Japanese POW

When I was about 5 my father took me to see Father Christmas at Whiteman's Toy Shop in The Borough, Hinckley, who gave me a present, which I wasn't allowed to open until Christmas. When I opened it I found it was a beautiful green fan, but on the back it said 'Made in Japan' and father threw it in the back of the fire. I was heartbroken. It then started to dawn on me that he had gone through very difficult circumstances. I knew Father was very fond of sugar cane and I wondered how he had come across it, but it transpired he had been a prisoner in Thailand and in that area was a large sugarcane plantation. When Dad died in 1983 my stepmother gave me a bundle, saying this is for you - there's letters in there from your Mum. My mother had died in January 1946 and Dad married my step mum in 1957. It was only when I sat and read the letters that I understood what he'd gone through. One of the letters from Mum to Dad was that he wasn't to worry about them at Christmas as Brinksty had sent us a turkey - in fact it was a chicken. We wanted to find out where he'd been and we went to Singapore, to Changi, then to Kanchilabri (?) and met the curator of the Thailand Burma Railway Centre, who was very interested in Dad's story. Then we went to Bangkok and found out about the Far East POWs Group and we've been in touch with them ever since; I took all Dad's stuff with me. A photograph of Dad that I'd never seen before. His service book, the original and a replacement. A bible presented to him just before he was called up by his Sunday School class at Hinckley Congregational Church, signed by all the children. In the back of the bible was part of a postcard from Mum, to reinforce it, who he always called Cherie though her name was Vera. A Variety Entertainment Competition certificate from the Australian Imperial Forces in Malaya; they did entertainments in the POW camps. He would perform monologues in the style of Stanley Holloway in which he would be unkind to the Japanese if they weren't listening. Although he didn't like ...