Category: Prisoners of War

CAMPBELL, Valerie. Camp 165 Watten: Scotland’s Most Secretive Prisoner of War Camp. xv, 133p., bibliog., illus. Dunbeath: Whittles, 2008. ISBN: 9781904445609.

The camp opened in 1943 in a remote site near Wick in Scotland. It housed Category A committed Nazi supporters and this is the story of the camp and its inmates until it was closed in 1948. Some had served in the Kriegsmarine. A second edition was published in 2010, ISBN: 9781849950053.

A detailed work on a very detailed topic, with some naval interest. Volume One covers Singapore and Changi, while Volume Two covers the Dutch East Indies

The author was a stoker who volunteered for submarines in 1940. After training he joined Otway then moved to Sahib as she completed in May 1942. He served with her in the Mediterranean in April 1942. He was taken prisoner but later escaped and much of the book covers this period in Italy. He met the advancing Allies in late 1944 and after repatriation joined Tuna based in Scotland for the rest of the war.

The story of a dog called Judy. She was a pet on the RN river gunboats on the China Station and was sunk with Grasshopper during an attempted escape from Singapore. The bulk of the book is concerned with her prisoner of war experiences, which led to the award of the Dickin Medal, the animal VC.

BENTLEY-BUCKLE, A. Through Albert’s Eyes (The British Navy at War, Volume 2). viii, 152p., illus., index. Dunbeath: Whittles, 2013. ISBN: 9781849950664.

An autobiography, roughly half of which describes his wartime career. He joined the RN in early 1939 and was initially with Dunedin on the Northern Patrol and then in the Caribbean. In mid-1940 he moved to Edinburgh serving from the Arctic to Freetown. In mid-1941 he joined Revenge with the Eastern Fleet. After a spell ashore he trained as a beachmaster and served in Sicily and Italy. He moved into special operations and was captured, escaped and recaptured in Croatia. He spent the rest of the war as a POW, including helping with the famous escape of “Albert, R.N.”.

PIKE, John G. Bamboo Years. 208p., illus. Grantham: Barny Books, 2009. ISBN: 1906542139.

He was a young midshipman who joined  Prince of Wales in May 1941. He served with her through the sinking of Hood to her own sinking in the Far East. He briefly joined Exeter until her sinking and was a POW for the rest of the war. A good tale simply but well told.

WORT, Stanley. Prisoner of the Rising Sun. ix, 178p., illus., index. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2009. ISBN: 1848840039.

He joined up in 1940 and after training was sent to Hong Kong, where he was captured by the Japanese. The book focuses on his POW experiences.

STUBBS, Pam. Unsung Heroes of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines: The Far East Prisoners of War 1941-1945. 144p. Lincoln: Tucann, 2011. ISBN: 9781907516115.

A Roll gives the full name and service number of each of these Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOW's) and the countries in which they were held. Included for those who did not survive is the place and date of death and where buried - or, for those with no known grave, the memorial where commemorated.

FOOT, M. R. D., & LANGLEY, J. M. MI9: The British Secret Service that Fostered Escape and Evasion 1939–1945 and Its American Counterpart. 365p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Bodley Head, 1979. ISBN: 0370300866.

Describes inter alia how some sailors escaped from captivity and how the RN was sometimes involved in aiding escape.

EDGE, Spence, & HENDERSON, Jim. No Honour, No Glory. 192p., illus. Auckland: Collins, 1983. ISBN: 0002172089.  

The little-known tragedies of the Italian merchantmen Jason, sunk by Porpoise in December 1941, and the Nino Bixio, sunk by Turbulent, both off Greece and with the loss of hundreds of British and Dominion POWs. Edge was one of the New Zealand survivors.

THOMAS, Gabe. MILAG: Captives of the Kriegsmarine. Merchant Navy Prisoners of War, Germany 1939–1945. xii, 320p., bibliog., illus., index. Pontardawe: Milag Prisoner of War Association, 1995. ISBN: 0952549808.

A full but scrapbook-like account of a neglected area

GALLEGOS, Adrian. And Who Are You? 406p., illus. London: Adelphi, 1992. ISBN: 1856540669.

An autobiography, which is in effect a substantially expanded second edition of his earlier book From Capri into Oblivion, the tale of a young RNVR officer captured and made a POW in Italy.

LEWIS, Damian. Judy: A Dog in a Million. xxiv, 359p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Quercus, 2014. ISBN: 9781848665361.

A retelling of the Judy story – the dog which won the Dickin medal - containing much original material on the Far East Prisoner of War experience.

He was called up in 1940 and by the end of the year joined Encounter at Gibraltar. In December 1941 he transferred to the shore signal station at Singapore. In February 1942 he escaped in a small minesweeper which was captured near Palembang. Most of the book concerns three-and-a-half grim years then spent as a POW in Sumatra.

