In this episode we are talking about the FEPOW Research Group. FEPOW stands for Far East Prisoners of War, and it focuses on capturing the history of civilian captives during the second World War and the impact that this has had on subsequent generations.

The group brings together veterans, their families, writers, and academics to create a friendly space to capture stories that we can learn from and apply to research now.

Approximately 240,000 Allied servicemen had become prisoners of war of the Japanese by early 1942. Over 50,000 British were captured during the fighting in Hong Kong, Malaya, at the fall of Singapore and across the former Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). The 415-kilometre Thailand-Burma railway was built by Far East prisoners of war (FEPOW) who were part of a huge slave labour force drafted from across the region. The railway provided the Japanese with a vital supply route for their fighting forces in Burma. It was forged through raw jungle, across mountain passes and was completed in a little over 15 months in October 1943. Of the 30,000 British FEPOW sent to camps in Thailand and Burma over 6,600 died.

For this episode, we welcome a new co-host, Geoff Gill from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where he has been involved with research and clinical care of former Far East prisoners of war.

He has led the medical history inquiries into Far East imprisonment, resulting in two recent books, Captive Memories, and Burma Railway Medicine. We also have two great guests, Brian Spittle and James Reynolds.

Geoff explains to us “I think one of the things I've learnt over the years, is that there are many different ways of telling a story and there's no one right way there, there are many different ways.” and in direct reference to the stories shared directly from the FEPOWs and their archives “It's a story worth learning from, and I think we have receptive generations to tell it to.”

This episode features:

Prof. Geoff Gill – Professor of International Medicine, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

Geoff Gill is Professor of International Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the University of Liverpool, and a retired NHS Consultant Physician. At LSTM he has been involved in the medical care of ex-Far East Prisoners of War (POWs), as well as extensive clinical research into their ongoing health problems – notably persisting malaria and amoebic dysentery, chronic worm infestations, hepatitis B infection, long-term effects of vitamin deficiency, and the extensive psychological aftermath. He has published extensively on these and other POW-related health issues. More recent research has involved the medical history of the Far East POW experience, in particular on the Thai-Burma Railway. This resulted in a PhD degree in 2009, and the book Burma Railway Medicine (with Meg Parkes) published in 2017. The LSTM Far East POW Project has been in operation in different forms since late 1945, and is the longest collaboration in the School’s history.

Brian Spittle

Brian grew up in the UK and in his mid-twenties moved to the United States to pursue postgraduate studies. He has lived in Chicago for the past forty years, retiring from a career in higher education administration six years ago. His father, Jack Spittle, was in the RAMC during the Second World War, arriving in Singapore at the end of November 1941. He worked in the dysentery wing at Roberts Hospital at Changi, and followed the hospital moves to Selarang and Kranji. A keen ornithologist, he made detailed observations of the birds at Changi, publishing them after the war in the Bulletin of the Raffles Museum. It was only after his father died in 2004 that Brian found the notebooks he had made in captivity. Brian is close to completing a memoir about his own journey to understand more of Jack Spittle’s time as a POW and of his own childhood growing up with a father with PTSD. The working title for the memoir is: Bird’s Eye View.

James Reynolds 

James Reynolds is the grandson of FEPOW Eric Cordingly, and the son of author Louise Cordingly. James has worked for the BBC since 1997, firstly as a foreign correspondent, now as a news presenter on the World Service. He's spent many years covering the effects of war.

Find out more about LSTM's FEPOW programme here: https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/history/far-eastern-prisoners-of-war-fepow

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Hello and welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science, a podcast about connecting people and communities to science or research

I'm Dr.

Kim Ozano and in this episode we are talking about the FEPOW Research Group.

FEPOW stands for Far East Prisoners of War, and it focuses on capturing the history of civilian captives during the second World War and the impact that this has had on subsequent generations.

The group brings together veterans, their families, writers, and academics to create a friendly space to capture stories that we can learn from and apply to research now.

I have a wonderful new co-host with me today, Geoff Gill from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where he has been involved

He has led the medical history inquiries into Far East imprisonment, resulting in two recent books, Captive Memories, and Burma Railway Medicine.

We also have two great guests with us today Brian Spittle and James Reynolds, but before we hear from them, let's hear from our co-host.

Geoff, welcome to the podcast.

We're really excited to have you here.

