Seeking Japanese POW info - thankyou

[wisewoman]

Hello,

I have a document that is relevant to my current line of enquiry - it is a Japenese POW record:



My question is - does anyone know if these documents were sent back to the UK when the prisoner was captured and so relatives /wives would have been aware of this OR if they were compuiled and sent out much later, perhaps at the end of the war?

Also does anyone know if Japeanese POW were allowed to 'write home'?

Thankyou,
Melissa

[Lesley Robertson]

I see that this is your first post to BG, so this is to welcome you to the forum. Your query does not come within my field of knowledge, but we have many expert members. Good luck!

[Megan Roberts]

Below is a link to the National Archives research guide:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/...ar-korean-war/

I also came across this BBC article which might be of interest.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33931660

[wisewoman]

Hi Megan - thank you veyr much for those links.

i m asking my question as I am writing an article about a lady whose husband ended up in a japanese POW camp in Malaya/Singapore. Whilst i found the documnent whose image i give in the first post, I dont know how qickly she would have been made aware of his capture.

I ask, because not long after he had left for Singapore in the Army, he was captured (15th Feb 1942). BUT she also appears to have entered a new relationship very shortly after this time, with someone else and went on to have children with him, but never married him. I was wondering if she had a) known of her husbands capture around the tiem it happened. or b) if she may not have known anythign at all and thus in the absence of contact, assumed he was dead and so moved on with her life... perhaps only finding out years later?

The doument above, does give her address then - but I cannot work out when or if that document would have been sent to her. The answer would give me some further insight.

I'm afraid i am no expert on WW2 history and I was wondering if perhaps, many young wives were left not knowing what had happened to their husbands in the face of them becoming Japanese POW. Until perhaps at the very end of the War when they were released, several years later. Were those docs perhaps only sent out then?

Thank you,
Melissa

[wisewoman]

I see that this is your first post to BG, so this is to welcome you to the forum. Your query does not come within my field of knowledge, but we have many expert members. Good luck!

Thank you for the welcome!

[Megan Roberts]

The short answer is that I do not know at what point the authorities would have told families that their soldiers were either missing in action or prisoners.

Newspapers could be a useful source of information.

Montrose Standard 07 April 1943 - tells how mail can be sent to PoWs in Europe

Linlithgowshire Gazette 24 September 1943 - tells how mail can be sent to Pows held by Japan

Lancaster Guardian 10 December 1943 - this talks about how someone learnt after almost 2 years of been missing that their relative was a PoW of the Japanese.

Middlesex Chronicle 24 July 1943 - this one has a number of stories about men who had previously been reported missing but were not PoWs.

Dundee Courier 06 December 1945 - this article is about how a woman had only just received notification that her son had been killed 3 years earlier when Singapore fell.


So in summary, just from looking at these articles, I don't think that there was a hard and fast rule for how and when people were informed about their relatives fate, which is not surprising when you think about the chaos that war causes.

If search old newspapers then you may well find more information about the person that you are interested in.

[wimsey]

I have a man in my extended family tree who was reported missing from Singapore in April 1942 and its not until October 1945 that a newspaper reports him alive and having been a POW. I can imagine that being a common circumstance.