MY father, Frederick Richard Bunday, was born in Gosport in 1912. His father, a shipwright, spent his whole working life in Portsmouth dockyard.

Dad was one of three brothers, and in 1927 enlisted into the Royal Artillery regular army at Woolwich as a boy soldier of fourteen. He was mustered to the ranks in 1930.

Thereafter, he was stationed at Derby for a short time. After being married to mum, Sarah, in 1936, he was posted to Singapore in 1938. While there he worked on the emplacement of the large guns which pointed out to sea which were intended to protect Singapore from a Japanese invasion, if it came, from the sea.

They proved of little worth as the invasion came from the north through the jungle. When this came my father and Lieutenant John Christopher Close, with others, stayed back to dismantle smaller guns so they could not be used.

As the Japanese began to encircle the aerodrome of Kota Bahru, in the north of the Malay Peninsula, my father and John were left to man one gun – the last defence of the airfield. While keeping the advancing army at bay the other soldiers, mainly Indians, retreated. For this action my father was awarded the Military Medal for bravery.

They were both eventually captured and interned at Selarang Barracks, a place that was built to house one battalion of about 1,200 men.

After the surrender of Singapore by September 1, 1942, 15,400 British and Australian troops were herded into the barracks. You can only imagine the conditions with sanitation facilities, etc.

York Press:

Richard Bunday, former head verger at York Minster

From there, dad was first taken by truck with many others to Singapore station to face the many days long journey ahead crammed into railway rice trucks which he described as “being in a hot oven at times”, destined for work as slave labour on the infamous Burma railway.

During that journey there was little ventilation, and only the occasional stop for a natural break. With so many of the prisoners already suffering from dysentery, they often had to be held partly hanging outside the wagon while the train was on the move.

Eventually on arrival my father along with many others was set to work from sunrise to sunset to extend the railway northwards, not knowing what brutal treatment lay ahead for them all.

He survived the three and half years in captivity until liberation came for him on the October 15, 1945. He was naturally a quiet man, and never spoke of his wartime experiences as a prisoner until the last few months of his life. I feel I should quote just two of the incidents he told me of.

The first was that of a roll-call held in the morning, which took place usually every day. A soldier was chosen to count all those present, who was standing next to my father.

In due course he told the Japanese officer the number. The soldier was rebuked and accused of lying and was ordered to count them again. This he did, but came up with the same number again. Again he was called a liar and without hesitation, with the butt of his rifle, the Japanese officer hit the man across the eyes, he collapsed. No one dared move to help him. The soldier’s head rested on my father’s feet, and there he died.

On another occasion when more prisoners arrived, a guard asked two of them “where did they come from?". America they replied. My father, who had overheard the conversation, when he had chance to tell them, said: “Be very careful what you say or do, it won’t go down very well with them with you being American.”

Later that morning my father asked if he could go for a call of nature into the trees, a matter of a few dozen yards away from where he was working. When he found a suitable place, he was confronted by the sight of both of the Americans tied to trees. They had been butchered in the most horrific way.

York Press:

Map showing the route of the Burma Railway

Other memories he told me were just as bad. As time went by, he confessed that because of his poor physical state, plus the ill treatment he received together with the illness he suffered, it became a matter of surviving from day to day.

Having suffered malaria, Beri-Beri and leg ulcers, he was lucky to survive, unlike his friend Lieutenant Close, who with dysentery and typhus, sadly died.

My mother, during the time her husband was in service abroad from 1938 to 1945, lived with her mother in York, and then with her in-laws in Portsmouth.

For these seven years, the family never saw Frederick, and when the day came that dad stepped off the troop train at Portsmouth station, at first they could hardly recognise him.

Here was a man under six stone, having been starved and beaten. At home with his wife and parents, with careful nursing and care, he slowly recovered physically.

The Second World War had finished, but for dad the aftermath of memories were still vivid in his mind. As a boy, I remembered him having nightmares, shouting out things, which were all related to his time as a POW.

By the time I was about eight years old, those nightmares, thankfully, began to subside. My father lived to be 77 years of age and died in 1989, with many more experiences than those he had told me locked away in his head.

As a Christian, I forgive those who had treated him and so many others so badly.

It has to be said though it would be a gesture from the present Japanese government, if they finally made an official apology for the ill treatment of the British and Allied forces during the Second World War.

If they do this on the 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender if would go some way to further the healing process.

BLOB The 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender, V-J Day, falls on September 25 this year