VJ-Day by Group Captain John S. Owen
‘Bud’ had only one good leg. It was made of wood and secreted a radio. That was how we knew of VE-Day. Our hopes that VJ-Day would soon follow were not great – there had been too many false dawns. But when a Japanese guard let out ‘One bomb fall Singapore, all men go Paradise’ we realised the end, for better or worse, was not far off.
A prisoner of war at Changi jail using a home-made radio set. If caught by the Japanese he faced the death penalty. © IWM.
The Hiroshima news came over the air in the middle of the night. I was in a hut full of Australians. Suddenly the air was full of shouts, missiles and flailing limbs as the Aussies went berserk. Being a little chap with little to contribute to the scrummage I feigned sleep. The guards did not interfere. In the morning they seemed subdued.
By some means that I cannot recall we heard that the Japanese Commander-in-Chief had declared that he would never surrender, and that if Allied troops landed in Malaya we POWs were all for the chop. That should have dampened our spirits, but I don’t think it did. To exterminate thousands of prisoners inside the gaol and billeted around its walls outside would not have been a simple operation; there were likely to be plenty of opportunities for escape. We kept alert, excited and waited.
In 1942 the Japanese ordered the 20,100 POWs at Changi Jail to sign an undertaking not to escape. After refusing, they were crowded into a barracks which had accommodation for 120. They signed under duress on 4 September. This photograph shows the crowded barrack square during what became known as the ‘Selerang Incident’. © IWM.
A couple of weeks later ‘Dutch’ and I were having an early morning stroll round the camp. The Japanese guard hut was empty, the road leading down the slope and out of the camp was void of life and beckoning. We went through the open barrier breathing freedom for the first time in three and a half years, and wondering why we were the only ones to be doing so.
In the distance, we saw a group of people coming towards us, a party of four, one a woman in a uniform new to us. When we came face to face, ‘Dutch’ said “Lady, don’t go in there. [They] haven’t seen a woman for years!”
“I think I will be all right”, she replied, “my husband is coming to take the place over.” Not recognising her as Edwina Mountbatten [wife of the supreme allied commander for Southeast Asia], we assumed she was referring to an Allied Camp Commandant.
We were shaven-headed, naked but for patched torn shorts and flip-flops on our feet, and we must have looked like a couple of tramps. Somehow (I don’t know how) we got to the bar of Raffles Hotel where we were welcomed. But, strangely, we had no inclination to drink. We felt that duty required us to report to our Service. We found the RAF (Kallang, I think) busy preparing their Mosquitos for war. No-one was interested in us. We were directed to the Airmen’s Mess and fed. I must surely have enjoyed that first meal in years, but I have no recollection of it!
Those with the brownest knees were on the first boat out of Singapore. Sirens hooted and horns blasted as we slid into the Straits. They sounded like a farewell salute to heroes. ‘Dutch’ and I did not feel like heroes – very far from it. We had spent the first half of the war bombing in the Middle East and three months of the second half doing the same in the Far East. Then, in Java, the Japanese had captured our airfield.
When the sirens blared as we steamed into Liverpool, our thoughts were not of heroics, but of those whom the Japanese had starved and worked into jungle graves. Those were the heroes who we will remember on VJ-Day.
Former POWs from Changi cheer as trucks bring them to hospital ships that will take them on the first leg of their journey home from Singapore. © IWM
