British Prisoners of War of the Japanese, 1941–45

Abstract

The first British servicemen to be captured by the Japanese, only hours after the outbreak of hostilities on 8 December 1941, were the few survivors of the gunboat HMS Peterel sunk at Shanghai, and a British Army officer seized on the airfield at Kota Bahru (northeast Malaysia). By the end of Japan’s ‘Hundred Days’ there were approximately 67,000 British prisoners of war in Japanese hands. Of this number over 40,000 entered captivity after the surrender of Singapore, the remainder were taken principally in Hong Kong, the Dutch East Indies and at the Battle of the Java Sea. During the course of the war, their number came to include participants in the Burma Campaign, aircrews, naval personnel and members of the Special Forces. Their dispersal began within weeks of capture, drafted as labour forces to Japan and to the Japanese-occupied territories, and in 1945 British POWs were recovered from all over the Asia-Pacific region – from the Tenasserim peninsula to Hokkaido, from the Celebes to the edge of the Gobi Desert.