Remembrance (From Croydon Guardian)

Remembrance

9:19am Wednesday 7th November 2007

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When this, and every other year’s, poppy wearing days are over and you take it off to bin it, spare a thought for the Forgotten Prisoners whose awful fate was to be captured by the Japanese during World War II.
Few of their kith and kin are still alive to remember them.
These many prisoners of war died horrific deaths, far from their homelands, and their actual fate in very many cases remains totally unknown to this day. There were no survivors at all from their POW camps or ships to return home and tell the story of their suffering and deaths.
Political considerations, at the end of the war, plus perhaps a wish to spare the feelings of their parents, wives, children and relatives led then, and still, maintains a silence concerning their cruel fate.
My uncle Bill, one may say luckily, died hopefully from disease and was buried in a marked grave at Sandakan in Borneo before the horrific death march on which, and at the end of, the last of about 800 British servicemen and around 1400 Australian servicemen were dead. Only, I think, six Australian servicemen survived to tell the broad outline story of their fellow prisoner's fate.
Nothing whatsoever is known of the fate of around 600 British Gunners who were transported to Ballale Island never to be seen or heard of ever again.
A ship, the Suez Maru, carrying 548 Allied POW's was torpedoed by an American submarine, which left the scene. The fate of these POW's was not known until 1949 when a Japanese Naval Lieutenant told what had happened. The 200 or 250 men who jumped from the sinking ship into the sea were all machine gunned to death by the crew of the Japanese escort vessel.
A book has just been published recording the behaviour of the Japanese Navy towards Allied sailors and seaman who they captured at sea. The book claims that 20,000 Allied Seaman suffered truly horrific deaths, at sea, following capture. Again it has taken years for even the barest information of the fate of all these men to become known.
A specific tribute to this forgotten body of men is long overdue, before the very few of us who can remember them pass on.
Please spare a thought for these men and the very high price that they paid to give us the freedom we have enjoyed as a result of their sacrifice. Only then bin your poppy.