Tag Archives: New Release

New Book: “Captured at Singapore”

June 17, 2022 fepowhistory 1 Comment

“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.

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.

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

Books, Featured, News

You Must Endure: The Lancashire Loyals in Japanese Captivity, 1942-1945

October 16, 2021 fepowhistory Leave a comment

By Chris Given-Wilson

Among the 80,000 British and Commonwealth prisoners who surrendered to the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in February 1942 were around 600 officers and men of the 2nd Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, most of whom would spend the great majority of the next three and a half years in Korea’s Number One Prisoner-of War Camp at Seoul (renamed Keijo following the 1910 Japanese annexation). One of them was my father, 2nd Lt. Paddy Given-Wilson, who, together with two other Loyals officers, Capt. John Turner and Lt Tom Henling Wade, decided shortly after their capture, in order to ‘occupy a few idle minds’, to write and circulate a camp magazine which they called Nor Iron Bars. Fourteen issues were produced over the next three and a half years, totalling 516 pages. Great care was taken to conceal them, and despite snooping guards and frequent searches the Japanese never discovered the magazine. Had they done so, severe punishment would certainly have followed. When the war ended, therefore, it was brought back to Preston, where it was bound and displayed in the Lancashire Infantry Museum at Fulwood Barracks, where it is still kept.

A humorous take on the discovery of the magazine by the guards, with forged censor’s stamp.

Nor Iron Bars is an extraordinary but barely-known illustration of life in one of Japan’s more obscure POW camps. Not just a story, but, literally, an illustration. Every issue contained between twenty and forty drawings, cartoons (often deeply subversive) and even paintings, many of them done by extremely talented artists such as Capt. Donald Teale, the magazine’s ‘resident’ artist. And if the artwork was subversive, so too are the poems, plays and topical, often very humorous articles about camp life which made up the majority of the contributions. All these have been woven together with diaries, letters, war crimes trial transcripts and other documents to re-create the story of life at Keijo in You Must Endure, which is published by Carnegie Press, Lancaster, in October 2021.

You must endure: the Lancashire Loyals in Japanese Captivity, 1942–1945 (ISBN 978-1-910837-35-1) by Chris Given-Wilson.

There is no doubt that, relatively speaking, Keijo was one of the better places to be a prisoner of the Japanese between 1942 and 1945. Yet even here brutality, medical neglect and gnawing hunger were everyday events. Beatings and incarceration in the guardroom for days at a time, regardless of the fearsome Korean winter or the almost unbearable summer heat, were routine. So inadequate was the food that most of the prisoners lost a quarter or more of their body weight. In such circumstances, a camp magazine which combined humour with news, story-telling and wistful memories of better days, did much to lift spirits at the time and now provides fascinating insights into the resilience and resourcefulness of brave men experiencing the grim reality of Japanese captivity.

You must endure: the Lancashire Loyals in Japanese Captivity, 1942–1945 by Chris Given-Wilson is £9.99 and is available NOW with a 10% discount direct from the publishers on 01524 840111, or by visiting http://www.carnegiepublishing.com, and in selected booksellers.

Information correct at time of posting

Books, Featured, News

My Father’s Experiences as a POW

October 15, 2021 fepowhistory 1 Comment

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.

RFHG