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WWII Civilian Internees of the Japanese in Singapore:
Royal Singapore Yacht Club Crew - I have a beautiful old photograph of a four man rowing crew from the RSYC, taken on November 8 1935. I am trying to locate any information about these individuals and whether they were interred by the Japanese during World War II. If any of them are still alive I would like to send them a copy of the photograph. The members of the crew are identified as N.C. Roberts, J.B. Dunne, G.C.R. Franks, A.F. Thorne and coxswain Miss L.W. Mowatt.
September 11 1998 (see also June 21) from Sharon Crapo
My mother's maiden name was Lawther. She was interned on Sime Rd, but I am unsure of which hut. All of her sisters and mothere were interned there also. I am unsure where her brothers, who must have been captured at some time during the War, were held, but if anyone were interested, I could find out.
August 1 1998 from Barbara Shayesteh
My uncle, Richard Banks, was a civilian construction worker on Wake Island when the war broke out and the men were taken by ship to a confinement camp, I believe in China. Somewhere I have a letter he wrote home to his mother but I can't put my hands on it just now. I do have two Japanese knives and a leather cigarette case the Americans took from one of the hated guards at liberation. My uncle is deceased now but I remember a couple of the stories he told although he didn't talk about it much. He survived only because he was willing to eat the fish heads (higher protein) and he traded regular fish meat for them. Many of his friends didn't make it. He never looked healthy - always had a kind of haunted look about him - and I wouldn't be surprised if his dying of a brain hemorrhage had something to do with head trauma during his captivity. I always wanted to get more info about what happened to him there.
July 9 1998 from Vic Blundell
I recently read an article in The Weekend Australian reviewing a new book Singapore Samurai by an Australian soldier Penrod V. Dean. It covers his experiences in the prisoner of war camp at Changi including his escape, recapture and interrogation by the Kempi Tai. He spent two years in solitary confinement in Outram Road and was one of the ten Australians to appear as a witness in the war crimes trials in Japan. The book is published in paperback by Kangaroo Press.
June 22 1998 from Sheenagh
I was born long after the War was over, but have vivid memories of my Great Uncle, Philip Gordon, who had been with the police in Singapore before the fall and subsequently was interned in Changi. Uncle Philip hailed from Strathdon in Aberdeenshire and had numerous brothers and sisters, including Jess, Margaret, Andy (Drew), Charlie (?) and Donald, the latter having served in Burma. Uncle Philip managed to get his wife Anne out of Singapore before the Japanese arrived. I recall that he had an extremely difficult time after coming home and family stories have it that he never fully recovered. He and his wife had no children and Aunt Anne died in the early 60s and Uncle Philip lived for a short while after that. I have also heard (possibly proud family legend) that he was distressed that the powers that be at home dismissed his entreaties about the intentions of the Japanese prior to the fall. Does anyone remember him? I wish I had been old enough to ask the right questions before memories became extinguished by death and illness, but I feel I want to know more about him, his life, whether the family legends are true, etc. Can anyone help?
June 21 1998 from Sharon Crapo
I became interested in your site because my mother and her family had also been interned in S'pore at the end of WW II. My Australian g'father had been the manager of an Aus.owned tin mine in a place called Sungei Lembing in Malaya. He was married to a Chinese woman, my g'mother and had 9 children. Several times during the course of his stay in Malaya, he was required by the company to go on 'repat' to Australia, since everyone knew the Caucasians couldn't tolerate the jungle heat for more than a couple of years at a time. (Note the sarcasm here). Anyway, in 1938 he became ill and went to S'pore, either seeking medical treatment there or using it as a stopping off point to get to Aus. He died there shortly after arriving.
This left my Chinese g'mother with 9 children, all of them Eurasian, and no husband when the Japanese invaded Malaya. The family took Chinese names and spoke Chinese for the duration of the war, hoping no-one would let on to the J's that they were part Australian. The boys in the family went underground and joined the Malay Liberation Army. G'mother and the girls spent the war in a small summer place in the hills. Towards the end of the war, they were all taken to S'pore by the J's, where they met up with at least one of the boys, whom they hadn't seen for years.
I realize this story doesn't actually fit with your "British civilians in S'pore" project, but I thought you might be interested. My dad, an Englishman from Northants, was stationed in S'pore starting in '48 and met my mother. This is how I came to be born there.
14 May 1998 from George Percy
I have just seen your web piece about internees in Changi. My father, George Reginald PERCY, was an engineer in the P.W.D. Malaya and State Engineer,Johore,at the time of the Jap invasion. He was also an officer in one of the Malayan volunteer regiments and taken P.O.W.,put in Changi and later in Palembang 1942 - 45, survived, returned to Malaya but died eighteen months later. He and your father must have known each other well; he first went out in 1919. I regret I have no photos, but will search my records for any other memorabilia, if you would like me to.
