大象传媒

Joseph's story of endurance began when his wife, 3 months pregnant, saw him off on a train. She didn't see him again for over 6 years.

Joseph left for the Far East on the first convoy of the war - the Devonshire. The boat landed in Singapore, where Joseph and the rest of the regiment were ordered to surrender.

Joseph and his commrades became prisoners of war in Changi jail, where they and thousands of other prisoners were threatened with death by the guards.

Following this, Joseph was taken to other prisoner of war camps, including Kiorin which was a huge railway workshop belonging to the Japenese. While they were there, the prisoners sabotaged whatever they could, to try to disrupt the Japanese military supplies.

The Royal Air Force also attempted to put a stop to the Japanese military activity by bombing the railway workshop. Unfortunately, British prisoners of war died at this time too, including one of Joseph's close friends.

From Kiorin the prisoners were taken off to work on the railway that to this day runs from Singapore, through Burma and into Thailand.

During this time, the prisoners were tortured, and many suffered from disintary, malaria, beri beri, and pilagra, amongst various other debilitating illneses and diseases.

It's said that there was a prisoner death for every mile of the railway. Some were accidents, though some deaths came as a result of the treatment of the Japanese guards.

During the time the prisoners spent at one of the camps along the way, the 6 Australian POW's who were in the same camp as Joseph, asked him if he'd like to try to escape with them. But Joseph chose not to because he had a wife and child - who he had still not seen - to go home to.

The six Australian's did manage to escape, but were soon re-captured by the Kempiti - the Japanses military police - and brought back to the camp. Joseph was amongst a small group who had to dig 6 vertical graves, before the Australian prisoners were beheaded and dropped into them.

Josep escaped death more than once. Being a smoker, he was allowed a ration of tobacco, which he cleverly swapped with a Japanese officer for soya beans. These were an important part of Joseph's survival because he was able to cook them up with wild asparagus and eat them with the small amount of rice that the Japanese military were giving them. Sometimes, they'd add beetles or snakes as well. They didn't receive any red cross parcels until the end of the war.

Towards the end of the war, the Japanese made the POW's dig pits all the way around the camp. These had big banks of earth piled up along the edges and a machine gun nests at the corners. Joseph has since said that if Lord Mount Baton's forces had have entered Burma, the prisoners would have been shot within 24 hours and put in the mass graves.

Before the threat became a reality, atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, prompting the end of the war, and saving the lives of many, including Joseph and the other surviving prisoners.

By the time Joseph was released he weighed little more than 6 stone and his legs were eaten to the bone by ulcers, which meant he had to walk on crutches. My father did, however, manage to regain enough strength to retell his story in a book entitled 'You Must Endure'. Unfortunately, the book was never published.

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