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I was asked at previous interviews what memories stay in my mind from the war, there are quite a few:
I worked as a prisoner of war in Japan. I had a good friend working with me, as a mate on board ship, and he started to be sick, ill, and I called the Japanese guard over who told me to take him back to the prison camp, escorted by a Korean guard. It was about 5 miles (don’t know what that is in kilometres) to the camp. When I reached the camp, his hands had been tied round my neck so he wouldn’t fall off, and the Medical Orderly there, a Dutchman, told me he had been dead over an hour. I had carried him all the way back to camp, badly ill when I started and dead when I got there.

I was sent to Alexander Hospital in Singapore, to escort Australian nurses down to the harbour to board a ship, just before the Japanese took over. Two days later the Japanese arrived at the hospital and they bayoneted a Surgeon, and the patient who was being operated on, and all the staff. Then they went round the hospital, into the wards and bayoneted or shot every wounded man/soldier that was lying there. That is one of the things I will never forget. I didn’t see it but we knew it had happened, we were told.

I was a prisoner for nearly four years, and learned to speak the Japanese language, not real good but enough to make then understand. Sometimes the Japanese would tell the prisoners to do this or do that, put a different size bit in the drill, and they didn’t understand. They would send for me to interpret. Many a time I told them the wrong size, so when they put the bolt in the hole in the ship it was too big. So I did my part of sabotage.

After we were released, we were taken by the Americans to Okinawa, into a hospital, which they had put up in two days, full of English prisoners of war. One day the Sister said ‘You have a visitor’. This lady came in, with one of the orderlies who was pushing a trolley. She stopped at every bed and gave us two cans of beer and a cigar. After she had gone the Sister said ‘You are a very lucky man, do you know who that was?’ I said ‘No’. That was Lady Mountbatten.

From there we were taken by the British Aircraft Carrier, The Glory, to Canada. We were in hospital there many weeks. We saw a film with Betty Hutton singing a song ‘Row, row, row’. One of our lads used to sleep really heavy and snore, so what we did was to put two sticks by the side of the bed like oars and we wheeled him into the ladies ward next door and left him in there. That was during the night, well in the early morning there was such a noise, women shouting, and he came running out in his nightie, and you can imagine what he called us! It is unrepeatable!

While we were in the Prison camp, the officers of ours had their own gardens, and grew their own vegetables or tended the Japanese gardens for them. What we did was to dig down under the wire, and go into the gardens. The first row was cabbages, so we pulled the leaves to one side put our head in and ate all the middle out of it, worms and all and then put the outside leaves back! They never knew why their cabbage had no inside!

On the way from Singapore to North Korea, we stopped at Formosa, Taiwan, and we had to shovel Bauxite, very heavy sand that makes tin. One of the Japs asked me for my shirt and he would give me some food. They grew bananas on the island, so I got a handful of bananas and gave him my shirt. I watched where he went to, he dug a hole in the sand, put the shirt in and covered it. Five minutes later I went back took the shirt and sold it to another Japanese. By the end of the day I had 32 bananas, (I can remember the number,) which I took back to the ship and we left 4 very frustrated Japs on the island fighting over the shirt. I still kept the shirt!

One of the worst things that happened in our camp, was that one of our lads was very ill, the Japs came in, about 4 of them and put a hosepipe down his mouth, switched the water on, and filled him full of water, and then jumped on him, bursting all his insides. He died like that in five minutes. That was one of the things they did for fun, you know.

There was an article in a local paper, 1941 or 42, to tell my parents that I was severely wounded with a bullet in my neck. I was missing, presumed dead. That is the only bit of information they got from the War Office, when they read it in the paper. The Japanese allowed us one letter, but it was printed for you — ‘I am very well’ — ‘I am getting good food’ and you had to sign it. A lot of our lads would not sign it, especially the Australians, well they shot the first four and then put the others in a prison, a very low prison, the walls of which were only about 3 feet high, and kept them in there, no food until they agreed to sign this letter. That letter was received by my mother in about 1943.

I was in the Regular Army; I left Liverpool on Sunday August 1st 1940. We couldn’t go through the Mediterranean due to the submarines, so we had to go down the coast of Africa, round Cape Town, and then up to India. We stayed there for a while and from there we were taken by ship to Singapore, arriving in October 1940, 5 months from leaving Liverpool.
We were released on August 16th 1945. They signed the Surrender in September, but the war finished 16th August. I spent many weeks in Okinawa, in Canada, (British Columbia) Hawaii, Philippines, different hospitals all the way home, and it took five and a half months before I got home. We were in such a bad condition that they wouldn’t let us go home. We were in a hospital ship, the main hospital in Victoria B.C. Canada, the main hospital in Hawaii, and the Philippines, so about 5 or 6 different hospitals. We lost a few men on the way back.
On the Aircraft Carrier we were allowed the freedom of the ship. About two days out from Manila, the Captain came over the tannoy on the ship, ‘This is for all Ex Prisoners of War, you cannot be allowed any more on the deck without a Naval escort. The reason was because some of our men, about 4 I think, felt too bad to go home, and they went over the side. Their bodies were found floating in the bay.

We left England on 1st August 1940 and we went into the first prison camp on 15th February 1942. Changi the first one. Second one was in North Korea. 3rd one was in Kobi, in Japan and the last one was Motoyama, down the coalmines. We used to get up at 3 in the morning, have a ball of rice (not a bowl) a ball, with a pickle, and we marched to the mines and started work at 5am, and worked right through till 8 o’clock, maybe more, every day. They don’t have a mine with a lift, it’s a tunnel under the ground to go into the mine, and the coal face was about 4 ft high, and I am 6ft 4 inches, so you can imagine what it was like. We did get a couple of Jap guards down there; one was at the coalface. When the coal face got too hard, we asked for the Mito (dynamite), drilled a hole blow it out, then we could go back and shovel. We didn’t leave the coalface; we just moved back and buried our head into the soft earth. Then what we did, the nearest one to the Jap got hold of his boot, and when the Mito blew twisted him onto the belt. Some pieces of coal were huge, and that went down with four or five other coalfaces onto a big belt so by the time the Jap got to the end there was nothing left of him. We go two.

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