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WWII Civilian Internees of the Japanese in Singapore:
My Mother asked me to submit on her behalf the following for inclusion in your Web Page. "My late Husband Frederick Henry Blunsdon was a Civilian Internee in Changi and Sime Road Camps in Singapore. Prior to the Japanese occupation he was a Prison Officer at Changi Goal in late 1941. In 1946 he was stationed at Taiping Prison, Perak, later at Outram Road Prison, Singapore. I would like to hear from anyone who knew my late husband while he was in the camps, his number whilst there was 185." Joyce Blunsdon of Perth, Australia. Please contact Joyce via Gordon's e-mail address.
December 23rd 1999 from Nadia Wright
I am writing a history of the Armenians in Singapore and Malaysia, some of whom were interned. I am wondering if you have come across the name Joaquim or Gordon Van Hien. Apparently Gordon was awarded an MBE for his role in maintaining morale in camp through establishing a choir. But I need to verify this. Can you please help at all?
My reply (because I knew the answer for once!): The following are diary references from T.P.M. Lewis' Changi:The Lost Years Pub. 1984 by the Malaysian Historical Society (no ISBN).
June 23rd 1942: "I attended a Promenade Concert in which Van Hein, a Singapore accountant, played a major part as conductor. Van Hein deserves great credit for his hard work in keeping up our morale".
August 6th 1942: "Van Hein gave us a second promenade concert with excellent piano recitals by Edyvean and Soul".
February 23rd 1943: "Van Hein conducted a concert given in the Laundry where Waddle played Beethoven and Hay Shubert. Coney (Customs) sang".
In the notes on people he met at the end of the book Lewis writes: "A special word of praise is due to those who provided entertainment for us in such discouraging times, in particular Mr Van Hein, a Singapore accountant, who trained and conducted the camp choir and organised many concerts which greatly boosted our morale."
Your man is also mentioned in John Hayter's Priest in Prison Pub. 1991 Tynron Press ISBN 1 85646 051 7: "The Camp Choir under Gordon Van Hein and Denis Soul and John Wood's Glee Singers were also very popular, not only to the singers, (of course we liked the sound of our own voices!) but also to large appreciative audiences".
Christmas 1944 - the first combined carol service in the Orchard for the men and women's camps was conducted by Van Hein. He had 50 singers in the Camp Choir for the service and sang himself. Denis Soul was also a composer and they worked together on several choral pieces. On Christmas Day 1944 Van Hein and John Hayter hatched a surprise for Soul by learning one of his songs and serenading him with it when he turned up for rehersal.
With regards to his MBE - the award should have been announced in the London Gazette. Both the Guildhall Library and British Library have full sets.
The internees themselves kept a register of all those in Changi Gaol up to 1942. In alphabetical order, it records each individual's name, age, marital status, occupation, the addresses of spouses and next of kin, date of arrival and, in the remarks column where relevant, cause and date of death. The original is now in the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ.
November 14th 1999 from Penelope Jackson
I am just beginning an M.Phil thesis on POW literature written by and about women interned in Asia during WW2. I've just been reading your site with interest. I just wondered if you had come across a very good text called 'British Civilians and the Japanese War in Malaya and Singapore' (1987) by Joseph Kennedy. If you haven't then I recommend it - full of good information and photos, etc. My particular interest is looking at the books/diaries that were published just after the war and those that have come to the surface in the last decade (and there are quite a few). Please contact me if you can help.
October 21st 1999 from Anton Rippon
My relation FRANK DENSHAM was employed in the rubber industry in Malaya before World War Two. In World War One he served in the 5th Royal Irish Lancers and was a talented artist who spent some of his home leave painting in the small garden shed at my grandmother's home in Derby. When the war ended he eventually ended up in Malaya and I have a photograph of him there. Alas, after the Japanese invasion he was never heard of again. Could anyone suggest where I might look? As an ex-soldier he may have joined a civilian militia upon the invasion and been killed. Or he may have been interned and died there. This is a family mystery that has endured for almost 60 years and if anyone has any idea as to what sources I might search please e-mail me.
