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I am trying to piece together my fathers journey from leaving the UK to being captured in Java , spending 4 years in the care of the Japanese until his release and returning to the Uk.
His name and service number is Desmond B Hayes
, 612572

Hello I am looking for info on my uncle Robert Irving. He was in 6 RA HAA and we have tracked him from Java to Singapore to Manila to Takao on June 18, 1944. He has been listed as missing at sea on the Tamahoko Maru on June 24, 1944, but on the national archive official death certificates, he was changed to presumed KIA on June 20. Why would they have changed it and did he die in Takao instead before the boat left? The timeline doesn"t make sense..

Hi, I am trying to find information on my Grandad Robert Hall, Date of Birth 13 September 1914. Lived at 86 Bell Street, Beswick Bradford(Ardwick) Mother Ellen, Father Edward, partner Mary McGahan(married 1946. He was a Railway porter(drove a van). My Nana said he was a Japanese POW, but that is all I know as he died when my mum was very young so she doesnt know much else. I am currently scrolling through Manchester Evening News papers from back then to try and find him. I have found another man who lived on the same street as my Grandad who was in the Manchester Regiment and went missing in Malaya and was a Japanese POW. Any help would be amazing!

Hi there my mother’s grandmas (Nancy macnab )was a nurse in ww2 and was captured during ww2
In Singapore She was placed in Changi  prison by the Japanese and she was referenced in the book priest in prison 
Our family believed  she was military intelligence 5  but we have no proof we have no details about her except from which camp 
As she never spoke about it and when asked she shut it down if any one has any information please contact me by email 
Show email address
Thanks 

Kate Polybank Horace Brown was buried at Takanun camp in Thailand. The Gr. No on the CWGC site stands for grave number. He died of cholera and was cremated. As you can see from CWGC his ashes were put in communal grave number 31 with several other men who died at the same time during a cholera epidemic. The various spellings of the site of the camp can hinder research but a good place to contact would be the Thai Burma Railway Centre. They may be able to give you help with the exact positioning of the cemetery

Kate, Takernoon is also referred to as Tha Khanum or Takanum, and is known as the 220 Km mark from Non Pladuk.

I am trying to trace the location of Takanoon or Takaneen Gr.Ne. 
My great uncle Horace Brown died 1.6.1943 was buried here before
being transferred from this "open " site to Kanchanaburi Military cemetery 
on the 8.2.1946. 
We have located his grave in Kanchanaburi but can find no location for Takanoon.
Any help locating this original burial site would be greatly received. 

Thank you so much for the information on private Cecil brown, service number 2878395 with the Gordon Highlanders. 
You mention his liberation questionnaire, is this information anywhere for us to see? Would love know more. 
We also have found out that his brother Richard Brown with the Gordon Highlanders, service number 2876171 was captured around about the same time. 
Would you have any information on him? It looks like he was held longer than Cecil. 

Thank you so much for the info. I will be sending off for his Military Record in the very near future and maybe it may have info as to how he returned from Thailand, if that is the case i will update you on this site. In the meantime i will be adding this info to familysearch so that anyone Related to my family will be able to see all the info about him that you have provided me with. He died 7/9/1957 of Tuberculosis when my Father had only just turned 9. My Father also named Alexander knew very little about his Father As his Mother didn"t want to talk about his time during the war or didn"t know and my Father Died 7/9/2017 which is when i started Family research and in all that time i could not find the info that you have given me on here so once again thank you ever so much for the info that you have provided me wih.

Thank you so much for the info. I will be sending off for his Military Record in the very near future and maybe it may have info as to how he returned from Thailand, if that is the case i will update you on this site. In the meantime i will be adding this info to familysearch so that anyone Related to my family will be able to see all the info about him that you have provided me with. He died 7/9/1957 of Tuberculosis when my Father had only just turned 9. My Father also named Alexander knew very little about his Father As his Mother didn"t want to talk about his time during the war or didn"t know and my Father Died 7/9/2017 which is when i started Family research and in all that time i could not find the info that you have given me on here so once again thank you ever so much for the info that you have provided me wih.