It would be great if you could start off by explaining why is it important now to share histories of captivity and how does this link to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine?

thank you very much and it's, real pleasure to talk about this fascinating and rather unusual topic.

So the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine became involved by accident in late 1945, where local Far East POWs were returning, from their captivity, and

Um, and shortly after returning home and started having relapses of malaria, dysentery and so on, which were clearly unusual and couldn't be coped with by general practitioners.

So the local schools started seeing them and treating them and what started off as a very informal small process snowballed over the years and became more formalised and became a national, scheme.

and since those days we've seen over 4,000 Far East POWs for, diagnosis management of continuing physical and psychological problems related to their imprisonment.

I, of course wasn't around in, in 1945, but in the mid 1970s as a very young raw junior doctor, I worked, clinically at the Liverpool Tropical School prior to working in

This totally new to me as a British trained young doctor and I became fascinated by this and after traveling and after further training, I came back to the Liverpool School as a, an academic,

So we certainly learned, a huge amount medically from these men and from their experiences.

And I think, and I'm sure we can explore this later, is that also there are.

The lessons of history as well, and, the stories that have evolved and, to this day are being told and retold and hopefully, informing and educating new generations.

It is really quite incredible.

and just a very quick question, before we meet our guests, were other people around the world doing something similar or was the Liverpool School of

So I think it's true to say that we did, lead the field in, researching and in publishing the results of our work, defining these long-term conditions.

but after our first publications, we were going back to, the early 1980s, but through to the late 1990s, then other areas did become involved, because of course there were

That's great.

Thank you very much.

And speaking of these stories, let's meet our guests who I think have quite a lot to share.

Brian Spittle.

welcome to the podcast.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you relate to this work.

it's a rather recent story and it's a very old story, both at the same time.

I think one of the first things that I remember was my mother sitting me down at the kitchen table and telling me that my father had been a prisoner of war in the

then followed a silence because the other thing she told me was that we weren't supposed to talk about this, and I was never supposed to ask

He died in 2004, and it was only a couple of years before he died that he pulled me into his study and said, I've got something to show you.

He pulled out a, an article that he'd written for the uh, bulletin of the Raffles Museum, in Singapore, on the birds of Singapore.

He'd studied the birds, at the Changi camp and another camp where he was.

My mother had initially told me that he had, managed to survive largely by keeping himself active and studying the birds in the camp.

I just had an idea that maybe he was scribbling some things on the back of an envelope, which actually he was, I learned later.

I didn't realize it was systematic.

I, I suppose after he died, that becomes the second part of my curiosity here.

I found a large box of materials that he brought back from Singapore, the bird notes and many other notes that he made.

Thank you.

When you listen to Geoff in the work that's been going on at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, is it really interesting cuz you have that link there?

yes, doubly In fact, really my father should be here because, he wasn't a trained doctor, he was a self-trained biologist, an entomologist.

for eight years before going to Singapore, he had, been a lab assistant in the, Imperial Institute of Entomology, just outside of Slough in, in England,

so he was quite well versed in, in biological topics.

He then trained as a sanitary inspector, right before the war, and so was very much involved in the early issues of sanitation and hygiene as the prisoners of war coalesced around Changi

So he was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, a very lowly position, just a private, he was out there doing anti-malarial work and did do that in the few weeks before the, fall of Singapore.

But then was very much involved with, I, I suppose you like the, the hygiene and sanitation and medical issues connected with, the prisoners as part of his work.

He was also sick for a long time.

From that point of view, the kind of work that the Liverpool, School has done, I think, it would be of enormous interest to him.

Sadly, he never knew about it while he was alive and came back with pretty serious, what we would now call, P T S D issues and never really got any treatment for that or any recognition of it.

So that was one of the things that I wrestled with growing up.

I only know a little about Jack Spittle his work, but a couple things that you mentioned there; one is, A lot of what he did was all about preventive medicine,

Our primary taught course is the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, so it's not just about diagnosis and treatment, it's about prevention.

and it seems to me that your dad was all about that.

and I read about remarkable things about his fly proof latrines and, and malaria work and so on, and amusing those that they sound, these things save lives.

So I think his work was remarkable.

Absolutely.

And what's coming across here is that systematic mindset of documenting things no matter what the conditions are.

But before we go any further, James, welcome to the podcast.