August 7th 1999 from Nigel Brown
Thank you very much for your web page on civilian internees, which is very interesting, and done well. My father was in the RAF, captured in Java, taken back to Japan via Singapore and Saigon. He had a short stay in Changi. The year before last I visited the town and location of the camp in Japan (Hakodate on Hokkaido island) where he spent his time.
I wonder if you might be able to help me? I know it is off topic as far as your specific web site is concerned, but you might just know the answer. I have my father's POW diaries, or rather, the first and last volumes, including illustrations, etc. He wrote them up from scraps of paper in August 1945 whilst waiting to come home. One or more middle volumes were handed to the US occupation force for the War Crimes Tribunal, and not returned - by then my father was back in England. Have you any idea how I might go about trying to retrieve it or them? I know this is a crazy longshot, but I would follow up any possible lead. I don't know the answer to this, does anyone else?
August 6th 1999 from Susan Barbara Trench:
In 1942 my father,Lewis Frank Day, who was a surgeon working for the Colonial Service, was captured by the Japanese and imprisoned in Changi for three and a half years. I have been searching and searching the internet for any information on the subject and last night I came across your web site. There is not a person in the world who should have had to suffer the atrocities, both mental and physical, and it amazes me that some people managed to have some sort of life after and, in fact, be quite successful. If you could choose the most unsuitable sensitive man it would be him. That may sound biased but I can assure you it is not.
My parents lived in Singapore for thirteen years before the invasion and I was born in Johore Bahru on 10th January, l942 with the bombs falling all around. My father drove my mother and I in an ambulance (she had had a caesarean operation ten days before) to the docks and we were very lucky to get on to the last boat that left Singapore Harbour. He felt very strongly that his patients needed him and that he could not abandon them and so he stayed behind. This must have been agony for him as three boats left the harbour and two were torpedoed and he could not tell watching from the docks if we had got through or not.It was nine months before he found out that we were alive. We were "put ashore" in South Africa because my mother's caesarean had gone septic (I don't think lying in the hold of a troop ship helped) and the captain told my mother that neither of us would survive if we continued the voyage to England.
My father was a deeply sensitive man, who had already, at the age of four, been traumatised as his mother had died of cancer. The only thing he told me about those terrible years was that, with his knowledge, he could perhaps have alleviated some of the prisoners' pain when they were thrown back into the cell having been tortured but, of course, having no supplies he could do nothing and he found it so terrible to be so helpless.
When finally the telegram came to say that he had been released my mother, then back in England, of course could not wait to go to the docks to bring him home. They had had no warning of how the prisoners would look and the shock of seeing a man of 6ft. 2in. tall who weighed 6 and a half stone must have been indescribable. For the first two or three months all he wanted to do was to sleep on the floor huddled up, which was of course familiar to him. If my mother left the house, even for five minutes, he would stand looking terrified staring out of the window to see if she was coming back. He did recover to be better than this in time and was able to work again. He was offered a job at Barts Hospital, where he had trained, but, of course, there was no question of him being able to accept it as he needed good fresh air not London smog. This of course was a terrible disappointment to him and did not help his career at all. He worked at the Royal East Sussex Hospital in St. Leonards but he was never a well man again and he died of cancer in 1976.
I just want to mention for other people, who have been through this, that as a child to wake up in the night and hear your father screaming and not knowing why was very frightening and as a result of the time he spent in Changi my life was incredibly difficult - if only I had understood or been told more because when he came home he didn't really want a child of four around, who he knew nothing about and had no relationship with and took up a lot of his wife's time and I could feel his resentment of me through no fault of his own.
When my mother went to hospital in Singapore full of hope to have a baby - she had had two miscarriages before - she never saw the house that had been her home for thirteen years again. They lost everything they possessed and a lot of the furniture had belonged to her mother and so was of tremendous sentimental value.
I am sure that it was the hope that my mother and I were alive somewhere that was the cause of my father's survival in Changi. He often told me that the people, who had someone to stay alive for, survived longer. It shows the importance of hope I think and finding your web site has given me hope that I will at last find out more about my father, which will make my childhood a little more understandable and which at the moment causes me a lot of pain.