Hi Val. ref: Douglas Haigh Walker. In the main POW listing there is just one Douglas Walker, and he was born in 1916. However it shows his home and wartime address as Glasgow. A middle name of Haigh is not shown anywhere. There is a possibility he fought in the Burma Campaign later in the war, in which case he may not be listed amongst the main group of POWs taken prisoner in 1941/1942.

Hi Tony. ref: your grandfather, Gunner Alex Whyte, 991817, 148th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery. Thanks to his Liberation Questionnaire, we can see his camps were Changi: Feb-Apr 42, Havelock Rd. Singapore : Apr-Oct 42, (Entrained to Siam 30/10/42), Tarsoa : 10/11/42-15/11/42, Tonchan: 15/11/42-02/6/43, Chungkai: 2/6/43- 20/5/44, Nakon Paton: 20/5/44-7/1/45, Tamuang:7/1/45-10/6/45, Takori: 10/6/45- Liberation. He was with Group 4 men whilst on the railroad, and I believe he would have been involved in railway maintenance whilst at Tamuang. His prisoner card states his liberation as "August 30th 1945, Bangkok, United Nations 2nd extradition". His liberation route would almost certainly (but no proof) have been taken to Rangoon, and then shipped home via Suez. It is most unlikely he came home via USA or Canada as this route was only for the POWs from Japan, Taiwan and Philippines, who came home via Manila. Like many other family stories, it seems his homeward story may have become elaborated. It would be good to be proven wrong though if you ever find proof. Unfortunately his ship from Rangoon will probably never be known as all paperwork was destroyed in the 1950"s by the War Transportation Dept.

I am trying to find any information I can about a Great Uncle of mine called Douglas Haigh Walker. I know nothing about him apart from he was born in Pontefract on the 29th December 1916 and was a Japanese prisoner of War. He returned home to Pontefract where he lived for the rest of his life

Sorry i made a mistake, he was Liberated 2/9/1945

Hi Mike
I"m Hoping you can help me fill in the blank"s in my knowledge concerning my Grandfather.
Alexander Whyte service number 991817 Gunner 148th Field Regiment Royal Artillery
who was captured by the Japanese in Singapore on the 15/2/1942
and was Liberated on the 15/2/1945 from Thailand.
I have no knowledge of what camps he was in or what he done during his captivity,
likewise i have no knowledge of his journey home to the UK.
I was told that he was on a round the world cruise to faten him up a bit so that it
wasn"t such a shock to Family, Friends and Loved ones when he returned but that may of
been him returning home on the Queen Mary ?
Any help would be gratefully Appreciated

I recently came across your video interview with my step grandfather, Gordon Newton.  I remember interviewing him about his time as a POW for a school project around 1987.  His story then and again today breaks my heart.  It is beyond belief that anyone could treat another human being this way.  He was an incredibly kind man that loved the simple things in life.  Jumping on the trampoline, raising chickens, a game of bowls, playing a tune on the pianola and a Sunday roast.   Thank you for capturing his and others stories of a tragic period in history.

POW historians: I would like to invite your attention to this volume of my father’s World War II memoir which I self-published in 2018 and edited in 2020. Col. Nicoll F Galbraith, GSC, US Army was General Jonathan M. Wainwright’s G-4, Logistics, staff officer, who survived the capture of Corregidor with Wainwright and other senior Allied officers and three and a half years as a Japanese POW. It is a valuable addition to the POW story that modern readers would gain much from. My father was in the same POW camps as Generals Wainwright and Percival which might appeal to British readers. Respectfully submitted. Whitney Galbraith, LCDR, US Naval Reserve, 1959-1964.