Tell us a bit about your experience and link to the work here please.

So I'm the representative of the next generation, of the second generation down.

My late grandfather was a Far East prisoner of war.

His name was Eric Cordingly.

He was a chaplain and we have some of his writings to help us piece together what he lived through.

He died in 1976 and as, Brian was saying, it was not something spoken about a lot with, my mother's generation.

My mother's one of four, and my grandfather died when I was two.

So it's been a process for our family of putting together those years, done so in the way I think that so many other families have done by finding bags in the attic, by finding documents and by

I think, and I wonder if that was a way of saying, if we don't talk about it, you can look at it when the time is ready.

and for us, that time has been over the last decade.

So I've worked with my mother, Louise, on editing her father's papers, and the reason I'm speaking to you is because in one of the projects that we did, we put together

Eventually my grandfather did come back and, it brings us onto a wider point beyond prisoners of all, every family has stories they pass on Geoff, in your introduction, you're

Perhaps as a spur to other families out there.

Write down your own myths.

Write down your own legends.

I think this is a really important message that passing down those stories is vital, so that we have that connection to history, but also we know, our own progression where we came from.

I have a question for you, James.

Tell me about the moment you and your mother sat together and thought, okay, we're putting this story together.

It was a gradual process.

We'd done together two previous books.

One, we'd found a manuscript left behind by my grandfather about his time in Changi, and we found documents of his time on the Burma Railway, which were, as I'm sure you all know,

So we done that.

Those were very much for grownups.

the subject matter is be beyond awful, even though humanity shines through and the title of the first book, we decided almost down to bedrock about the fact that when you

But then we thought, let's do something else as well.

So we'd always been telling the story of the dog who waited for, for my grandfather.

I heard about it for years, I said let's just get it down.

It just felt like something that would be fun to do.

And it was.

It sounds like a really good route to talk about something that's really difficult, but to maintain those messages and make sure

I'll hand over to Geoff now to talk a little bit more about how these kind of two narratives link with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and research now.

it is very interesting, isn't it, that a of these myths and stories have completely skipped a generation, that the, returning POWs themselves, mostly just said nothing.

Then a lot of these stories have come to light either very late in their lives or even after their deaths.

I can think of lots of examples, sons and grandsons, granddaughters and so on, giving to us at the School of Tropical Medicine, all sorts of memorabilia and

Was that a sort of a stiff upper lip?

Was that a kind of no one will be interested or what's your take on that?

The strange thing for me is, I've been very aware that my father, when he made all these notes in, in, in captivity, he buried them, he kept them buried because they were

So he buried them.

But then he came back and he buried them again.

Not actually buried them, but he put them in the attic,

We, we never talked about Singapore.

For the longest time, I forgot that he was even in Singapore, even though I'd been told that as a young child, I thought he was in Burma until about, oh, I don't know, in my forties or so.

That was the level of disconnect that was going on in the household.

He didn't talk about it.

He didn't join any sort of the associations that were out there that could have been helpful, and he retreated into his study.

Within his study, he was doing work that connected him with people.

In, in, in some cases all around the world, so there was an outwardness and an inwardness that, that, that remains a mystery to me, but a, about this, no, we

Brian, the question I wanted to ask you was, do you understand the silence?

And I'll maybe come back to that question, but on a practical level, Geoff, there was an instruction given to the returning, FEPOWs, and I'm just gonna read some of it to help us

If you'd not been lucky enough to survive and had died unpleasant death, you would not have wished your family and friends to been harrowed by lurid

details of your death."

In other words, don't talk about it.

That was the order, perhaps even the last order that they were given as they returned firstly to Liverpool and then to the rest of the country and, I can get that, I can understand

And one was from, I think the brother of someone who died, who wanted to go and see my grandfather in late forties, early fifties, to hear about his brother's death.

So there was this need to know among those that we don't know about, and it may have just have been a different generation following that order.

It may have been the weight of time.

We're lucky that in my grandfather's case, in 19 67, 68, he did write down an account and a reflection some 20 odd years later about his thoughts.

I think one of the things my mother and I feel on this is we don't have any unanswered questions.

All the questions that we had, there were answers to it, and that's given us a lot of peace for those who weren't able to give answers, maybe that silence is also

Silence can be peace as well.

I think that, yeah, those are really good points, James.