DETHICK, Janet Kinrade & CORKE, Anne M. Twixt the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Story of the Crew of HMS Saracen. 213, viip., bibliog., illus., index. [n.p., authors], 2016. ISBN: 9781326063207.

Briefly covers the career of Saracen until her loss in the Mediterranean in 1943. Mainly focuses on the fate of the crew and their tales of partisans, escapes, and concentration camps.

DE BOLSTER, Marc. 47 Royal Marine Commando: An Inside Story 1943-1946. 232p., illus. Stroud: Fonthill, 2014. ISBN: 1781552975.

Based on personal accounts written by veterans who served in the conflict. From the D-Day landings to fierce battles in Holland, young men were taken prisoner and sent to camps until freed at the end of the war in 1945.

THOMSON, Max. 8th Div Home From Changi 1945 (H.M.A.S. Hawkesbury). Addendum: USS Mount Hood Explodes 1944. (Naval Historical Society of Australia, Monograph 11). 13p., illus. Garden Island, NSW: Naval Historical Society of Australia, 1989.

The text of two lectures given to the Victoria Chapter of the Society in 1988 and 1989. The first records the movements of Hawkesmoor in the dying days of the war and her trip to Singapore to return Australian POWs. The second deals with a catastrophic incident in Manus harbour in November 1944. There are several pages of poorly reproduced photographs.

PARR, Claude. A Seemingly Ordinary Man. 160p. Cardiff: Candy Jar Books, 2016. ISBN: 9780993519253.

An autobiography. Aged seventeen he joined the Merchant Navy in 1939. He was sunk on Laconia in September 1942 but survived and was captured and imprisoned by the Vichy French. A good account of a far from ordinary life.

MILLAR, Andy. Lost At Sea: Found at Fukushima. viii, 251p., bibliog., illus. Newport, NSW: Big Sky, 2012. ISBN: 9781921941528.

The story of survivors of sinkings of merchantmen by the raider Thor and of their subsequent imprisonment in Japanese camps. Reprinted in 2017 by Pen & Sword Military (ISBN: 9781473878068).

URQUHART, Alistair. The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East. [v], 312p., illus., index. London: Little, Brown, 2010. ISBN: 9781408702116.

A somewhat bitter autobiography. He joined the Gordon Highlanders and went to Singapore on the troopship ss Andes. Captured at the fall of Singapore he worked as a POW on the Burma railroad then was shipped to Japan on one of the “Hellships” in late 1944. The Kachidoki Maru was sunk by an American submarine and he was only rescued after several days on a raft. He was then sent to Nagasaki where he saw out the war. As with many others he was denied financial support post-war because he could not produce documentation about his imprisonment!

KELLY, Terence. Living with Japanese. 228p., illus. Folkestone, Kellan Press, 1997. ISBN: 0953019306.

The personal memoir of a RAF pilot captured in Java, which tells the story of his imprisonment as a POW, his transport to Japan and his work in the Hitachi shipyard in Innoshima. Republished in 2006 by Pen & Sword Military as By Hellship to Hiroshima. ISBN: 1844154033.

KELLY, Terence. By Hellship to Hiroshima x, 244p., illus., index. Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 2006. ISBN: 1844154033.

The personal memoir of a RAF pilot captured in Java, which tells the story of his imprisonment as a POW, his transport to Japan and his work in the Hitachi shipyard in Innoshima. Published originally in 1997 as Living with Japanese, q.v.

BLAIR, Joan, & BLAIR, Clay. Return from the River Kwai. 338p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Macdonald & Jane's; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979. ISBN: 0354044176.

One of the little known tragedies of the war. When the survivors of the building of the Burma-Siam railway were being moved to Japan in 1944, many of them died when their transports were sunk by American submarines. Some of them had already survived the sinking of the Australian cruiser Perth. Based on survivors accounts.

OAKLEY, Derek. Bagged in World War 2: Two Tales of Royal Marines Prisoners Of War - The Jim Fallace Story And The Diary Of Benjamin Knapton. (Royal Marines Historical Society Special Publication No. 24).  103p., illus. Royal Marines Historical Society, 2001.

Fallace was captured in Hong Kong when it fell. He was sunk in the Lisbon Maru en route to Japan and was one of only half a dozen to escape ashore in China and then managed to reach India where he joined the RINVR for the rest of the war. Knapton was born in 1899 and joined the Marines in 1917 and served for twenty-one years. He was recalled to service in 1939 and served in DEMS. He was on s.s. Natia when she was sunk in the South Atlantic by the German raider Thor (listed as Ver in his diary) in October 1940. Rescued by her, he then spent four years in German POW camps. This pamphlet includes his contemporary diary.

