Description
Object description
Photocopy of an extremely well-written and restrained ts memoir (131pp), written in 1947, slightly revised in the 1980s and with a few illustrations, referring briefly to his service as an RAF medical officer in Singapore and Java before their capitulations (January - March 1942) and covering in detail his experiences as a prisoner of war of the Japanese in camps at Tasik Malaja, Sourabaya and Semarang in Java (March 1942 - April 1943), as one of the medical officers accompanying a party of British and Dutch prisoners of war, originally 2000-strong, sent from Java to work on the islands of Haroekoe (May 1943 - June 1944) and Ambon (June - August 1944) in the Moluccas and finally returned to Java after an horrific voyage on the prison ship MAROS MARU (August - October 1944), at a camp at Jakarta in Java (October - November 1944), at working camps in Singapore near the docks (November 1944 - May 1945) and at Changi camp, Singapore from June 1945 until its liberation. The memoir, which includes important accounts of the dysentery epidemic and other privations on Haroekoe, and of the remarkable achievement of a fellow prisoner there, a plant physiologist, in producing yeast, an abundant source of vitamin B, from the rice rations supplied on the island, has since been posthumously published under the title PRISONER DOCTOR (Lewes: The Book Guild Ltd, 1996).
Content description
Photocopy of an extremely well-written and restrained ts memoir (131pp), written in 1947, slightly revised in the 1980s and with a few illustrations, referring briefly to his service as an RAF medical officer in Singapore and Java before their capitulations (January - March 1942) and covering in detail his experiences as a prisoner of war of the Japanese in camps at Tasik Malaja, Sourabaya and Semarang in Java (March 1942 - April 1943), as one of the medical officers accompanying a party of British and Dutch prisoners of war, originally 2000-strong, sent from Java to work on the islands of Haroekoe (May 1943 - June 1944) and Ambon (June - August 1944) in the Moluccas and finally returned to Java after an horrific voyage on the prison ship MAROS MARU (August - October 1944), at a camp at Jakarta in Java (October - November 1944), at working camps in Singapore near the docks (November 1944 - May 1945) and at Changi camp, Singapore from June 1945 until its liberation. The memoir, which includes important accounts of the dysentery epidemic and other privations on Haroekoe, and of the remarkable achievement of a fellow prisoner there, a plant physiologist, in producing yeast, an abundant source of vitamin B, from the rice rations supplied on the island, has since been posthumously published under the title PRISONER DOCTOR (Lewes: The Book Guild Ltd, 1996).
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 1983-10-17