I'm aware of those orders, which were given to returning POWs "don't talk", I just sometimes wonder as the years went by, whether those orders

There's no question about that.

Some did, but many did not.

One thing that impressed me with many of the, Far East POWs that I saw at the Liverpool School was that they were very self-facing over their experiences.

That they've been through terrible experiences.

in Singapore, Java, the Thai Burma railway, whatever, malnutrition, recurrent malaria, dysentery and so on, mistreatment, and they just made light of it.

They said, oh, I was lucky, I got through.

and so on and talking of getting through, I wanted to ask you both about survival because we've enquired historically and medically about,

And we can come up with medical answers.

Yeah.

They were lucky.

They were in a good camp, they got better food.

They, there, there were more, treatments and drugs.

The doctors were better or it was less remote and so on.

And you can medicalise the experience to some extent, but time and time again, many people, talked a lot about this, about, about the actual

I wonder if you might comment on those

On that point.

the thought that we've always had as a family is that one of the reasons my grandfather was able to survive was because he had a very important job that being a chaplain,

But suddenly when they got captured, all of a sudden there was firstly nothing in Changi, and then obviously horror on the railway.

His job became really important as a place of solace, and on a practical level and on burying people and being with them in their last moments, the meticulous records he had to take as

and that's suddenly become from what was an rather non-essential job he felt before the war to an absolutely essential job in captivity.

Brian, do you think that your father's knowledge of public health at preventive medicine, do you think that might have

Yes.

I th I've thought quite a lot about this.

I've read your grandfather's book, James, I, and, I, I was very struck by it.

It's a wonderful testimony.

My own father was I think by character almost at this point, a researcher.

He'd gone through a nine years as a lab assistant.

He was immersed in research techniques.

From this, I think he wanted to document what was going on.

Yes, some of it was just keeping up time.

He was bored and he, he needed to fill time and fill the day, and he did that through writing down everything, I think, but one of the things he wrote

He wrote an article on fly swatting, which I mean, there was a sort of slightly humorous take on the hygiene, if you like.

I don't think it was ever published, but he wrote these drafts of these short articles, and I think that what's implicit in that is two things; one is the discipline and the focus and the ability

It implies that you are going to publish this, hopefully, at some point, as he did with one or two of the pieces.

Even though towards the end of his time there when he was at Kranji in the northwest, coast of, Singapore.

I'm not sure he thought he was ever gonna survive at that point.

That was a very bleak period.

But still, I think those two pieces, the discipline of the research, which he'd learned so well, at, the Imperial Institute of Entomology, and then I, to me, the sense of the future.

You mentioned fly sorting there and, that was a very interesting practice and, a very simple but effective method of dysentery control.

particularly worked well on the, the Thai Burma railway, where it became so sophisticated that before men could have their supper, they had to produce 50 dead

You cut down the flies.

They stopped buzzing around the latrines.

They stopped landing on food and so on.

Less dysentery.

It's just such a simple and clever hygiene, method.

and it's interesting that your dad was involved with that.

And again, I mentioned before the fly proof latrines again, something very, simple, but actually something of huge benefit.

And I think that's one of the things that, we as a school of, academic tropical medicine have learned that very simple techniques can actually be enormously effective.

You see that in simple things like malaria control in children in the tropics, just a bed net.

A properly used bed net can be enormously effective in reducing malaria transmission and, and mortality.

So I think that is, a very important point.

I think what also strikes me here is the human resilience that comes out.

I was listening to your stories and, having a focus and living for others and playing a role, and as we live in a world that's changing all the time

James and Brian, have you found that you've learned a lot just from, not just about the stories, but also about the way you can live in the, in, current situations.

I think I'm still learning.

There are so many pieces that I'm still trying to piece together, I'm not gonna be able to do all of it.

I've got to a certain point, but it's leading me to more questions as much as answers.

Now I think there's a certain peace that comes from a period of engaging with, in my case, my father and, and what I did not know and trying to come to know some of

The gap there is just too enormous.

In terms of learning about resiliency and his character, of course, I've learned a lot, but I'm left with this paradox and I don't know, what to say about it, but awful though, they were,

My father said there were no quarrels.

People got along with each other.

There was no time for, for discord.

and so that's one piece that I think becomes a puzzle is that once as, and I've read one or two POW memoirs, Russell Braddon's in particular, Naked Island, as

That he's lost his comrades, he's lost this camaraderie.

