Prisoner of the Japanese in WWII

Fortunately I was not born until just after the end of World War II, but my early childhood was full of the stories told by people around me and books and newspapers which I read.  


Even in the early 1950's the papers were still talking about the war.  It was only five or six years since it had ended.


The story I want to tell you about the war relates to the experiences of my father who spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war on the island of Formosa, now called Taiwan.  

He joined the British army in early 1939 before the official outbreak of the war and took part in the normal training which every soldier has to do.  He told me little of the time he spent in the UK during that period of training, and very little of the time he spent as a POW.  It was only after his death in 1976 at the age of 67 that I was able to look through his diaries and papers and put together the full story of his life.


On 30th October 1942 he set sail from the port of Liverpool onboard a troop ship called the Empress of Asia.  They did not know where they were going but thought that it might be North Africa.  They went to Glasgow in Scotland first, then Newfoundland in Canada, then sailed down the eastern seaboard of America to Bermuda and then across the Atlantic to Durban in south Africa.

From there they sailed to Calcutta in India where they disembarked for two weeks of training.  


After that they got back on the ship and sailed to Singapore where the ships in the convoy he was in came under attack from Japanese planes.  His ship was hit several times and so the order to 'Abandon Ship' was given.  After helping many of the troops under his command off the ship he swam ashore to the mainland with many others of his friends.  


After having left the UK with the most up to date arms and clothing, he arrived in Singapore with nothing other than what he stood in.


He re-grouped with several of his platoon and was given charge of a small Bren Gun Carrier - a type of small armoured vehicle and told to go to look for the Japanese in the jungle north of the city.


For three days he and his comrades fought and hid from the Japanese until they finally came under fire from a machine gun in a jungle hiding.  He was hit, though not too seriously, and the Bren Carrier drove wildly along the road back into Singapore.  


On the 15th February the British armed forces in the whole of Malaysia were told to surrender, and many many thousands were taken into captivity.  My father was one of them.


He spent several weeks on the mainland and then shipped off to the island of Formosa (Taiwan) in the hold of a filthy, hot, and unhealthy ship until they finally arrived at the island.


He spent the next three years there in four or five camps.  They were worked very hard and given little to eat.  They had no drugs for the many tropical diseases which abounded in the region and like many others, my father became very ill.


There were no hospitals in the camps, simply a large room where the sick and dying were kept together.  When he was well enough he joined the many work parties which the Japanese set them to.  At one point they spent many weeks in one of the camps building a river bank of stones.  The ideas was that when the monsoons came the river bank would stop the water from running into the town nearby, as it had in the past.


The prisoners deliberately did such a bad job that the first time the monsoons came the whole bank washed away - but threatened to take the prison camp with it!!


Late in 1944 he was moved to the final camp he stayed at, a place called Shirakawa.  This was a camp which had originally been set up just for officers and in time was also used to house the very sickest of the soldiers.  Soon after he arrived in the camp he found his cousin had been living there for most of the war!


I can imagine the reunion they had.  Even with the most limited supplies and food they had it must had been a good time for both of them.


The war ended some six months later and both men left on the same ship to come back to the UK.  My father arrived back in Liverpool on the 20th October 1945 - exactly four years to the day after leaving.

His cousin was married soon after the two men arrived home and my father and his wife (my mother) went to the wedding as guests.


Some time after that I was born, and a few months later my fathers cousin's wife had a baby.  Unknown to each other they both called their sons David.  Quite a series of coincidences.


My father was one of six children, five boys and two girls.  The last of his brothers died last year.  All of his siblings died in their 80s, he died at the age of 67, four years older than my current age.


I recall that until the mid 1950s he would go to hospital for treatment for the tropical diseases and injuries he had sustained during his time in the far east.  I am certain that his early death was a direct result of the treatment he received during his time as a Prisoner of War.


He died in 1976 at the age of 67.  His four brothers and two sisters survived into their early 80's.  His early death was due in no small part to the ill treatment and diseases he contacted whilst a 'guest' of the Japanese.  If you would liek to learn more of the camps on Taiwan, then visit this web site.