive instincts.”^[iv]

If any Japanese guards appeared, these items would suddenly be cut from the bill. But at this point, no Japanese officers attended the shows and guards dropped by only intermittingly during their rounds. Nor did scripts have to be submitted to a censor.

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[i] Boardman, J. “Notes.”

[ii] Boardman, J. Lyrics and Score in Original Docs.

[iii] Thomas, Letter. 31 March 01.

[iv] Thomas, Fax, 31 March 01. 1-2.

Note that all the documents in this series of blogs reside in Sears A. Eldredge Archive in the De Witt Wallace Library at Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, Minnesota, 55105

Sear’s book, Captive Audiences/Captive Performers: Music and Theatre as Strategies for Survival on the Thailand-Burma Railway 1942-1945, was published by Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2014, as an open-access e-book and is available here: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks/22