As I was getting tired of constantly looking up the correct National Archives reference for POW Liberation Questionnaires, I've knocked up a little search engine to find the correct reference: http://arcre.com/questionnaires Just type in the POW's last name and choose if he was a prisoner of the Germans or Japanese and it will give you a brief list of where the questionnaire might be located in the National Archives. There's no guarantee there will be a questionnaire for a particular prisoner of war but this gives you the place where to look for one. And if you want me to copy one for you, click the "Order" button and fill in POW's name, rank and number. Lee
Well done Lee Took me an hour to find one on Mon & of course when i looked at the file at Kew on Wed, he had'nt made one. Just tried your search engine & bang the file ref in seconds. Best Rob
Thanks chaps, thought it would be useful! (Just did a little bug fix to correct a small error but should be working fine now).
Lee Nice work - As you're aware I've done a lot of work on the German reports in the past year or so. In doing so I've encountered a number of instances of misfiling so don't give up if the record is not where you expect to find it (in alphabetical order) - have a scan through as it seems that these files may have been taken apart and the pages not always reinserted in the correct order. Also, surprisingly, I have encountered a very small number of reports for people who were captured in Singapore/Far East John
John, what's really needed is for all of them to be individually indexed but that's a hell of job to complete. Something like 140,000 names isn't it? The Japanese POW index cards are even more out of alphabetical order. Sadly readers not marking the card's place properly is mainly the cause of that.
Lee I thought about that but just looking at all of the rerecords, extracting the ones I needed, took about a year. There is a gent who's going through the Japanese cards and copying them. He's a fascinating fellow to talk with as he was a POW of the Japanese as a young boy and can read what's written on them. He comes about once a month and photographs a batch of about 2000 which he then works on until his next visit John
Do the liberation questionnaires also contain details of how the POW was captured in the first place? I'm sure I read somewhere that after WW1 all liberated officer POWs had to account for their capture by the enemy, wondered if same happened after WW2? Regards Tom
Thank you, that’s interesting. I guess I’ll just have to take a look next time I’m at Kew and hope for the best. Regards Tom
I got a hit on 4197714 Hughes, H. 3976643 Hughes, W. both from Rennes POW Hospital both in the WO 344/154/1 reference. It says they are not digitized yet and it appears the reading room is still closed. Is there a way to get a copy? Also are Canadians list there too?