https://www.valleyoftheshadowpow.com
---------------------------------

The Flags of My Father
It can often take a long time, often too long, for a son to recognize the value of his father, in his own life and that of the society he defended. The experience of my father, Col Nicoll F. “Nick” Galbraith, GSC, US Army, has come to me in magnificent proportion with my self-publication of Valley of the Shadow: An Account of American POWs of the Japanese, published by XLibris in June, 2018, revised May, 2020.
This experience was triggered, now seemingly long ago, by the ambitious year-long exposition of our Pioneers Museum in Colorado Springs in 2010, titled So Far From Home: the American POW Experience in World War II, the entire Japanese half of which was my father’s wartime archive, from the surrender of Corregidor in May of 1942 and continuing through the three-and- a-half years of infliction as a “guest of the emperor.”
As our Galbraith family amalgamated our father’s extensive POW archive, including Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright’s original Corregidor surrender order, that aged, dusty box containing over 1,000 handwritten flimsies was dragged out from a deep family shelf and I began to understand, page by page, what we had.
The two flags played an integral part in the Corregidor surrender process and an emotional one in August 1945, when the POWs were rescued/released by a six man OSS team and the Russian Red Army, both events being very close calls.
Col. Galbraith treats these experiences thematically, in third-person narrative format, enabling him to offer a psychological, emotional and moral matrix to help the reader interpret the challenges and personal behaviors of incarcerated American prisoners who suddenly had been deprived of their normal social and physical lives as officers, colleagues, husbands and fathers. Galbraith describes his own and his prison mates’ struggle to maintain their personal dignity and relationships.
Whitney H. Galbraith Colorado Springs, CO 719-633-2740 https://www.valleyoftheshadowpow.com

-------------

80 years after Bataan, history has personal resonance in Colorado Springs for hero"s son

• By STEPHANIE EARLS Show email address April 13, 2022

Colorado Springs resident Whitney Galbraith is the son of U.S. Army Col. Nicoll F. Galbraith, who was responsible for the evacuation of Manila in 1942. Whitney discovered more than 1,000 pages of his father"s writings, documenting his experiences in the war and as a POW of the Japanese.
Even after he retired from the Army to spend many long, good years reading books, playing bridge and leading a quiet life with his family in Colorado Springs, Col. Nicoll "Nick" Galbraith maintained the dignified demeanor of an officer. He wore a coat and tie every day and was a man of few spoken words - unless you knew the right questions to ask.
Whitney Galbraith now knows what those questions would be. But it"s too late; his father died in 1986, at age 89.
Luckily, the Army officer who played a key role, 80 years ago this week, in the evacuation of Manila prior to the Fall of the Philippines during World War II, including the safe evacuation of nurses, the Angels of Bataan, to Corregidor - was a prolific writer.
He left behind his words, for history and his children, to discover.
"So much of what I knew about my father, when he was alive, was through osmosis," said Whitney Galbraith, who is 83. "I knew the rough outline of his experience, but I was a young child during World War II and was only aware of the surface" that he was gone, that he spent the war in prison camps, and that we got him back in 1945."
Whitney Galbraith knew his father had been a rigorous recorder and keeper of diaries, documents and artifacts during his time in the Philippines and throughout the 3 1⁄2 years he"d spent as a prisoner of war, in Luzon and camps in Taiwan and China, where he was when Japanese forces surrendered in 1945.
He didn"t realize just how comprehensive the collection was until he and his older brother, Nicoll Jr., set about selecting items for a 2010 Pioneers Museum exhibit about American POWs during World War II.
"That"s when I just stumbled on this, on a dark, dusty shelf," said Whitney, sitting at his kitchen table next to a box filled with reams of sepia-toned pages stored in plastic.
More than 1,000 "flimsies," some typed, many handwritten in loose lines of slanted script. A memoir, in third person.
"His cursive tells me that it"s rapid forethought, that he"d had this whole thing in mind all the while during his POW years,"Whitney said. "He knew exactly what he wanted to write. Just stacks of it. Just amazing."
And so he started reading.
Col. Nick Galbraith was a slender man in his early 40s, maybe 5 foot, 9 inches tall, with a wisp of a mustache and Clark Gable good looks.
Born in Williamsport, Pa., in 1896, he began his professional military career at age 20, expecting to be sent overseas to serve in what would come to be known as World War I. To his disappointment, he was ordered to the U.S.-Mexican border, to serve as a horse cavalry soldier.
He hadn"t seen his last wartime service, though. Not by a long shot.
Twenty-three years later, the world was again on the brink of war. Duty called the commissioned Army officer and married father of three to Fort Stotsenburg, now Clark Air Base, on Luzon Island in the Philippines, the stronghold of Allied operations in the South Pacific. The Army sent his wife and three young children along, too, only to evacuate them back to the States in the summer of 1941.
Leila Galbraith was "an Army wife and had no idea where to go, "but she had an aunt who lived in Colorado Springs, and an open invitation, Whitney Galbraith said.
The family settled temporarily to wait out the war with Leila Galbraith"s aunt, Sally Whitney Robinson, and her husband, the well-known artist and illustrator Boardman Robinson.

