Japanese POW

When I was about 5 my father took me to see Father Christmas at Whiteman's Toy Shop in The Borough, Hinckley, who gave me a present, which I wasn't allowed to open until Christmas. When I opened it I found it was a beautiful green fan, but on the back it said 'Made in Japan' and father threw it in the back of the fire. I was heartbroken.

It then started to dawn on me that he had gone through very difficult circumstances. I knew Father was very fond of sugar cane and I wondered how he had come across it, but it transpired he had been a prisoner in Thailand and in that area was a large sugarcane plantation.

When Dad died in 1983 my stepmother gave me a bundle, saying this is for you - there's letters in there from your Mum. My mother had died in January 1946 and Dad married my step mum in 1957. It was only when I sat and read the letters that I understood what he'd gone through.

One of the letters from Mum to Dad was that he wasn't to worry about them at Christmas as Brinksty had sent us a turkey - in fact it was a chicken. We wanted to find out where he'd been and we went to Singapore, to Changi, then to Kanchilabri (?) and met the curator of the Thailand Burma Railway Centre, who was very interested in Dad's story.

Then we went to Bangkok and found out about the Far East POWs Group and we've been in touch with them ever since; I took all Dad's stuff with me. A photograph of Dad that I'd never seen before. His service book, the original and a replacement. A bible presented to him just before he was called up by his Sunday School class at Hinckley Congregational Church, signed by all the children.

In the back of the bible was part of a postcard from Mum, to reinforce it, who he always called Cherie though her name was Vera. A Variety Entertainment Competition certificate from the Australian Imperial Forces in Malaya; they did entertainments in the POW camps. He would perform monologues in the style of Stanley Holloway in which he would be unkind to the Japanese if they weren't listening. Although he didn't like the Japanese he did say that some of them were better than others.

A telegram that he had sent to Mum to say he had arrived in Singapore on 21/05/1941, then he went up country to Malaya where he felled a lot of trees. He was in the Royal Corps of Signals. His recollections of his time there, then a typed transcript of it. Another set of recollections (the first part) and a transcript of it.

A poem - amongst his effects passed to me by my step mum 'Thoughts of D Powry' - I think he must have joined up at roughly the same time about a child that he'd never seen, Elizabeth. He died in 1943.

His POW record compiled by the Thailand Burma Railway Centre. Four sets of sketches - when they were captured there was a lot of time spent with nothing to do, so anyone who had any knowledge was encouraged to talk about it and he became interested in architectural drawings and poetry. Before he went to war he worked in a hosiery factory, but when he came back he retrained as a teacher.

The Dream - a series of jottings. A document with 20 points on it - possibly another of his monologues. A photo of him and 3 of his friends in Malaya before they were captured. A kanju(?). Incoming mail from the UK - the first letter he received from Mum after he'd been captured, postmarked Hinckley dated 22/06/1942 (that was the first day they could send mail to the prisoners).

A list of all the documents that went to and from your father. A typed letter that Mum had sent - if the address was handwritten the Japanese couldn't decipher who they were for. A telegram when he arrived in Liverpool saying he would be back in Hinckley at 4.16.
A photograph of the POW camps along the River Kwai - red arrows indicate that was where Dad worked. He became ill with beri beri and dysentery and was sent to the POW hospital at Changki where he recovered. A waxed gaiter - that was used to wrap up all the letters and documents.
A photograph of Mother and a drawing - Dad took a photograph of him and Mum; Jeffery Gee was an artist and he drew a coloured sketch of the photograph.
Document given by Rod Beatty of Thailand Burma Railway Centre. Document - Father's Colonel, Swinton, talking about the conditions, the health of the men, where they went to and what happened to them. A photograph of a reservoir, which they built to avoid Bangkok being flooded.