In this last in the VJ75 series featuring British Far East prisoners of war (FEPOW), author Meg Parkes shares three anecdotes revealed to researchers at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) over recent years.
Over 50,000 British servicemen were captured by the Japanese during the Second World War.
The first British colony to fall was Hong Kong, on Christmas Day 1941. One survivor who gave an interview to LSTM’s FEPOW oral history study, was former Petty Officer Wireless Telegrapher Reg Davis RN.
He recalled spending Christmas Day and into Boxing Day undetected in the British underground radio station, feverishly sending vital radio messages to the Admiralty.
He said: “We kept the station going until Boxing Day and we got rid of all the casualty reports… [the Admiralty] knew everybody that’d been killed and wounded. And round about two o’clock in the afternoon…when we cleared the last of the messages to the UK we walked out of battle headquarters and set the depth charge off when we were well clear.”
Extracted from Captive Memories, ©courtesy LSTM oral history archives.
This sketch below is one of the artworks featured in this year’s “Secret Art of Survival” exhibition in Liverpool. It was drawn by Captain Godfrey Bird RE and depicts the POW hospital at Shamshuipo POW camp, Hong Kong.
The Fall of Singapore came just seven weeks after the capitulation of Hong Kong, on February 15, 1942.
Over 30,000 British FEPOW were herded into the vast Changi POW camp. By Christmas that year many British FEPOW had been sent north to Thailand, to Japan, Taiwan, Korea and to Borneo.
Among those remaining on Singapore was Royal Army Medical Corps doctor Capt Gordon Marshall.
He was working at Changi’s Roberts Hospital and on Christmas Day noted in his diary: “Last night I attended a most impressive communion service in the Palladium [Theatre, newly constructed within the hospital].
"The hall was packed to the door and people were standing; on the stage was the altar with the crucifix and the candles and with the stage lighting it was most impressive; Padre Wearne conducted the service and he was certainly at the top of his form and was very pleasantly surprised at the huge gathering. There were at least 300 communicants.
"I was busy in the ward all this morning. Everyone was very happy and the ward had been decorated with flowers and greenery that gave a very Yuletide atmosphere."
Extracted from The Changi Diaries by Capt. G.K. Marshall RAMC.
At Japan’s Motoyama coalming camp, Captain Atholl Duncan A&SH had only just arrived from Java when Christmas 1942 loomed large.
He noted in his diary: "Dec 23rd Well, I guess this will prove the bluest Xmas I have had as there is next to nothing to eat, absolutely nothing to smoke either in the camp or village, nowhere to go and worst of all nobody to see. What wouldn’t I do to get out of this lot! Weather still bitterly cold and still no fires. In fact, the whole bloody outlook stinks!!"
Dec 24th "The Japs [sic] have promised us quite a few things for our Xmas and much to our surprise and delight kept their word. In the evening, the mine manager provided a gramophone and a good selection of records, Jazz and serious to which we listened after supper when an issue of cigarettes and wine was made. When selections from Mozart and Beethoven were being played my thoughts went to home and I wondered how soon it would be before our reunion. All the Nips [short for Nipponese, another POW name for their captors] very affable during the concert and, in fact, we spent a most enjoyable evening."
Dec 25th "The food today has been marvellous! For breakfast we had barley porridge and sugar – we followed this up with bully [canned corned beef] sandwiches and cocoa in the forenoon – for lunch pork, boiled spuds, cabbage and spaghetti whilst for supper, beef stew, roast spuds, beans, cabbage, duff with sugar sauce, and bread biscuits butter and wine... In all, we had a far better Xmas than we ever dared hope for and I do feel the Japs did their best to give us a good time. A sing-song concert at night round the fire in the men’s dining hall rounded off the best day of our captivity so far."
Despite the unexpected celebration of that first Christmas in captivity, Duncan’s camp ID photograph taken a couple of weeks later, seems to tell a different story. His inscription, written at the time on the reverse, sums up what life really was like.
All three men survived, along with 37,500 British FEPOW, but the history of what they endured remains little-known. For more information of the work of LSTM, go to: www.captivememories.org.uk
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