What happens to them now?

Your question, I think, gets to that a little bit.

What do we learn from all of that?

The other question I have is the other voices.

I think one of the limits of these memoirs and it's, it's inherent in them because they're personal stories, of course, but what voices are we not listening to?

What voices have we not heard?

I'm finding myself more and more interested in what was the experience of the Chinese, what was the experience of the Malays, what was the experience of Indians, and for that matter, Japanese?

Those are stories I would like to hear more of and engage myself more with because I think my father, thought that too.

He actually was one of those people who did not have any particular malice, feel any particular malice towards the Japanese .He thought everyone was in a pretty rotten boat.

Most of the Japanese he met didn't wanna be there either.

That was his sort of view.

I think we have some real questions to ask there and there's so much that can be added with these stories, but they need to be multi-dimensional, not just one dimensional.

I can only do one story.

I, I'm not even sure I can do that, but there are so many, that, I would like to engage with.

I've thought of others and there's my, in my work as a journalist, it's taken me to people who did know what it's like.

I've seen many, people caught up in war.

Many people caught up in disasters over the years, and it struck me that they're the ones who know not me, and that I can understand it, but I haven't lived it.

But it is worth knowing that out there, there are people who have lived it.

we talk about the FEPOWs and we can also talk about the people who cared for the FEPOWs left behind.

There are people I've interviewed who've been split up for years in different parts of conflicts, not knowing if their relatives are okay or not.

People who've gone through devastating tragedies of their own and there are people out there who know it's not me, but I've met them.

What you both say is very interesting and the strong impression I've got from talking to many hundreds of Far East POWs is that in the vast majority of

There was wonderful camaraderie, incredible support, huge gratitude to the Padres, the doctors, and so on.

and incredibly clever responses to adversity, both physical in terms of camp workshops, producing amazing surgical equipment and distilling alcohol

I think there's so much that I've learned in this small window.

around, I, the importance of documenting and sharing these stories because there is so much to learn and apply in the current context.

Unfortunately, we have to come to an end of the episode, Brian, can you just tell us what piece of advice would you give to others wanting

I'm very conscious that I could have reacted very differently to that box of material that I found after my father died.

I could have chosen not to open it.

I chose to open it and then that obligates you to do certain things.

So I think if the, if you are faced with a situation where, you have access to information that, that is important and should be uncovered, and shared, then you should do it.

And it takes a certain discipline, it takes a certain commitment, and it isn't something that is done quickly.

it, it happens over a period of time.

I think that's the, that's one thing I think and it's worth doing, and it brings you into contact with all kinds of people, that, that will help you along the way.

The other thing I would just say quickly, is try to be open to other points of view and other perspectives.

Don't just stay within a received opinion about what you think the situation is because, clearly, it's the old age, old problem of history.

To look at it from any one perspective is not to really do history, but you're involved in something else altogether, go beyond what you're given.

That takes some commitment and you have to be, you have to be ready to do that.

It took me some while to actually read the notes.

Some years after I found them, I'd still not really engaged with them.

That took some time to get myself in the right place to, to do that.

Thank you.

I think there's some great pieces of advice there.

James, anything to add?

If there are family folk tales writing down, because they're gonna be really fun to tell to other generations and to other people.

And if there are somewhere plastic bags in attic, then quietly have a look at them.

Wonderful.

Geoff, take us home with one final message for others.

I think one of the things I've learnt over the years, and I've learned more of tonight, is that there are many different ways of telling

We haven't seen a Far East POW at the Tropical School for just over 20 years now with the passage of time, but, as that phase of clinical medicine and medical

and so we've continued with, books and historical articles and so on in trying to keep it alive.

And just finally, by perhaps final story or message, is that perhaps one of the most interesting and successful projects we've done over the last 10 or

And that has been received, very enthusiastically by both teachers and students, and we've had some wonderful experiences where Far East POWs

The take home message of that is that this was a unique episode in history.

It's a story worth telling.

It's a story worth learning from, and I think we have receptive generations to, to tell it to.

Thank you so much and, a children's book is obviously another way to reach out and keep the generational knowledge going.

So thank you to our co-host and to guests, that's been a wonderful conversation.

I have certainly learned a lot.

And thank you to our listeners.

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