LEWIS, Damian. SAS Great Escapes: Seven Incredible Escapes Made by Second World War Heroes. xii, 332p., bibliog., illus., index. London: Quercus, 2021. ISBN: 9781787475281.

A good read telling the story of seven remarkable men and their escapes while being held as POWs. Has some marginal detail about the involvement – or lack of it – of the RN in their escapes.

The story of the Hall in Cumbria which was used as an Officers POW camp. Tells, the story, prints documents, has oral history and accounts of such famous escape attempts as Von Werra's.

Anderson was a CPO on Exeter when she was sunk. He was moved from his first camp at Macassar to Nagasaki where he worked in a shipyard for three years and survived the atomic bomb attack on the city. This account is largely based on a contemporary diary which he managed to keep in shorthand throughout his captivity.

The author was one of the 229 survivors of Perth who returned home in 1945. A very personal account.

This story told by a survivor from HMAS Perth gives a real idea of the adventures and sufferings of a group of POW's in the hands of the Japanese. Able-Seaman Bancroft was a POW in Japanese hands from March1942 to September 1944.

Of the 4500 of the Hong Kong garrison who died during the war some one thousand died directly or indirectly when their transport to Japan was sunk by USS Grouper in late 1942. A detailed account.

This is the first work that documents the experiences of Hong Kong's prisoners of war and civilian internees from their capture by the Japanese in December 1941, to liberation, rescue, and repatriation. While the prisoner-of-war main camps in Hong Kong itself have been mentioned in many other works, there has so far been no definitive chronology of their operation. Where the camps in Japan (to which many of the Hong Kong POWs were sent in six main drafts) have been mentioned, coverage has been superficial and limited in scope, and many camps have been entirely overlooked. This book includes them all, and the movements between them, using only primary sources and only - as far as possible - the words of those involved.

The author was one of the survivors of the sinking of HMAS Perth. Her loss is graphically described, but most of the book concerns his POW experiences.

Bird was captured by Komet when m.v. Australind was sunk. This autobiographical work is a full account of the workings of the Milag Nord prison camp for merchant seamen. He escaped in 1943.

The story of a rating who served in Oswald in the Mediterranean until her sinking, then spent five years in Italian camps.

Broom joined the Royal Naval Patrol Service in 1940 and served for two years on HMT Norse in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1943 he moved to Special Services and was captured at Leros. Although he survived the war he died aged 58 and his letters and diaries are published here by his widow.

Cooper was a Lieutenant Commander on Exeter when she was lost. He spent almost four years as a prisoner in the East Indies and this is movingly described. Originally published by Hale in 1963 as Ordeal in the Sun.

The author's wartime experiences. As a young signalman, he was sunk on the Voltaire by a German raider. Rescued by the raider, he spent four years in POW camps and it is with this grim story that the book is mainly concerned.

An alphabetical nominal register by service and country. A facsimile reprint of a 1945 government listing.

Includes brief details of the fate of the Athabaskan and Dieppe survivors.

He was captured in the North Sea in 1943 when his MGB was sunk. He soon bluffed his way from prison camp to Stockholm, disguised as a Bulgarian officer called I. Bagarov and then home. Reprinted by Hollis & Carter in 1954. US title: Escaper's Progress. Republished with that title by Pen & Sword in 2008 (ISBN: 1844158438).

The first third of the book covers the wartime career of the Exeter up to her sinking and the remainder the harrowing tale of a Japanese prison camp. Reprinted in 1990 by Allen (ISBN: 1852271515).

These almost 50 brief tales are taken mainly from POW WOW, the Newsletter of the Scottish Far East Prisoner of War Association. There are a few from merchant seamen and a few on the sea transports used to move the POWs.

Flying a recce from Warspite in his Walrus in 1940 he was shot down over Italy. In September 1943 while being moved from an Italian to a German prison camp following the armistice, he escaped and made it to the Allied lines. He was then based as an instructor in the UK but was killed in a plane crash in August 1944. This is the story of his home run, reconstructed from his own notes by his partner in the escape, Major Frank Simms.

The untold story of prisoner of war exchanges. Few of them happened but the tale of tortuous negotiations and dangerous journeys is well told.

Morgan was captured by the Germans in a partisan fishing boat off the Dalmatian Island of Lussin in 1943. His capture is briefly described, but the book concentrates on his term of imprisonment. US title: POW

An account of the loss of the Peterel at Shanghai in 1941, but more concerned with the fate of British POWs in Shanghai.

A continuation of Out of the Smoke. The story of some captured survivors of Perth, who suffered terribly at the hands of the Japanese when working to build the infamous railway. The author was a survivor and one of Perth's crew.

There is a graphic description of the sinking of Gloucester off Crete, but the bulk of the book describes his trials and adventures in prison camps in Greece, Austria, and Germany.

Three dozen brief reminiscences, some of naval relevance.