August 19: A family’s memories of the war in the Far East

THE services from St Martin in the Fields and Horse Guards Parade to commemorate VJ Day as the actual day when war ended was poignant and very moving (Malcolm Barker, The Yorkshire Post, August 15).

As a young child, l can vaguely remember VE Day and holding a balloon for celebrations in a nearby mill.

All l remember of 
VJ Day is the account of my grandmother going to Huddersfield Railway Station to meet her 25-year-old son – a Japanese Prisoner of War – only to be told by one of his comrades that he had died of Beriberi a month earlier.

Fortunately her other serving son had returned home safe and well but not before being blown up in a ship off Italy and ending up in the next hospital bed to the German pilot who had destroyed the ship. My uncle said he got on well with the pilot and that “war was war”.

Yet my grandfather – himself a decorated WW1 corporal – returned all his medals because of Churchill sending soldiers on a hopeless mission to the Far East. Many of the Japanese Prisoners of War who died were eventually brought back to Hong Kong by Sir Edward Youde and interred there in a beautiful war cemetery overlooking the sea.