“Captured at Singapore” by Jill Robertson and Janice Slimming, is a formal record of their father’s experience in one of the UK’s longest periods of war in the last 200 years. The small diary account recorded by a Royal Army Service Corps Driver, while residing under the hospitality of the Japanese in WWII, is another opportunity for future generations to understand and learn from history about the horrific atrocities of the Far Eastern years of POW captivity, from 1942 – 1945.

Many war stories have been written for posterity. Captured at Singapore is structured through our father’s experiences of plight and fear in terrible, adverse conditions while being incarcerated by another culture. The diarised words may only be a small account and not a particularly heroic one, but it is our family’s account of a time that should never be repeated, if we are to be living and believing in a peaceful World. — Jill Robertson & Jan Slimming.

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Stanley Albert William Moore a young man from Tooting, South London is gratefully, the only family who had to endure such wartime hardship. He is their unsung hero.

Sisters, Jill and Janice, through their research, have found it humbling to now understand this increasingly forgotten period of history, which may slowly fade away as those who experienced this episode reach old age and memories dwindle. Stan was part of the secret convoy from Liverpool, to Canada, then onward destined for desert warfare, fighting for King and Country, or so they thought. Instead, this book reveals the delights and insights into their experience at sea and ultimately the terrible plight during three and half years of captivity, by aggressors in WWII. It was so different to what could have happened: a toss of a dice and change in world affairs, meant their lives were spun in an entirely different direction. Stan’s direction was altered on 7 December 1942. Or was the die cast before?

While the European fascist dictatorship tried starving the British People into submission in 1940-1943, in another part of the World, thousands were already being starved to death, let alone submission, in the Far East. [This refers to the Hitler regime, and the Chinese/Hong Kong/ Vichy France atrocities. These last two invasions already carried out by the Japanese in their endeavours to claim parts of the Far East as their own Empire, dominate the entire coastal area of the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.] From the miniscule diary that Stanley kept, he
re-wrote – in simplistic form, notes to ‘show and tell’ for his grand-childrens’ primary school history lessons. Eventually, his own spoken, extremely understated account was recorded on a Philips cassette tape recorder for posterity, in the early ‘90s. Delving into old photo albums, discovering delicate newspaper cuttings, documents, reference books, etc., compiling this book has been rewarding, cathartic and informative. Through the sisters’ research they overturned a few stones that have answered many of the questions, since his passing in October 2001, there are still some pieces to fit into the puzzle, as with most Prisoners of War, they did not want to, or they were ordered not to, reveal their own specific experience. Many horrific episodes were discovered. Could these have happened to Stan? Perhaps the family will never know. The story unfolds entwined with other small connecting episodes by a handful of other PoWs, where their paths meet and experiences are corroborated.

The authors’ aim is to provide an important reference work for future generations so they too can understand the ordeals their 1940s predecessors went through. It will be another source of referral in the hope the family names mentioned in the diary-cum-address book which Stanley had also written on the reverse, will come forward, or perhaps their ancestors will to reconcile these soldiers’ memories and discover more about their own family hero, before this part of history becomes just another fading sentence about being Captured at Singapore.

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Captured at Singapore is due to be published 30th June 2022. For more details please visit the Pen and Sword website.