Meantime, half a world away, Col. Nick Galbraith"s saga was just beginning.
The island nation where he and thousands of American and Filipino troops and support staff were stationed had been a U.S. territory since 1898. Operations in the Southwest Pacific, under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, were headquartered there until defeat by the Imperial Japanese Army became imminent. The general and his family were evacuated by submarine to Australia in March 1942.
On April 9, after months of intense fighting, bombing and bloodshed, the Bataan Peninsula fell to the Japanese. The infamous "Bataan Death March," the forced transfer of as many as 80,000 U.S. and Filipino troops more than 60 miles to a prison camp in the north, began. Thousands wouldn"t survive the journey, and the episode would lead to international charges against Japanese commander Lt. Gen. Masaharu Homma and two of his officers, for allowing their men to commit war crimes.
The day before, on the afternoon of April 8, 1942, Logistics Officer Galbraith had been ordered to leave Bataan for Corregidor by Gen. Johnathan Wainwright, who was in command of Philippine forces after MacArthur"s departure to Australia. The tiny island off the southern coast of Bataan was the last bastion of Allied operations in the South Pacific, and Galbraith was to report the "impending collapse" to the command there.
He took a number of staff officers, and the Angels of Bataan, with him, to sit out another month of siege. As a result, no nurses were captured on Bataan.
"That"s one of my dad"s proudest moments, was his ability to do that," Whitney Galbraith said.
What remained of the Battling Bastards of Bataan would continue their doomed campaign for another month on Corregidor, as Japanese forces closed in and aimed flame-throwing tanks at the entrance to the Allies" ad hoc base in the Malinta Tunnel. Gen. Wainwright"s men were trapped and being massacred.
Surrendering would turn out to be a battle all its own. In an attempt to stop the carnage, Wainwright sent an officer out with a white flag. The Japanese officer he met wasn"t authorized to accept a surrender. After several more days trying and failing to broker a surrender, Wainwright ended up in Manila, at a meeting he hoped would bring an end to fighting.
"There"s a photo of my dad sitting with Wainwright preparing the surrender speech, which I"m sure was an interesting, and difficult, moment for my dad,"Whitney Galbraith said.

Homma was afraid of a potential guerrilla war, and steadfastly refused to accept surrender until every American in the field surrendered, too.
"He wanted more than Corregidor. He wanted the entire Philippine Islands cleaned of American forces," Whitney Galbraith said.
Wainwright tried to find a way forward: If somehow he was able to round up the remaining forces in the field, then could a formal surrender happen? With a formal surrender, the American captives in the Philippines would become prisoners of war, protected by international conventions and laws. Lives would be saved. Wainwright"s Hail Mary worked. The Japanese allowed him to send emissaries to different parts of the archipelago where it was thought Allied field commanders were still operating.
Col. Nick Galbraith was one of those emissaries.
Galbraith set out for the "boondocks" of Northern Luzon, on a "Heart of Darkness" style quest over mountains and through jungles to find a U.S. commander thought to be in charge of units there. He was accompanied on the trek by a Japanese escort, and he carried three dime-store flags given to him by the Imperial Japanese Army.
One was an American flag. One was Japanese. And one was the white flag of surrender.
"So depending on what line he thought he might be crossing, he"d wave the right flag. I don"t know how often he had to use them, and somehow it worked," Whitney Galbraith said. After six weeks, the Japanese finally said, OK, you"ve tried enough."
Formal surrender of the Philippines to the Japanese occurred on May 6, 1942. Col. Galbraith rejoined his men at a prison camp in Central Luzon.
From there, Galbraith and the other men were moved around the island and then packed onto various vessels, Japanese Hell Ships, including the Oryoku Maru”bound for prison camps, first in Taiwan and then China. As the Allies gained ground and the perimeter of the war continued to move west, Col. Galbraith found himself and other officers at a prison camp in Mukden, Manchuria, in August 1945.
That"s where he was when the war ended, at least for those in the field who had access to a radio.

