This beautifully researched and curated book documents the art
produced by Far East Prisoner of War (FEPOW) whilst imprisoned during the
Second World War. Their life in the tropics, and how they coped with captivity
is captured. It highlights the importance of art in documenting war. It arose
out of work done with FEPOWS who were looked after by for their tropical
diseases by the medical team at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine after the
war. The team developed an oral history project contacting families of FEWPOWS
and documenting their lives post captivity.
These pieces were produced secretly because their captors forbade doing
art.
Meg Parkes, daughter of a FEPOW, has researched FEPOW art and
wrote the first section. Eight well known artists including Ronald Searle
documented the experience of captivity,
her father was in Japan and nearly died of starvation there. The young men were
beautiful and hopeful before they went to war. They returned on repatriation
boats to Liverpool and Southampton. Photocopies of artwork by the prisoner AKKI
was given to Dion Bell in the 1960’s.
She tracked him down, a Basil Akhurst who trained as a draughtsman
before the war and post war worked as a cartoonist in Blackpool and identified
his work in the Changi museum in Singapore.
She found 69 more artists who contributed pieces. The beauty of Far East
is captured in small pictures and maps and
the tropical flora and fauna. Each artist has a half plate with their
art, military rank, birthplace, camps and photos. The oral histories from families are moving,
often their fathers did not talk much about the war.
Geoff Gill is a physician who looked after the FEPOWS and their
tropical diseases with Dr Dion Bell in Liverpool STM. Later their psychological
problems were recognised. The range of
medical problems experienced by the FEPOWS included malaria, dysentery and
tropical ulcers which are illustrated here. An early aspect of camp life is
captured with the cartoon of a VD clinic in Changi in 1942. One needed humor to cope with the captivity.
The prisoners created solutions to the camp problems and created a citizens
army that prepared yeasts and had distillation going. This resulted from having
men with different skills such as biology and metal working together. The
picture of Captain Mackintosh at his microscope is beautiful capturing an
expert looking for diseases.
Religion helped people survive. The padres kept services going
and supervised many burials. The cemetery picture by padre has a quiet stillness
.
One family have kept a wooden carving of St George their father
carved for the chapel, it was used by Japanese as dart board
Jenny Wood is an archivist at the Imperial War Museum, in her
chapters she describes how art was used to keep morale up. It created by men who could easily die. Searle
had dreadful experiences especially working on the Thai –Burma railway and was
fortunate to be survive. She contributed the oral history project and the final
appendices have comments from the families.
The art work has been kept by the children. Many parents did not
talk about their experience until they were v old. They realized that they used art to survive
imprisonment.
This book has a resonance for me because my mother and aunt and
grandparents were FEPOWS in Java. My grandfather was a colonial water engineer.
I wonder how they survived? She was with
her mother and twin sister which must have helped hugely. My grandfather was in another camp which
created anxieties. They passed the time playing games. It is very boring being a prisoner especially
for a teenager. She spoke little about
the experience. She mentioned the chaos in Java after the war. She described being given English fried
breakfast on the boat back to Holland that they could not eat and the boats
were followed by hungry seagulls eating the scraps. Her experience made her a
survivor, when things went wrong her survival instinct kicked back when
experiencing fractures in her late eighties. She was the fastest elderly lady
to mobilise after her hip fracture surgery in 2014. She occasionally mentioned
the viciousness of the guards. Mostly
she coped by not discussing it.
The absence of women artists is because the British FEPOWS were
all male and in the British Army. However as my family history shows women were
imprisoned. Australian women have
written about their ordeal. The enquiry would be strengthened by having some female
voices or a discussion of how to capture those voices.
This beautiful book is a testament to the human spirit. These
men could die at any time but they created pieces of art as a survival
strategy. This book captures their
survival then and through the oral history project gives one a link to their
post war lives.
Palatine books 2019
Meg Parkes, Geoff Gill, Jenny Wood
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