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This story is taken from an interview with June Brown at the Dublin WW2 Commemoration, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Neil Graham, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I was born in Singapore and I was leaving Singapore with my mother to go to Australia. And our boat was bombed and my mother was drowned. Then I was on a raft for 4 days and 4 nights with nothing to eat or anything. So then the Japs got us and took us to this Prison of War. I was only 9 and a half, and I had nobody to look after me. And then I got onto a woman that was there, Mrs Murray. She’s dead and gone now. And she took me under her wing and looked after me until the war was over. But it was hard-going in the prison camps.

[how long were you in the POW camp?]
3 1/2 years. I was 9 ½ when I went in, 13 ½ when I came out, and I was 2 stone exactly.

[where was the camp?]
In Sumatra. Java.

[did you have to do hard labour?]
Oh, we worked. Anybody died, we dug the graves and buried them.

[what were the Japs like?]
Cruel.

[They didn’t feed you well?]
We just had rice, and then we used to find bits of grass or anything to mix it up. I was very bad with malaria, and then after the war I come to Singapore. My father was there, and he met me. I came to Australia. I couldn’t go to school for a year because of the malaria. And I had, I was — no nourishment, it took them a year to build me up.

[A lot of your childhood was taken away]
Oh, it was. No school, neither.

We were born, I was born there. My father was an engineer. And my brother was born there as well, but he was at boarding school during the war so he wasn’t in it at all.

[could you tell us about the medals you’re wearing today?]
The medals on the right hand side belonged to may father now. He’s dead now. He was in the navy. And the one on the left is the POW one that my son David got for me.

[I believe your father was also captured]
he was captured in Changi in Singapore. The same [duration], 3 ½ years.

[when were you liberated?]
1945. I forget the month now. It was 1942-45. We were delighted. It was Lady Louis Mountbatten that come to collect us and take us to Singapore. On a plane. It was, we were all glad to see your father, anyway.

[Do you remember the siege of Singapore?]
I do, definitely. It was bombed. The house we lived in was bombed, too.

[It was scary, being 9 years old?]
Yes. And then you had nobody.
When my mother was drownded I had nobody. I didn’t know if there was, if I was going to be left on my own or anything about it. But this lady took me under her wing and looked after me until I come to Singapore.

[one of many children in the camps?]

There was a right few children. There was a lot of Dutch children. I got talking to them and learned their language. But then I forgot it all. It’s that long since I …

[Singapore being besieged — do you remember the rationing?]
Not at that time, no. When we came back, there was no … the Red Cross gave us clothes and all. So that was all. And then I came home to Monaghan there, I hade an uncle there, and stayed with him til I got married to Erwin here. We made our home in Enniskillen, and had 2 boys. Robert and David was the 2 boys. And we’ve 4 grandchildren.

[How long was it before you were reunited with your father after the war?]
It was about a month after, when Lady Louis Mountbatten came for us in the plane.
My father was only 8 stone. He’d lost an awful weight. And I didn’t really know him, and he didn’t know me that well. But I was glad to see him. But he knew my mother was drowned. There was nothing we could do.

[Presumably he didn’t know until you told him]
He knew before that, because apparently one of the Japs told him that she was drowneded.

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