INTERNMENT IN JAVA DURING JAPANESE OCCUPATION. Recently I borrowed a book you may find interesting, Daphne Jackson's 'Java Nightmare: An Autobiography', published by Tabb House, Church Street, Padstow, Cornwall, 1979, ISBN 0 907018 25. Daphne Jackson's husband was MD of a huge British plantation company sited in West Java. The book describes her internment in Java. During internment she took under her wing a young British mother and her baby. This girl, Deborah Fitzwilliams Pope, was the daught of one of theWattie partners (my father's firm); her husband Noel managed one of the Wattie estates in East Java. Daphne Jackson gives a detailed account of civilian internment under the Japanese. The copy I read is in the Devon library system, and possibly available on inter-library loan.
I would very much like to hear more about the H.H. Belderson collection, Hubert Henry being the brother of my paternal grandmother. He was born in Fressingfield, Suffolk and studied agriculture when he left school but this did not suit him and Hubert went into nursing. He was living in Singapore when it captured by the Japanese. Hubert suffered badly. He never got over his experiences, bitter towards both the Japanese and the British who escaped or who never experienced life under the Japanese. He had married Toni, born in the Dutch East Indies in 1914. I do not know where they met or where they were married.
Toni also had an eventful war, she escaped Singapore although her ship was sunk somewhere between Singapore and South Africa. Eventually made it to Britain where she helped in the Belderson family shop for a while. A bright lady she spoke five languages, she left Fressingfield for London and the War Office.
After the war Hubert and Toni returned to Singapore, nursing and office work. They had no children. Eventually they both retired to Grouville, Jersey.
I was hunting down ancestors, and found your interesting web page. My parents-in-law, Henry Charles ('Harry') and Audrey ('Jim') Schooling were interned in the Sime Road Camp. With them was their eldest child, Dorothy Olga ('Romy').
Harry was one of nine children of Joseph and Rose Schooling, resident in Singapore. Except for one daughter who had left Singapore in 1937 and two boys who were married (Harry was one of them), the family was on an evacuation ship that was torpedoed. Joseph was sent to a POW camp (not sure of the exact chronology). Only one daughter-in-law and her daughter and one of Joseph's daughters survived. They were interned in a Civilian Camp in Sumatra. Harry's sister is now Mrs Phyllis Jameson and, as a member of ABCIFER, has been to Japan several times to press the case for compensation.
Harry and Jim married in 1941 and had seven children altogether. I am married to number five in the hierarchy. Lloyd and I lived in England for a while before coming to Perth. Harry and Jim also live in Western Australia now.
I have not checked the Imperial War Museum records (was not aware of the Changi register) but we do have a copy of Lewis's diary and there is no mention of my father in that. [There is a mention of my uncle - the "Wemyss" in the entry for August 10, 1945]. A number of my other relatives were interned and I know of others interned with my father but again there is no mention of any of them in Lewis's book. I imagine that the internees lived in the close environment of their own and adjacent huts and unless a particular event occurred or someone died, Lewis would not have necessarily been aware of all the other internees in Changi or Sime Road.
I was very interested to read your Web pages on civilian internees in Singapore during World War II and to see the picture taken at Sime Road Internment Camp. Although the photo is rather poor on the Web the person third from the right has a fairly close resemblance to my father. I have tried to enhance the picture with not a great deal of success but enlargement of the figures tends to confirm my view (and confirmed by my sister).
My father, John McRae Chalmers, was an internee in Changi and Sime Road from 1942-45, latterly at Sime Road in Hut 32 (possibly previously in Hut 37). He never spoke of his experiences and we have little record of his time there except for one message postcard and a photograph of our family taken in 1943 that he received in 1944 and managed to keep. My father was a pharmacist and optician working at Maynard & Co in Singapore (most of his life was spent in Malaya, previously in Penang); he returned to Singapore after the war and was Managing Director of Maynards when he retired in 1948.
My brothers and sister were all born in Singapore, myself in November 1941; we left Singapore in February 1942 on the 'Felix Roussel' and eventually reached Scotland after some time in India. We returned with my mother to Singapore in 1946 after my father had returned and left finally in December 1948. My mother's family (Wemyss) were all brought up in Penang, where most of them were born. One of my mother's half brothers, Alfred Home Wemyss, died in Sime Road Camp in August 1945 and is buried in Kranji War Cemetery (he was in the Perak Local Defence Corps). However, we do not have information on some family members who were in Penang when it was overrun.
My sister and I would be very interested to know if you have any other information about the photograph or of others to which you refer or of other people in the pictures and, indeed, any other information you can share about Sime Road Camp or the civilian internees there or in Changi.