Talking today about how long it took to get back to "normal" after WW2, husband remembered a man in his street returning from being a POW in ?Japan. He thought it was the late 40s,early 50s, said the poor man looked terrible and could only do the minimum of work. We were wondering how long it was usually for POWs to be returned home. Maybe they were hospitalised first? Or perhaps some prisons weren't found until later? I've had a search on Google, didn't find anything, except that the Japanese didn't keep much in the way of records about their prisons, whereas the Germans were meticulous.
Hi TriciaF, Rangoon Jail was the first POW Camp to be liberated as the 14th Army swept the Japanese out of Burma. This was in early May 1945. I know that some of the luckier men from Rangoon were flown home from India and arrived in the UK in late August. The vast majority of the POW's at other camps all over SE Asia would have taken longer to liberate and process ready for repatriation. Most came home on ships, arriving from October onwards. Here is a link which mentions some of these repatriations: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/paddy-shennan-previews-very-special-3362230 As you can imagine it was very much down to the individuals capacity to re-intergrate, some did this fairly straightforwardly, others would be haunted by their experience for the rest of their lives. Many men suffered from the effects of their incarceration and the diseases they had developed whilst imprisoned for long periods after arriving home. Some took part in medical trials and assessments at places such as the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and it's sister hospital at Roehampton.
Thanks bamboo43. Perhaps husband was mistaken and this man returned sooner, though he didn't live in this town until?1950. In my family, the brother of an uncle by marriage, Adrian Hedley, was a survivor of the Burma railway. He didn't live long after returning home (Northumberland.)
Hi TriciaF, I'm sure there must have been men who took longer to come home, those in far flung corners of the then Japanese sphere of influence, or those too ill to travel immediately after liberation. Best wishes Steve
My father, an RAF clerk, was captured on Java in early '42 and liberated mid-1945 in Sumatra after being used as forced labour to build a railway. He suffered bouts of malaria-like symptoms into the 1960s and had a strong aversion to certain foods, rice especially, probably due to the repetitious rations POWs were given. As regards general health, I can recall that he was screened under some government scheme, maybe in the 1980s, to assess the long-term effects on POW of wartime illnesses and mistreatment. That may have been when FEPOW were actively pushing for compensation payments from Japan to former POWs, which I believe never happened, as the UK government had effectively signed away such payments in the 1950s. I don't have any info on my father's repatriation, other than his liberation questionnaire and a very poor photograph of a group of quite emaciated men sitting on an air strip somewhere with a C-47 in the background. I believe he was flown home at least most of the way. An incident he never mentioned to me and I only found out about a couple of years ago was that in '42 he was shipped from Durban to Java on the SS "City of Canterbury". Prior to sailing from Durban, there was a mutiny amongst some of the troops due to the alleged state of the ship and issues like lice-infestation. Eventually, after gunpoint threats and arrests, the ship sailed with my Dad on board but minus the mutineers, who were later transferred to India where they no doubt spent a better war than those who "did their duty" and stayed aboard. '610E
I heard that many men were sent the long way home via America to "fatten" them up because they were in such an emaciated condition. It was thought it would upset the general public in the UK to see their menfolk like this. On the point about how long it took to get back to normal, I would say never!! I personally knew one of my fathers friends who ended his latter years in a mental institution and without doubt there were many others with tormented minds who shared the same fate. I don't think there were many PTSD councilors back then. Lionboxer
Thanks to both - interesting stories but tragic. The prisoners must have suffered from many medical problems, without the poor diet. Skin diseases etc. And the mental affects, as you say, never get back to normal.
The vast majority of POWs from the Far East arrived back at either Liverpool or Southampton between October and mid December 1945. There was obviously others who had been hospitalised in New Zealand and Australia who arrived early 1946, for example the Hospital Ship Maunganui arrived at Southampton on Jan 6th 1946. There were many reasons why many were sent eastwards to San Francisco and Vancouver. The USA had spare shipping capacity. The Australians were almost "stranded" and put pressure on London to use British ships to get the Ozzys home. British ships were needed to get the Indian Army home. The American and Canadian Red Cross had winter wear clothing ready for POWs. The big Liners were still sailing full of USA and Canadians from Southampton westwards (from the Europe war), but were sailing back nearly empty. Therefore once the POWs were landed on the Americas west coast, and then entrained across the country, there was empty Liners waiting to take them on the final trip across the Atlantic. Mike
Commander Peter MacRitchie of HMCS Prince Robert meets with liberated Canadian prisoners of war at Shamshuipo Camp at Kowloon, Hong Kong, in September 1945. On Aug 31, the HMCS Prince Robert and the Empress of Australia entered the port of Kowloon. The crews were on the alert, for they had learned that the garrisons were completely in the dark about the Japanese capitulation. The men of the Prince Robert quickly liberated the 1 500 Canadian and Allied prisoners in Sham Shui Po Camp, which was abandoned by its guards. After a stop in Manila, the ship reached Esquimalt, Vancouver Island, BC, on Oct 20, 1945. The Canadian prisoners from Yokohama and Niigata, meanwhile, were repatriated by the American warship USS Wisconsin. On Sep 26 the HMS Glory assisted in the retaking of Hong Kong. The Glory was part of the Royal Navy’s 11th Aircraft Carrier Squadron of the British Pacific Fleet, Royal Navy. With some repatriated Canadians aboard, it then went to Australia; arriving at Esquimalt on Oct 27, 1945. There seems ot be a wide variation. Some Canadian POW's were back in Canada by August 1945 while others were only liberated in September. While many returned home it can be said that they were never truly liberated. So many died in 1945 and 1946, shortly after their return while most others had lifelong health and PTSD issues.
Not exactly repatriation-related, more to do with liberation, but posting to this thread yesterday set me thinking about a couple of rare POW anecdotes I can recall my father mentioning. Generally, he never spoke at any length about his time as a guest of the Japanese. Firstly, he was never a smoker until liberation, unusual in itself in the 40s. His explanation of how he took up the habit was that in the days after the Japanese surrender the camp he was in on Sumatra was visited by Lady Mountbatten, who was armed with a Dak full of cigarettes and supplies. Not wishing to appear rude, Dad helped himself and then spent 30+ years trying to break the habit. Secondly, not long before he died in 1994 I took him on a day trip to Duxford. On seeing the B-29 on display (at the time you could climb a small gantry and look through the nose into the bomb-aimers position) Dad said, "my favourite aircraft". I assumed, not unreasonably, he meant the fact that B-29s dropped the A-Bombs but I was wrong. He claimed that a few days after the surrender the camp was deserted by the Japanese and there were no food supplies of any kind. Out of the blue a flight of B-29s arrived and dropped food and other essentials. Great as it sounds, it nearly did for my Dad as he almost killed himself eating a can of "Klim" powdered milk and was spectacularly ill afterwards! I'd be interested to know if there is any more info on these or similar incidents. '610E
"The Grenadiers’ MacPherson recalled that at Oeyama the camp commandant told the PoWs “that the war was over and now we were all friends again. He then had a large pig delivered to the gate and let it go into the compound. I don’t think it had time to squeal before it was in the pot.” A few days later USAAF B17s dropped one hundred oil drums of food to the starving prisoners. “I ate 32 of those large Hershey bars,” MacPherson remembered, “and 11 large cans of peaches in two days! I just ate and threw up and ate and threw up.” Like many of the PoWs who suffered from beriberi, pellagra, “electric feet” and other diseases caused by vitamin deficiency, MacPherson had already begun to lose his eyesight." https://legionmagazine.com/en/2011/11/hong-kong-the-inside-story-of-canada-e2-80-99s-role-in-a-doomed-garrison/
