WW2 Far East Prisoners of War - memories

[Carolyn]

Captive Memories "is home to Far East prisoner of war (widely known as FEPOW) research projects run by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medcine." The LSTM interviewed 62 FEPOWs and extracts of these interviews are made avaible on this site. My Great Uncle and Aunt were in Changi as civilians and one of my grandfather's cousins was a FEPOW and I found these snippets illuminating. They are only short extracts, but they cover various aspects of POW life. I thought others might find them interesting.

 

[Gillian]

Thank you very much, Carolyn. My cousin's husband, so not a blood relation at all, was taken prisoner in Singapore and was one of the prisoners on the Burma railway. He was lucky to survive the horrendous experience, particularly, from my point of view, as he was the person who first introduced me to family research. That was back in the 50s, long before I was the least bit interested in the subject. For some reason, he gave me three family trees on my maternal side, which he had researched over the years. I still don't know why he gave them to me, but luckily I kept them as they've since been invaluable. He died in Canberra in 1983 so, sadly, I haven't been able to ask him where he got all his information from. Sorry if that went a bit off topic. His grandson, by the way, is now a member of Lost Cousins.