Gerard Livesey 3529590 POW Thailand

Hi John,
I shall keep a look out for books. I do a lot of research but this is a first looking at a POW. However my uncle was in the navy during the war and in Hong King for the surrender and stayed for around 6 weeks I think, from there the ship was sent to Java to help with the Dutch evacuation. One family from the evacuation he befriended and remained in contact for many years and even visited them in Holland. They had been civilian pow for three years I think it was. We have photos of the family and their children on board the evacuation ship and numerous as they grew up. Its strange I always have known them as ‘ the dutch children’ I knew their names and roughly where they lived in Holland and tried for many years to make contact, then around four years ago I joined a couple of dutch facebook groups and managed to find them, we have corresponded since then.

I have to say I don’t do too bad research WWI and amassed quite a good set of info/documents etc etc and helped a lot of local people and friends discover their ancestors, its very rewarding. Todays research has taken me on the route of a local mining disaster, who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Thankyou once again to you all for the help and advice.

 

Sue

I'm pleased we were of help. Curiously enough, my late father was in the RNVR and went out to the Far East in late 1945, on board a Dutch destroyer. As for this thread, you will probably have come across a 1 Manchester survivor who has left tapes at IWM and wrote and published a book available in Kew library. The tapes are rather graphic in places. See attached copy and paste.

I hope you research more cheerful subjects from time to time !

Good Hunting

John

 

It’s hard to imagine conditions could be any worse than the POWs endured?