A book, written by Arthur Stirby in installemts so that it could be sent to his son in boarding school, has been published 75 years later.
Arthur Stirby was a Japanese POW Camp survivor and wrote the book about a dog to “build a link” with his son Robert.
You can read more about the book, Now It Can Be Told, and how it came to be publsihed here.
A bench to commemorate VJ Day has been installed in the market town of Swaffham, after it was inially delayed due to COVID-19. In addition to this, “Swaffham Heritage Museum has created a new resource on its website covering the history of the war in the Far East and the involvement of soldiers from Swaffham and surrounding towns”.
To read more about this story please click here.
A memorial stone dedicated to all men, women, and children who served or were interned has be unveiled in Leicester. Installed with funds raised by COFEPOW, the stone has been installed in Peace Walk, next to the Arch of Remembrance at Victoria Park.
More information can be found here.
Also in Leicester, an exhibition for the 75th annivaersay of VJ day is being held. VJ 75 – Leicestershire Prisoners of War in the Far East, 1941 – 45 is displayed until the 8th November 2020 at Newarke House Museum & Gardens.
An online memorial project, organised by COFEPOW members Pam Gillespie and Gail Taylor, is aiming to gather 1000 photos of those that served in the Far East during the Second World War in time for Rememberance Day.
They have so far collected 600 pictures since the project was inspired during the VJ Day 75th Anniversary.
You can read more about the project here.
You can submit a photo of a relative who served by emailing galleryofheroes@outlook.com or through the “VJ Day Gallery of Heroes” group on Facebook.
To mark VJ Day75, and as a legacy of the highly successful Secret Art of Survival art exhibition in Liverpool, hosted and curated by our partners Victoria Gallery & Museum, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is re-launching it’s Far East prisoner of war (FEPOW) research website – www.captivememories.org.uk.
As you will see from the attached flyer the exhibition was accompanied by a new book – Captive Artists, the unseen art of British Far East prisoners of war (to order a copy visit the website).
As well as more unseen FEPOW artwork and stories revealed by the exhibition and book, the website now includes:
Teacher’s resources featuring FEPOW artwork and histories and designed as an aid to explore FEPOW history with a range of Year Groups
Family resources, interactive and craft based activities to do with younger members of the family to introduce a FEPOW relative
In addition, there is a link to the Secret Art of Lockdown, the University of Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum’s creative arts project marking VJ Day75 commemorations. It features digital images of artwork submitted by members of the public on the theme of connecting people to friends and family who they have not seen for many months.
Secret Art of Survival was funded by players of the National Lottery, Trusts, FEPOW groups and individual donors.
A campaign has been started to have ‘Dr Bill Frankland‘ as a name for one of LNER’s ‘Azuma’ locomotives.
LNER are running the naming exercise through an online submission form which is open to anyone to make a submission through. Although not bound by the number of votes alone, it is hoped that the more forms submitted for a particular name, the more weight it will hold with the judging panel.
To lend your support to the campaign please nominate Dr Bill Frankland as a name through this web form: https://www.lner.co.uk/tickets-savings/savings-rewards/special-offers/current-competitions/azuma-birthday/ ) by the deadline which is Monday, 1st June.
In the light of the growing worldwide uncertainty around the Coronavirus outbreak and its potential impact specifically upon the U.K. over the coming months, as well as in response to some concerns expressed by our delegates and speakers, the Researching FEPOW History Group has regrettably decided that we need to postpone the conference scheduled for June 2020. We have deliberated long and hard over this decision and we also consulted with our hosts, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.
This news is of course very disappointing for everyone, especially in this 75th VJ Day anniversary year. However, with the growing uncertainty and anxiety expressed by some of the conference participants who have existing health concerns, we have little choice. We do not wish to put anyone at risk and we cannot run the conference without the required number of delegates and – of course – our team of expert speakers.
The good news is that the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) have agreed to host the postponed conference in June 2021 (the precise dates to be confirmed). We very much hope that everyone who had planned to attend the conference in June 2020 will be able to join us next year. More news will be posted on the Researching FEPOW History website https://fepowhistory.com/blog (https://fepowhistory.com/blog/)/ as soon as we have the details for 2021. Emails to all the delegates and speakers have been sent.
We would like to thank everyone for their support and understanding and we very much hope to see you in Liverpool in June 2021.
-The organising team of the Researching FEPOW History conference
Dr Bernice Archer writes…
It is with great sadness that I report the death of Connie Suverkropp.
Some of you may remember Connie and her sister Else attending the RFHG conference in Liverpool in 2015 where Connie told her story of internment by the Japanese in Java during the Second World War.
Connie was just twelve years old when she was interned with her two younger sisters, Else aged 5 and Kathy aged 2, in Tjihapit Camp and Struiswijk Prison in Java. Her two older brothers (aged 14 and 15) were interned with the men in Tjikudapateuh. Their mother, suffering from T.B. was interned in a Japanese hospital. She died just after the end of the war. Their father died in 1943 on the Burma Railway. Her grandfather died in Ambarawa Camp and her grandmother in Bloemenkamp.
So Connie became a mother to these two younger sisters who she struggled courageously to care for and educate while at the same time, as she was no longer considered a child by the Japanese, she had to work in the camps.
Thanks to Connie’s efforts all three sisters survived the gruelling time in the camps, both Else and Kathy survive her and her spirit, strength and courage live on in them and in her children and grandchildren and her wider family.
Throughout her adult life Connie was determined both to honour the memory of her parents who she missed so much and also to ensure that this dreadful part of Dutch history would not be forgotten. Her efforts were recognised on 14 November 2007 when she was awarded the Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau.The statement made by mayor E.C. Bakker of Hilversum, in Museum Bronbeek (Arnhem) at the occasion of her decoration said: (a précis translation from Dutch to English by Connie’s brother-in-law Derk HilleRisLambers )
For many years of work Mrs Suverkropp focused on an accounting of history that reflects, and does justice to, the experience of the Dutch in the occupied Dutch East Indies during World War 2 – a history which she lived and remembers herself, and which dramatically affected her own family, and which has formed her as a person.
