大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wendy of the Stoke CSV Action Desk on behalf of Leopold Manning and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was in the Royal Engineers, bomb disposal in Singapore from 1940. On the 15th February 1942 the Japanese came to the island, fighting ensued and lasted for about 2 weeks but eventually I was captured and taken to Changi. I was put in the married quarters of some old barracks from Feb to November. For the first few months we ate European food but after that we went on rice. I was then moved to Siam where I was put to work on the death railway, so called because so many people died making it, at a place called Hellfire Pass. I was there for 2 years.
I was then taken back to Singapore where I worked on the docks doing general labouring, then in July I went to Japan. Whilst we were sailing to Japan we were torpedoed, the boat sank in about 10 minutes. There were 900 men in the hold but we lost 500, I jumped into the water and managed to get to a raft, there were so many people on it that we were all waist deep in the water. We were picked up by the Japanese 12 hours later.
Then we were taken to Hainan Island on a Japanese whaling ship carrying civilians, it docked at Formosa then sailed to the Moji port, Japan. Then we went on to Omuta to work in a chemical factory where I stayed until 1945. We were bombed by the Americans because we were in a factory. On the 9th of August we heard an air raid siren go off, when we looked out we saw a bright flash and then a cloud rising from it, we had witnessed an atomic bomb.
During my time in the camps I lost weight and went down from 10 stone to 5. I have later estimated that I ate approximately 3 陆 tons of rice, about 26 1/2 oz per day! The guards were cruel and would beat you so my only thought was just to survive, nothing else mattered. It was often the ones who had appeared to be the toughest who fell first. I had Malaria many times and Beri Beri which is a vitamin b deficiency so marmite became a life saver, 1 spoonful was enough to take it away. 1 man lost both his legs through ulcers, it was a terrible time.
When the war was over the Americans came and dropped food and clothing, our captors ran off. I went to Nagasaki to begin my journey home, then I got on an aircraft carrier, over the Pacific to San Francisco but it was cold because the clothes we had been given were for hot weather, not winter clothing. I picked up some more clothes and then went to Seattle on a train where I stayed for a week, then across Canada to New York, where I caught the Queen Mary to Southampton. We all had to make our own way home.

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