May 20 1999 from Graham Ledbrook:
My wife has an uncle who was captured in Japan in WW2 at the fall of Singapore and who died we are told in Osaka Japan 25 Dec 1944 just as the US army liberated the POW camp. Alfred William Gawler, Gunner service no 5722690, 78th Battery, 35 Light Anti- Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, British Army.
We are trying to find out why the body of Alfred Gawler was taken to the USA and buried at the St Louis National Cemetery in Missouri. There is a memorial in Jefferson Barracks on which his name appears. I wonder if there are any US Army records which could shed light on this. The British War Graves web site gives the information on the burial site but doesn't mention anything about Japan.
We have now heard (UK Television Programme "Timewatch" April/May 1999) that a US Navy submarine torpedoed a vessel containing Japanese Allied prisoners of war during the summer of 1944, and we are wondering if it is possible that the uncle was on board and was rescued by the US Navy and transported to the USA where he died (possibly due to being torpedoed) and was subsequently buried at Jefferson Barracks St Louis Missouri.
I need to find any historical records of the USN or any surviving personnel who can remember the incident. I have found a lot of references to US Navy and Japanese on web sites bit nothing of any use to me. Is it possible that his death was registered with the US Death records which may show some light ?
February 27 1999 from Mary Harris
I am trying to collect experiences of other refugees from Singapore. My mother, brother, infant sister and myself left on the last flying boat out and spent our war in New Zealand. My father, Norman Alexander, was Professor of Physics at Raffles College when Singapore fell, and survived until two years ago. He left some notes on his personal experience of the surrender days and of the scientific work he did in Changi. My mother, Elizabeth, who was also a scientist, eventually got work in the DSIR in Wellington, in secret radar research and ended up directing some very important war work. She kept a diary, part notes on how we children were growing, part love letter to my father and part account of her scientific work.
I remember quite a lot about those days and am currently transcribing the diary, so that I can add my own memories and those of my brother. Ialso want to add a substantial introduction on the surrender and what happened to women and children who escaped and were not torpedoed. It is in this context that I am trying to find accounts of other refugees' experiences. If anyone can contribute anything at all I would be very grateful and would of course acknowledge it. My address is 15 Treadgold Street, London W11 4BL.
23 February 1999 from Kevin Bovill
1. I am in contact with an old friend and former internee FRANK van INGAM. Frank was born in India and worked for a telegraph company before being interned. After the war he settled in Australia. He is now 93 and bed bound but is still mentally alert. Anybody wishing to contact him can do so via myself or write to him at: NUMBALA NUNGA NURSING HOME, C/- Post Office, DERBY, WESTERN AUSTRALIA. 6128.
2. I am also seeking to contact any former employees of the Anglo-Dutch Plantation Company (P&T) who may have been interned in the SUBANG district of West Java and may have known NORMAN ISAAC WINNING,MBE. He was a Scot, born at OBAN in 1906 and was the manager of the SUMUR BARANG estate at the time of his death on 5 Dec 1950. I am trying to locate his grave and would appreciate any information that may assist. Kevin Bovill, 2/84 Zenobia St, Palmyra, Western Australia, 6157. Ph/Fax 62-8-93392623.
January 31 1999 from Cathy Elliott
My grandfather was interned at Changi and later at Sime Road Camp during the Japanese invasion. His name was Harold Dundas Dunbar and had been Station Superintendant at Chenderoh Dam for the Perak River Hydro Electric Co. before the war. If you come across any reference to him, I would be most grateful if you could advise me, because my knowledge of him is very scant.
January 26 1999 from Caroline Ingram
My grandfather was also in Changi as a civilian during WWII. He left a cookbook which he had written during his time there and a long letter he wrote to his wife when he was released at the end of the war telling of his time there. I don't know why he chose to write a cookbook. Cooking wasn't a particular pasttime of his. I think it was just something to do. I think he may have got recipes from the other prisoners. My mother now has the letter and book. She has not been able to read the letter but I have done so.My grandfathers name was Apollo Ernest Coleman-Doscas (long story) , he was an Australian who had married an Englishwomen. He was working for the Department of Agriculture in Malaya.
January 16 1999 from Mary Whitworth