Private Papers of Major R Peaty

Ts transcript (87pp) of the very informative diary kept as the Senior British Officer (up to May 1945) of the small contingent of British prisoners of war in Mukden camp, Manchuria from November 1942 - October 1945 and describing in excellent detail conditions in the camp (which moved site in July 1943) with particular reference to the grave effects of the intense cold during the winter months (over 200 American prisoners of war died in winter 1942 - 1943), the inadequacies of the fuel supply, rations and medicines provided by the Japanese, regular instances of brutality by the camp staff and the execution of three Americans who had attempted to escape, the curious speeches by the camp commandant and other examples of bizarre behaviour by their captors, the extreme infrequency with which the British prisoners received or were allowed to send mail, the vital importance of the occasional consignments of Red Cross parcels, visits by the Japanese propaganda corps, the employment of prisoners in local factories, the deaths of nineteen prisoners in an American air raid on Mukden (7 December 1944), relations between the British contingent and the American prisoners, the arrival in the camp of two parties of high-ranking Allied prisoners in April and May 1945, the liberation of the camp by a small American paratroop unit (August 1945) and his repatriation, including passage across the Pacific in the aircraft carrier HMS IMPLACABLE; together with a large number of associated documents including his prisoner of war record card, two commonplace books compiled by him while in Changi and Mukden camps, ms and ts notes written by him in the 1980s to accompany and expand on his diary entries, his and other prisoners' recollections of the appalling conditions during their voyage in the Japanese transport FUKKAI MARU from Singapore to Korea in August - September 1942, and a few official forms relating to his post-war Army service, 1946 - 1948. Peaty, an officer in the RAOC, was captured when Singapore fell in February 1942.

Ts transcript (87pp) of the very informative diary kept as the Senior British Officer (up to May 1945) of the small contingent of British prisoners of war in Mukden camp, Manchuria from November 1942 - October 1945 and describing in excellent detail conditions in the camp (which moved site in July 1943) with particular reference to the grave effects of the intense cold during the winter months (over 200 American prisoners of war died in winter 1942 - 1943), the inadequacies of the fuel supply, rations and medicines provided by the Japanese, regular instances of brutality by the camp staff and the execution of three Americans who had attempted to escape, the curious speeches by the camp commandant and other examples of bizarre behaviour by their captors, the extreme infrequency with which the British prisoners received or were allowed to send mail, the vital importance of the occasional consignments of Red Cross parcels, visits by the Japanese propaganda corps, the employment of prisoners in local factories, the deaths of nineteen prisoners in an American air raid on Mukden (7 December 1944), relations between the British contingent and the American prisoners, the arrival in the camp of two parties of high-ranking Allied prisoners in April and May 1945, the liberation of the camp by a small American paratroop unit (August 1945) and his repatriation, including passage across the Pacific in the aircraft carrier HMS IMPLACABLE; together with a large number of associated documents including his prisoner of war record card, two commonplace books compiled by him while in Changi and Mukden camps, ms and ts notes written by him in the 1980s to accompany and expand on his diary entries, his and other prisoners' recollections of the appalling conditions during their voyage in the Japanese transport FUKKAI MARU from Singapore to Korea in August - September 1942, and a few official forms relating to his post-war Army service, 1946 - 1948. Peaty, an officer in the RAOC, was captured when Singapore fell in February 1942.

Cataloguer RWAS

Catalogue date 1995-11