A six-man rescue/release team from the Office of Strategic Services was dispatched to the Hoten Camp, to secure the safe release of prisoners.
Sgt. Hal Leith, of Golden, was one of those OSS officers. In his diary, Leith wrote about parachuting from a B-24 and landing near an American POW camp run by a Japanese commander who was unaware of the surrender.
Col. Nick Galbraith"s diary entry for that day records what he saw on the ground. Six Americans floating to the earth, to save them.
"And all these years later, Hal Leith is in Golden and Dad"s in Colorado Springs. I would have loved to get those two together, but it wasn"t possible," said Whitney Galbraith. ""We lost dad in 1986, and I only learned about a dozen years ago that Hal Leith was so close. I wish I would have known earlier."
But along with regrets and missed moments is gratefulness for what he does know now, and for a memoir that answers so many questions he didn"t get to ask about his father and the lesser-known, but just as dramatic, chapter of World War II in which he played such a critical role.
Whitney Galbraith turned those pages his father furiously churned out, then stashed away in the years after his service overseas, into a book "Valley of the Shadow: An Account of the American POWs of the Japanese." He self-published the almost 500-page account, including photos and archival documents from Galbraith"s collection, in 2018.
He hopes that sharing his father"s words, and the 80th anniversary of the Fall of the Philippines, will help bring attention to an important story that"s far more than a personal journey.
"Getting to know your father that you didn"t know in earlier times is, for anybody, thrilling," he said.
Getting to know a father who was a war hero, and being able to share his story with the world? Thrilling doesn"t even come close.

Hi Naomi, re William Henry Othick. I had difficulty tracking much information on him but hopefully these few facts might help to investigate further. His service number is 7637629 and he was a private in the R.A.O.C. , Royal Army Ordnance Corps. His service number belongs to the RAOC so he must have enlisted with them and you then take your number with you wherever you go, so I cannot see any connection to the Yorkshire Regiment. There may be a possibility he was RAOC attached to Yorkshire Rgt. at one time. However, at the time of being captured on 19.02.1942 he was RAOC attached to the 137th Field Regiment. He appears in records as belonging to 137LAD, which is 137 Field Regiment Light Aid Detachment. He was captured at Banka Island, South Sumatra, and although I have no documented proof, this suggests he was probably on an escape ship from Singapore as the 137th never were in action in Sumatra. William was held at four camps , Mulo School, Chunghwa School Sungei Ron and No.2 camp Palembang. There are documents to show him at camps, and eventually liberated from Sumatra. It is clear he was never in Japan but certainly a prisoner of Japan. Singapore and Sumatra were known as Malaya during the war. I can email a few wartime documents showing his name if required.

