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World War II veteran Tago Athieno survived on food cooked on skulls of Japanese soldiers in Burma, 70 years ago.
Athieno recalls how Corporal Idi Amin cut off the heads of dead Japanese soldiers and used them as cooking stones in the forest as World War II raged on.
Athieno was under Amin, later a dictator president in Uganda, and had to obey the orders.
“Whenever we wanted to cook, Amin would chop off the heads of Japanese fighters we killed and sometimes we did it under his orders,” says Athieno, the 91-year- old who is the chair of the Defence Forces Comrade Association, Siaya branch.
Athieno was in the King’s African Rifles (KAR) battalion of the British that fought the Japanese in Burma in 1940s.
They were dispatched to the war zones with a monthly salary ranging between Sh30 and Sh60, depending on one’s rank. “We got used to it and would make fun of it. Amin was a fearless man,” he recalls.
The ex-soldier says they showed no mercy to the enemies when a lone Japanese sniper killed nearly an entire battalion that was largely composed of Kenyans.
“They cut huge holes inside giant trees from where they struck the battalion. Only one Andala Oleli escaped. In revenge, he beheaded the Japanese sniper,” he recalls.
The lucky soldier notified them what tactics the Japanese fighters were employing, making it easy to launch counter-attacks.
However, a group of soldiers died when the ship they were travelling in was sunk before they could reach the war zone. A handful of those killed hailed from Siaya in Nyanza.
“Many were my villagemates and some my close relatives. Their families received Sh600 as compensation,” says the ex-soldier who laments that some veterans never got the stipend the British had promised them.
In 2005, Athieno complained to the British government that sent a representative who met him in Kisumu on October 12, 2005.
“The representative, a Lord Thompson, told me the assistance is sent regularly but is pocketed by some State officials,” he alleges.
Last year in November, he was to be among a dozen veteran fighters to fly to mark 70 years after the war ended and also meet Queen Elizabeth II. He however claims his name was dropped from the list.
