My forg KEPT SECRET FOR otten hero
Torpedoed twice, years of suffering in Japanese POW camps and finally gunned down as he swam from hell ship.. now soldier’s family calls for us all to remember VJ troops’ sacrifice
JACK Frith’s fate was as cruel as any endured by the fallen in the Second World War.
The 20-year-old factory worker from Manchester joined the Army in 1941 to do his bit like millions of others.
On his way to the Far East, his ship was torpedoed and he was captured by the Japanese.
Over the next two years he was starved and beaten in a squalid prisoner of war camp.
And in 1943 he was herded on to a “hell ship” with 547 other Pows to go to another camp.
The unmarked cargo vessel was torpedoed by a US submarine and only half of the captives, including Jack, managed to escape.
For around eight hours they floated in the Pacific while the Japanese picked up their own men.
Then they turned machine guns on the helpless prisoners, spending hours finishing them all off.
After the war the atrocity was investigated but no war crimes charges were ever brought against those responsible.
Even Jack’s elder brother George – who fought the Japanese in Burma – went to his grave in 1982 unaware of what had happened.
But the story can be revealed for the first time today thanks to a new book by George’s granddaughter.
Wreath
Jacquelyn Frith – named after her great uncle – spent ten years unearthing facts that were shelved for nearly 70 years.
She also hopes to raise awareness of the sacrifice of the thousands of Brits who died fighting Japan.
They are dubbed the Forgotten Army because the campaign is not as well known as the battle against Japan’s ally Hitler.
Jacquelyn spoke to the Sunday People as Britain prepares to honour the 75th anniversary next Saturday of VJ Day when the announcement of Japan’s surrender marked the end of the Second World War.
She said: “Last year on VJ Day I went to Southport War Memorial and I was the only person standing there. I laid the only wreath on the monument.
“I think that was absolutely tragic that they had all been forgotten. It’s emotional just thinking about it.
“Those who fought in Europe, in North Africa, in the Far East, were all brothers in arms, no matter where they were.”
In 1941 her uncle Jack left his job doing essential war work in a factory in Hyde to join up – hoping to avenge the death of a friend in the battle of Crete.
Jack, a gunner in the
77th Heavy Anti-aircraft
Regiment of the Royal
Artillery, was on a convoy heading for
North Africa when
Japan joined the war on Germany’s side by bombing the US navy base
Pearl Harbor.
His ship was ordered to the Far
East instead but it was sunk.
Just three weeks after he had set off and without ever firing a shot, he was forced to build an airstrip with other Brits in Java.
Jacquelyn, 48, said: “The Pows tried to sabotage the work b but were killed if they were caught caught.
“One day one chap, a trooper with the King’s Own Hussar Hussars, simply spilled water on him himself and jumped up.
“Th The Japanese started hitting him with their rifles. He pu put up his arms to defend himself but they thoug thought he was trying to g grab rab one of t heir weap weapons.
“T “They took him into the fores forest and dispatched him. He i is one of many Far East prisoners of war with no re resting place.” On November 25, 1943, 54 548 Pows including
RESEARCH: Jacquelyn Frith
Jack were packed into the Japanese freighter Suez Maru sailing from Ambon for Surabaya.
Prisoners were crammed into cargo holds with little air, food or water for journeys that could last weeks.
Many died of starvation, dysentery or beatings and their bodies were thrown overboard. The Geneva Convention of 1864 set out that prisoner or hospital ships should be marked clearly with red crosses. But Japan ignored the conventions and 20,000 Allied prisoners died because transport ships were sunk by accident.
On November 29 the submarine USS Bonefish torpedoed the Suez Maru
unaware it was carrying Pows. Most prisoners drowned in the holds but an estimated 250, including 23-year-old Jack, were shot in the water.
Official papers about the massacre were not declassified until 2010.
Jacquelyn, from Southport, Merseyside, said: “Jack survived almost two years in a prisoner of war camp in relentless inhumanity. He then survived a ship being sunk in a torpedo attack, only to be shot as he struggled in the sea.
“The case came to light in 1949. The Australians built up a very strong open and shut case, recording 22 statements from eye-witnesses, with each of the accounts
ORDEAL: Allied Pows in Singapore
CRUEL: Emaciated survivors of camps very similar. We know from interrogation records exactly what happened.
“Despite that, not long before the sixth anniversary of the massacre, the Allies, primarily the Americans but including the British, decided that the case should not come to trial and that they were shutting down trials against the Japanese.”
Jacquelyn’s book is called Unwritten Letters To Spring Street after the address in Hyde – 13 Spring Street – where Jack left to sign up.
She said: “I visited the site of where he lived and it is now under a Morrisons supermarket car park.
“But I did find a bit of cobble that would have once been the road.
“The Unwritten Letters title is because Pows were not allowed to write letters.”
Jacquelyn hopes stories like Jack’s will make people honour VJ Day as much as VE day. She said: “The motivation behind the day is to give thanks for our freedom, and to remember their sacrifice.
“On August 15, put a light in your window, put a poppy on your door and fly the VJ Day flag.”
To find out more about Jacquelyn’s book, please visit unwrittenletterstospringstreet. co.uk