Why were Japanese POWs told not to talk about it?

I recently watched BBC’s Antiques Roadshow VJ Day Special, in fact my son and I were in it.
One of the things that struck me was that several people stated that their father or relation, were told not to talk about their experiences under Japanese imprisonment.
My father, who was a Changi prisoner, didn’t talk about it, but I assumed that was because he just didn’t want to recall the memories. But now I hear on AR, that it was an instruction.
Which begs two questions. Who gave that edict, the army or the government? Was it official and enforced? Did people have to sign something?
And secondly why? What was the purpose of hushing everything up? Something to do with the Geneva Convention?
Talking about events today is considered a way of releasing any psychological issues that may be present. The therapy first came to prominence in the 1950s in the States, through work being carried out with USA veterans.

 

Do you know if this was an army or government missive?

 

Hello John278.

Not the official side. The unofficial side. The soldier's side.

You might like to have a look at the two recent posts here:

80 years on.

And here:

80 years on.

Always remember, never forget,

Jim.

 

And John278,

What was going on in Parliament at the time (scroll down the page that opens up from the link for the 14 items that came in for the date parameters I selected):

https://hansard.parliament.uk/searc.../01/1945 00:00:00&endDate=12/31/1945 00:00:00

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

This one bugs me a bit. I can only read it as sensible advice to blokes who'd obviously gone through a lot. The words do not say 'never speak about it', simply 'don't be thoughtless and spread lurid stories about blokes who might not get home for a while or ever, especially to the press'. FEPOWs did not come back in one nice, tidy lump. The recovery of personnel alive and dead - to say nothing of trying to account for the missing - was a process that took time, sometimes in still-hostile areas like the Dutch East Indies. If blokes were told never to talk, then it's down to the tellers' lack of comprehension.
I'd also suggest that 'I was told not to talk about it' became a convenient get-out for some FEPOWs when asked about their experiences.
There's also a bit of a legal angle that if you are going to be trying Japanese war criminals, maybe you don't want them getting off on the technicality that all the evidence looks a bit too similar.
This instruction fitting in somewhere between liberation/recovery and debrief does not mean that they weren't told to never talk about it at a later stage but I've not seen anyone offer that as an alternative.
The obvious counter to the 'conspiracy' is the quantity of memoirs that were published and the films that were released. Did the government or Army ever try to stop or censor those?
I've always assumed it to have been an [Indian] Army initiative as they're clearly still considered 'in'.

 

"E" Group or Force 136 handled interviews in Singapore and handed out these certificates.

U.S. Forces also interviewed former POWs in Singapore.

Liberation Questionnaires and Atrocity Forms could be handed to returning former POWs anywhere en route.

A.G.3(V/W) : Adjutant-General 3 ( Violations of the Uses and Customs of War ), or the Army's Director of Personnel ( there was such a person in 1945 ) liaised with Judge Advocate General in analysing "Q" Forms or Atrocity Forms.

See file series WO 356 at TNA or Kew for the cards ( downloadable, free ) for names of suspects, witnesses, places in the Far East. About 13,000 names of persons who completed atrocity forms.

File Series WO 311 at Kew should have the files created by JAG in London, but only about 5% are there - there are about 50% of the war crimes files opened for European cases - ( the cards are in WO 353 - not online ). See also WO 309, WO 310 and many FO files.

Deputy Judge Advocate General in Singapore and elsewhere set up investigating teams abroad at the end of December 1945.

 

There's also the "allies soon to become enemies" thing and the looming spectre of the then soviet union.

"Don't give 'em anything that might be to their use. They might turn it against us".

It is complicated, definitely. One of those can't do right for doing wrong things.

Protective or fettering? Done with good intent or malice aforethought?

Looking at it with modern mores should not be a thing with this. Mindset and government of the day need to be got inside of methinks for any hope of getting close to what was going on, what was behind that leaflet, as Adam and Idler and Papiermache have so eloquently said.

Walk a mile in their shoes. In their bare feet.

All I can be certain of is that the resentment was very real, even from men of the cloth.

Always remember, never forget,

Jim.

 

H.M.H.S. Somersetshire's return home, Liverpool, V J Day 1945

 

Burma Campaign: Pictures of all war graves now available.

Stuff for the reading of. It is well worth it for the immediate post-war picture at the sharp end.

Always remember, never forget,

Jim.

 

Something almost identical came from ALFSEA at the end of the war:

 

Was just about to post this - you've beaten me again. However the copy I have is headed 'This is a personal message from' - hardly an order, though many have interpreted it as such. I think some confusion arose from the phrase 'now you know the reason for this order...' An order in the military is not necessarily a command but this is how it has been mistakenly interpreted by those not au fait with military terminology. #7 explains it well.

Much was already known about the Japanese treatment of FEPOWs well before they returned. A statement was made in Parliament at the end of January 1944 and was widely reported in the national newspapers, which undoubtedly caused alarm to FEPOW relatives.
Japanese Treatment (Hansard, 28 January 1944).

Tim

 

Near the end of the Hansard excerpt is:

 

The political situation may have militated the hush order. We would need Japan to stage up for a war on the Korean Peninsula. (Very broad strokes here, sorry.)

 

As per Papiermache's post, Liberated POW Questionnaires (WO 344) - this is from the version used for European theatres. Sorry I couldn't find FE example straight away. n.b. Not every POW completed/signed a form.
Ancestry - liberation questionnaires
(Liberated POW forms were part of an intelligence gathering exercise and relevant information was passed on to different departments - Intelligence, Cas. Branch & JAG, so they weren't a simple clerical rite of passage for PsOW. As such it's not unexpected that this declaration would be placed right above the space for a signature.)


Part II refers to questions regarding

• Lectures about Capture & E&E
• Interrogation
• Escapes
• Sabotage
• Collaboration
• War Crimes - Forms Q, which, if completed, were not filed with Lib Reports
• Other Matters to bring to notice

As more information came in, eg 2719823 Guardsman Douglas BURNELL, 2 Irish Guards: PoW, some later Questionnaires also included this typed addition, referring specifically to Long Marches




War Office Casualty Branch documentation records problems resulting from relatives receiving information via unofficial / informal sources, including propaganda broadcasts, returning personnel, and even well-meaning charitable bodies (not Red Cross), etc. The stress caused to families when Cas. Br. was unable to immediately confirm/reject such information was a real issue and staff had to be diverted to deal with resulting spikes in correspondence. IIRC, similar experiences during WW1 were also referenced. Given the timings between liberation of PsOW in Europe and in Far East, I imagine that the War Office might have also learned from some experiences when dealing with the former and applied it to the latter as well.

• General procedure for dealing with Casualties in War, 1939
• History of Prisoner of War Casualty Branch
• WW2. Remarkable Statistics.

[As a personal aside: my father told me grim stories of what happened to his fallen comrades. He specifically requested that I never pass on circumstances to relatives or name some of those individuals publicly, these being particularly distressing circumstances.]

 

Far east version Java PoW (RAF)






Kyle

 

Thank you, it’s fascinating and heart rendering all together.