Connie has contributed by serving in the board of the “Foundation Guest Lecturers on WW-2, South-East Asia” (Stichting Gastdocenten WO II Werkgroep Zuid-Oost Azië). The Foundation offers guest lectures on history in schools in the Netherlands.
She made a special effort to get Dutch-Indonesian historic facts integrated into the curriculum History of the Netherlands in secondary schools: through special projects with the Royal Tropical Institute, and exhibits in the educational museum Museon. She also gave lectures on the subject in schools in Japan.
Connie was active in the Film Foundation Japanese Occupation of DEI.
With her activities she helped open the eyes of many Dutch students to this special part of history, Dutch history, of the Dutch East Indies. She has served the Dutch Indonesian community through her efforts to prevent their history from being swept under the rug, and forgotten.
5 – 7 June 2020, Liverpool
Co-hosted by the Researching FEPOW History Group (RFHG) and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), our 7th international conference will focus on the stories and creativity that sustained prisoners, internees and forced labourers throughout captivity. We will also look at the made, recorded and preserved memories that subsequent generations have drawn upon in their own responses to this rich and moving history. In doing so, we will look for different perspectives and new voices to shed light on all that is yet to learn about – and from – the experiences of captivity, internment and forced labour across Southeast Asia and the Far East.
Taking place during the 75th anniversary year of liberation, and in conjunction with LSTM’s Art of Survival exhibition, the conference will encourage delegates to think of the objects, poems, artworks, and stories that resonated with prisoners and enabled their narratives to endure for many decades post-war.
Located at The Liner Hotel and LSTM buildings in the beautiful city of Liverpool, speakers already confirmed include: award-winning novelist Mark Dapin, acclaimed history writer Damien Lewis, representatives from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, British Red Cross, Imperial War Musem, the WarGen history project plus many more family researchers, academics, photographers and writers.
Hope to see you there!
To coincide with the publication of her latest article in History Today, Dr Clare Makepeace writes for RFHG about her moving research into POW war graves in Thailand.
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A few years ago, I visited Kanchanaburi and Chungkai war cemeteries in Thailand, which lie approximately 80 miles north-west of Bangkok. The cemeteries contain the bodies of thousands of POWs who died while constructing the Thai-Burma railway. I was backpacking around Asia at the time and, in between immersing myself in the continent’s wonderful food and culture, I was visiting every historical site I could reach. While staying in Kanchanaburi, I also went to the Hellfire Pass Interpretive Centre and Memorial Walking Trail and the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre. I still regard the latter as the best museum I have ever visited.
Visiting the war cemeteries was a profoundly moving experience. I had gone to war cemeteries in the past, but this was something different. I think part of the difference was due to my physical surroundings. The cemeteries felt like surreal enclaves. Their beautifully-tended green lawns and the peace and serenity that reigned within them contrasted starkly with Bangkok’s cacophony and concrete, from which I had recently emerged. Another reason for the difference was that, unlike in other war cemeteries, I could picture quite vividly the circumstances in which these men perished, that is while in captivity, while being forced to work on the Thai-Burma railway and, in all likelihood, from one or a combination of five diseases. Dysentery, malaria, tropical ulcers, cholera and malnutrition were the main killers. Knowing the conditions and causes from which most of these men died somehow made them more human, more tangible and more real.
However, I was moved most by the personal inscriptions carried on each man’s headstone. These inscriptions ensured I was not just scrolling through reams of names, ranks and ages, but that I was seeing individual after individual, and grieving family after grieving family. I was seeing a son who would never take up his place at the dinner table again when I read ‘He sits no more at familiar tables of home, he sleeps beyond England’s foam’. Or, when I looked at the inscription ‘Secret tears often flow; what it meant to lose you no one will ever know’, I saw bereaved parents, whose stoicism was hiding an untellable loss.
I decided there and then that one day I would write about these epitaphs. I felt there was a powerful story to be told: about how the bereaved in the Second World War made sense of losing a loved one in such horrific circumstances.
In 2017, I spent a couple of months reading the inscription on every single headstone belonging to the 6,609 men from the British armed forced who are buried at Kanchanaburi war cemetery, Chungkai war cemetery and Thanbyuzayat war cemetery. Thanbyuzayat lies just over the border in Myanmar. It contains the graves of those who lost their lives along the northern section of the line.
When I read these thousands of inscriptions, some stood out for their tenderness, others for their intimacy, some for their anger and a few for their appalling stories of parental loss. I dug deeper behind the names and inscriptions, to unearth what I could about the life of each of these prisoners. Beyond these individual stories, when I looked at the epitaphs as a whole, I was able to draw some broad conclusions about how people made sense of their bereavement in the Second World War.
My research has just been published in this month’s edition of History Today. I’m delighted to see it in print but, if truth be told, I’m also feeling some trepidation. When we write history, we have to be as accurate and informative as we can. That’s a given. But the more I know about what prisoners of war went through and the more I understand the trials they faced, the more I hope I write about them with the respect and sensitivity I think they deserve. I feel an increasing sense of responsibility not to let their memory down. Today I feel that obligation more than ever. I’m not sure if that attachment to my subject makes me a good or a bad historian. I think I’ll let you decide. If you read my article, perhaps you can let me know.
Clare Makepeace is the author of Captives of War. British Prisoners of War in Europe in the Second World War. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London.
All words © Clare Makepeace, 2019. Feature image: Kanchanaburi War Cemetery © Richard Stokoe.