I have been researching my Grandfather in law’s history as a FEPOW. His name was William Percival Bridge, ‘Taffy’. 1427185 Gnr. 11th Bty. 3rd HAA Regt.
The following is what I have managed to uncover, but I would be extremely grateful if anyone has anything else to add. Either about him specifically, or about his movements within what has been documented about his group party, etc.
Captured 15th February 1942 in Singapore. He left Singapore for Thailand on 28th October 1942 as part of U Party under the command of Lt. Col. J.O. Mackellar, FMSVR (who died of cancer March 1945).
Sent to work on the railway (Work Group 4), presumed to work at or around Thailand Camp 4 (is this the same as Moji POW Camp #4?).
Survivor of the hell ship Kachidoki Maru as part of Japan Party 3 and sent to Fukuoka #25-B, Omuta Electro Chemical Branch Camp as POW #14093, working as a slave labourer at the carbide manufacturing plant. He was mentioned in Captain Wilkie’s War Diary as being gaoled for having a fight with a Japanese sailor.
Liberated 16th September 1945. Evacuated from Nagasaki Harbour.
I do not know his movements after this at all. Nor do I have a copy of his liberation questionnaire. But I do know that he returned home to Pontypridd on 21st October 1946, to the delight of his family. I remember him saying that he weighed less than 6 stone.

I"m struggling to put together my grandads story. Pow in Japan. Yorkshire regiment. William Henry Othick. I found a "pow camp card" possible that he was kept in Malaya. His daughter says he arrived home to Yorkshire in an ambulance

Hello Mike,




Thank you for your reply with regards to Private John Edward Parkins 4977431. 
I have read accounts of  Heito and Kinkaseki Copper Mine, some of which are accounts by former POWS there. I don’t know how anyone survived the experience but somehow they did. As for Hellships, I had picked up that he was taken on the Taiko Maru to Japan and now you have clarified that he reached Taiwan on the Dainichi Maru (another gap filled in).
Fukuoka 24B, I know was a coal mine, he was a miner before joining up and returned to it after coming home.
As I mentioned I have found records with John being in Nagasaki on the 14th to 16th September 1945, before sailing on the Implacable to Canada. As for how he travelled home I guess I will never know, but think I would go with the Ile de France to  complete his journey home.
Thank you for your help, and it is thanks to you and all the others who are making sure that these people are never forgotten and the experiences they went through. I can only say that I am extremely proud of John and like others showed great strength of character to survive. 
Having done this research I think he and his father did talk, but not of their different  experiences (his father served in the First World War).  This is a forgotten part of our history,and needs to be talked about. As for the years after who knows what memories he carried with him. He will never be forgotten and will make sure my own family remember him in the years to come.
Thank you for your help 
Best wishes
Colleen

Hi Colleen. re Private John Parkins. The two Taiwan camps you mentioned are spelt as Heito which is in the hot south of the island and nowadays named Pingtung, the second camp was the cruel Kinkaseki Copper Mine near Keelung in the north. John arrived at the southern port of Takao on 14/11/1942. He had sailed from Singapore on 28/10/1942 and had been locked down in the holds of the hellship Dainichi Maru for over two weeks. At Heito they were enslaved into removing boulders from a dried up river bed to plant sugar cane. Kinkaseki was the notoriously vicious copper mine where they were treated so badly that replacement men were continuously required. When the copper mine closed down, John was shipped to Japan on 27/02/1945 in the Taiko Maru, and ended up in Fukuoka 24B, Senryu Emukae. His liberation was on 14/09/1945 when in the safe hands of Colonel Griffin at Nagasaki Port. I lose his paperwork trail thereafter, but most were taken to Okinawa, and then onward to Manila.. As you know he then boarded HMS Implacable for Vancouver on 25/09/1945 and arrived 11/10/1945. No paperwork exists for the next part of the journey, but most diaries state they took a five day train journey across Canada. Most from Implacable caught the Ile de France from Halifax to Southampton although some got delayed and ended up on the Queen Mary from New York.

Re the above I’m sure my father went to Thailand

I am trying to find information about my father 
James Albert Miller who was an acting sergeant
In 1942 on the casualty list in Malaya.regt.
Royal Artillery service no. 889927 and a P.O.W
He had a bayonet wound down his chest and stomach.
1944 when released he joined the RAOC in 1945.
His childhood was spent in India. I have waited almost a year for his records  
from the war office and still nothing. I would be so grateful for any information
Lin Barber