Tag Archives: Carl Murray

Conference

More Speakers Confirmed

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We can excitingly now announce the next three speakers for our June conference! Remember, to be the first to hear this news, make sure you are signed up for our newsletter. Limited spaces for the conference are still available, so register now to avoid disappointment. Missed out on the first three speakers, click here to see who they are.

Carl Murray

Carl Murray is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London.  He obtained his PhD from Queen Mary in 1980 and then spent two years as a postdoc at Cornell University before returning to Queen Mary.  Carl is a planetary scientist who specialises in the dynamics of the Saturn system.

Carl’s father was Major Frank Murray RAMC, who survived incarceration as a FEPOW in Changi and Hokkaido, Japan, before returning to Belfast to marry his fiancée, Eileen O’Kane.  In the 1980s, Carl began to use his father’s wartime diary to learn more about the experiences of FEPOWs.  In 2020 this research led to the creation of a website, thebelfastdoctor.info, where Carl documented Frank Murray’s life with the aim of providing a useful resource for descendants of Frank’s fellow POWs.  In 2022 BBC Gaeilge broadcast an Irish language documentary based on the wartime correspondence between Frank and Eileen.

John Willis

John Willis is one of Britain’s best-known television executives. Nagasaki: The Forgotten Prisoners is his third book about the Second World War, following on from Churchill’s Few and Secret Letters: A Battle of Britain Love Story, both published in 2020.

John was Director of Programmes at Channel 4 and Director of Factual and Learning at the BBC. In 2012 he was elected as Chair of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts). He is currently Chair of Governors at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (University of London) and Chair of the Complaints Review Panel, Guardian and Observer newspapers.

Louise Reynolds

Louise Reynolds is a qualified psychotherapist and worked for 20 years as a couples’  therapist in London for Relate, for the Tavistock Centre and in private practice.  Before that, she worked for the BBC as a studio manager (radio) and floor manager (television) and then for BBC Radio Training.  When her husband was appointed BBC Foreign Correspondent, she and their young family spent nine years abroad in New York, Brussels and Jerusalem and latterly in Washington, and she contributed some radio features to Woman’s Hour and The Sunday Programme.

She began her research into her father’s experiences as a FEPOW after discovering his diaries amongst her mother’s papers in 2012. They covered his time as a Padre in Changi and then in Kanchanaburi beside the River Kwai, where he buried over 600 young men who had died of complications due to the appalling conditions of their captivity.  She has published four books:  Down to Bedrock, The Changi Cross and Eric and Scrunchball (a children’s book) and then in 2019, she embarked on a series of interviews for her latest publication, Echoes of Captivity, which illustrates and exposes the trans-generational trauma experienced by many FEPOW families.  She has used her therapy training as a basis for understanding this phenomenon.

Books, Featured, News

My Father’s Experiences as a POW

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By Paul Murray

I have recently published a book, “From the Gaeltacht to Galicia: a Son’s Tale”, which includes, as one of its main themes, my father’s experiences as a POW in Changi between February 1942 and May 1943, his transfer on the prison ship Wales Maru to mainland Japan, and his onward journey to the northern island of Hokkaido where he was imprisoned in six further camps until September 1945. My book follows on from the setting up of a website by my brother Carl in August 2020 called thebelfastdoctor.info where he published the secret diaries in the form of love letters from our Dad to the woman who was to become our Mum.

Paul’s parents on Newcastle Beach in N. Ireland with Slieve Donard in the background (Image courtesy of Paul Murray)

Using the diaries in which, apart from one month, there is an entry every day for 42 months, I travelled to Singapore in October 2017 and on to Japan to follow in his footsteps. This special pilgrimage proved to be an emotional roller coaster but I was so glad that I went as, with the help of a guide and an interpreter, I met numerous historians and museum curators who were able to piece together the story of some of the British, Dutch and American POWs in the ten camps on the island. I even met an elderly Japanese man who claimed to have met my father when he was imprisoned in what proved to be the worst of the camps, Muroran.

My father’s name was Major Francis J. Murray and he was the chief MO as well as the senior CO in two of the six camps on Hokkaido where he was in charge of 350 British prisoners. He was awarded the military MBE when he returned to N Ireland after the war to set up a practice as a GP in a working class area of north Belfast.

Major Francis J. Murray at Chitose Aerodrome near Sapporo, Hokkaido, on 13th September 1945. (Image courtesy of Paul Murray)

During my visit to Singapore, I met up with one of my sisters who flew in from her home in Canada and, together with the son of the country’s former first chief minister in 1955, David Marshall, we re-enacted our dads’ walk from the Padang beside St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral along the route of the 14 mile march into captivity at Changi.

On Hokkaido, Dad was incarcerated for one week in Hakodate, four months in Yakumo, 19 months in Muroran, five weeks in Raijo (all the POW accounts I have read including my Dad’s know this camp as Nishi Ashibetsu), two weeks in Utashinai, and two months in Akabira. The only building still standing on its original site on the island is now a café in what was once the compound of the camp at Hakodate on the outskirts of the town. A television crew from Japan’s national station NHK together with a reporter from a local newspaper covered my visit to Hakodate and Yakumo. Later on my first day at Hakodate, I was taken to a temple which used to be the camp hospital and which has been reconstructed in another part of the town. There is a small plaque in the temple with the names of some of the British and Dutch POWs who died during captivity. Included on it are some of the thirteen men who died on my father’s watch and who are all buried at the Commonwealth War Cemetery at Yokohama. On my visit to Tokyo a few days earlier, I had laid poppy crosses at the graves of each of the men. Our guide at the camp at Hakodate and the Eizenji Temple was Masatoshi Asari, an elderly local historian, who was responsible for erecting the symbolic plaque of reconciliation and for bringing the story of the foreign prisoners to the attention of school children on the island.

My visits to Yakumo where the men constructed an air strip in the summer and autumn of 1943, and Muroran where they provided slave labour in the Wanishi Iron and Steel Works, proved to be equally fascinating though tinged with great emotion when I learnt more details about the tragic deaths of Signalman Stan Faunch at the former, and Private Raymond Suttle among the twelve at the latter.

An extract of Major Francis J. Murray’s secret diary. (Image courtesy of Paul Murray)

My book has a special focus on two Japanese officers whose treatment of the POWs was markedly different. Lieutenant Kaichi Hirate was camp commandant at Muroran and Raijo. Lieutenant Colonel Shigeo Emoto had overall responsibility for all the camps on Hokkaido between March 1944 and May 1945.

The stunning autumn colours of the interior were in stark contrast to the bleakness of the port at Muroran and it was so very special to gather in a clearing in the middle of the woods at Dad’s fourth camp, Raijo, to picture what he called his proudest moment when, on 5 September 1945, he was presented with a giant scroll of tribute by the British and American POWs.

I am indebted to two women from the POW Research Network Japan, Taeko Sasamoto and Yoshiko Tamura, who gave me so much assistance throughout my special pilgrimage to their country. They are among a number of volunteers who are continuing to bring the stories of the Allied POWs in all the camps in Japan to the attention of its people and, ultimately, to a far wider audience with the future publication of a book.

Cover of From the Gaeltacht to Galicia: a Son’s Tale by Paul Murray

As for my own book, it is available for purchase in paperback form at thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk  Any money I make from it will go to the arthritis charity NASS.