REPMoments - VJ Day & The Naked Island

15 August marks 75 years since VJ Day. Long-standing REP Volunteer Linda Hisgett writes...

It's August 1945. Six men sit in the heat and humidity of a small concrete walled courtyard, one of many in the overcrowded Changi Gaol in Singapore. Designed by the British to accommodate 600 inmates, the prison now holds over 10,000.  

The men, emaciated, malnourished, showing the effects of recurrent bouts of diseases such as dysentery, cholera, malaria and tropical ulcers that have killed so many of their comrades, are in their fourth year as prisoners of a brutal Japanese regime which believed that surrender equalled disgrace and dishonour and treated their prisoners accordingly.  

During this time they have been used as slaves and tortured for amusement – no Geneva Convention here. They have been transported around the Far East packed into the bowels of ships and into cattle trucks, travelling for days to wherever their labour is needed. Their diet for this time has been little more than boiled rice, even when working from dawn to dusk building the railway in Thailand, living cheek by jowl in bamboo huts and being beaten and tortured by sadistic captors. If you could stand you were fit for work. The Burma Railway became known as The Death Railway (more than one man died for every sleeper laid for the 258 miles of track). 

One of these men was Russell Braddon, another was the artist Ronald Searle (later the creator of St Trinian's) and another was my father, Frank Anstey. They shared this story. They had been members of the ill-fated H Force sent north to build the railway. One third of them never returned and those who did were changed forever by their experiences. 

In 1951 Braddon wrote his memoire, illustrated by Searle whose pictures were drawn in secret – severe punishments and torture being administered if any record of captivity was discovered. The Naked Island sold over two million copies. It was one of the first accounts of a Japanese prisoner of war's experience and many regarded it as possibly the finest war book ever written. 

On this he based his play of the same name and it's here that we meet our six characters sitting in the overcrowded Changi Gaol. Still underfed, ill and employed as slave labour, the men are living through what turns out to be the final two weeks of WWII. They hear news of allied victories over forbidden wirelesses, the discovery of which will result in severe beatings; they heard of Victory in Europe, but they are having to wait another two months for Victory over Japan. During this time, their captors order them to dig their own mass graves as (it became clear after the war) there exists an order to kill all remaining POWs in the event of Japanese defeat. 

Finally, victory comes at the heavy cost of the dropping of two atomic bombs over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945.  

However, prisoners are not finally liberated until September, many  spending almost another month at sea. In October 1945, they eventually disembark at Liverpool. 

Braddon's play was performed at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in May 1961. “An acute observation of the character of half a dozen men, all of very different types, exposed to the strain of life as prisoners of war of the Japanese.”   

The cast for this production included Derek Jacobi, Alexis Kanner and John Carlin and was directed by Bernard Hepton, then Artistic Director of The REP. Coincidentally, his most famous role as an actor was to be as the Kommandant of Colditz in the 1972 BBC series. 

Always overshadowed by VE Day and often completely forgotten, 15 August is VJ Day marking the surrender of the Japanese forces, which in effect became the real end of WWII, 75 years ago. 

Forgive if you will, but never forget.