It’s now been 80 years since VJ Day – the day when Japan surrendered to the Allies and in effect ended WWII – on August 15, 1945. Also known as Victory over Japan Day, it came months after VE Day – Victory in Europe Day – as WWII continued to wage in the Asia-Pacific region.
It only came to an end after two atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US, with Allied consent. Through the generations, VJ Day has been a part of history outside Europe that has been less prominent – but it certainly should not be forgotten.
For years, Professor Geoff Gill, Emeritus Professor of International Medicine, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the University of Liverpool and Meg Parkes MPhil, Honorary Research Fellow, LSTM, have worked closely with numerous Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOW) who survived and returned to Merseyside. Documenting their fascinating stories, they said VJ Day’s 80th anniversary is another opportunity to keep their memories and legacies alive.
Meg, from Wirral, is the daughter of Wirral practitioner Dr A. Atholl Duncan, who was a prisoner of war in Java and Japan. In more recent years, Meg has shared her dad’s story in her book, Notify Alec Rattray, and the stories of other prisoners of war from Merseyside and beyond to ensure their experiences and powerful stories are not forgotten.
Meg, 72, told the ECHO: “It’s in my DNA, really. My dad was in the British army and survived.
“He kept diaries which when I was in my late teens, I eventually got to read. It produced hundreds of questions – none of which he really wanted to answer.
“But I was very, very lucky that over time he did open up to me and try to make it clearer to me what he’d been through and what references in the diaries meant. There were all sorts of acronyms and different references that meant nothing to me.
“And that’s where my interest started. Dad had brought so many different things back with him, bits of paper, newspaper cuttings, photographs.
“Even though some of the men did talk to the press and the news cuttings are there to see and to read – the vast majority closed it down. And I think it’s important certainly for us in the Merseyside area to just understand how important Liverpool was to this experience.”
Meg’s dad died in 1997 and she later inherited his diaries, which inspired her to self publish her first book, to ensure the experiences of her dad and others were not forgotten. Among her dad’s belongings, she also found sketches – including one of the view across his hut in Japan, Zentsuji Officers’ Propaganda camp, on the island of Shikoku, from late 1943.
The artwork of Dr A. Atholl Duncan and other veterans, hidden from the Japanese and created in secret, gives an insight and documents the life and conditions of prisoners of war of the time. After the war, Dr Duncan switched from doing engineering to studying medicine and with his wife, Dr Elizabeth Glassey, they both became well known practitioners in Moreton.
In more recent years, a road in Upton was named Atholl Duncan Drive in his memory. After publishing her first book, Meg said she was offered “the chance of a lifetime” by Professor Geoff Gill to record interviews with prisoners of war, making contact with the community and documenting the stories of survivors.
Meg said: “Ships were leaving to go out east and some of those survivors came back into Liverpool, the others came into Southampton. Liverpool played a pivotal role in welcoming back not only the servicemen but also the civilian internees.
“There are a lot of families across Merseyside affected by this history. When the men first came back into Liverpool or Southampton, they started to self refer to the specialists in Liverpool at the School of Tropical Medicine because they knew the tropical diseases they had.
“No local doctor anywhere would have a clue where to start. So the patients started appearing off their own accord.” Professor Geoff Gill, from Wallasey, first became associated with the Liverpool School of Tropical medicine in the 1970s and through the decades has worked closely with FEPOW’s who returned to the city.
Prof Gill, 76, told the ECHO: “I was at a young doctor about to off to the Tropics and I worked at the school for a while and part of my duties were to look after their patients. They had some beds in one of the Liverpool hospitals which doesn’t exist anymore now Sefton General Hospital on Smithdown Road.
“And many of these patients were FEPOWs who had been referred to check out for continuing tropical diseases. I’ve kept those prisoner of war links because we’ve seen over the years a very large number, over 4,000 since the end of the war, up to the turn of the 20th century.
“Many of them had continuing problems with tropical diseases like malaria, dysentery, worm infections. Some of them had long term effects of malnutrition. They suffered a lot of vitamin deficiency in the prison camps.
“Some of them had continuing nerve damage causing poor eyesight or pain or tingling in the legs. But mostly the commonest problem was PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). They’d never told that story before, even to their wives.
“Stories of beatings, slappings, semi starvation, multiple attacks of malaria, dysentery – being cared for by doctors who were terribly short of drugs and equipment. The importance of your mates to try to help you through, to get you some food when you were too ill to get it.
“All of this kind of thing sort of came through and sometimes more horrific sort of events. These kind of things haunted many of these men in flashbacks and nightmares for literally decades to decades to come.”
As generations passed, Prof Gill felt that the story needed to “be kept alive” and became involved in numerous projects with Meg to ensure this history is not forgotten. He said: “The men rarely spoke about it and I think for that reason, recent research and experience by ourselves and many others, and perhaps an increasing willingness of survivors to talk as the years went by, has brought the story to the front.
“It’s an incredible story of inhumanity, of callousness, but also of ingenuity, of camaraderie, of survival. This sort of complex piece of history deserves to be kept for future generations, there are lessons to be learned.”
About 4,000 FEPOWS were supported and studied by LSTM as a result of the diseases they had endured in the prison camps such as amoebic dysentery, malaria and cholera. This led to LSTM’s longest running collaboration influencing the way service personnel are treated today and LSTM’s research also included the effects of PTSD before it become a recognised condition.
Here on Merseyside, a number of commemorations took place today for VJ Day. In Liverpool, a Service of Remembrance will be held at the Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOW) Repatriation Memorial on the Pier Head was led by The Revd Canon Bill Addy of Liverpool Parish Church.
As well as civic dignitaries, who laid wreaths at the memorial, Prof Gill and Meg also spoke at the service. Cunard’s newest ship Queen Anne also returned to the Mersey to play a leading role in Liverpool’s commemoration of the 80th anniversary of VJ Day.
