75th anniversary of repatriation of former Far East Prisoners of War

On 7 October 1945 the P&O liner Corfu docked in Southampton, the first ship carrying 1,500 former Far East Prisoners of War (FEPOW) to arrive back in the UK after the end of hostilities in South East Asia. She was the first of 27 other ships to bring over 20,000 FEPOW back to Southampton, whilst another 17,000 or so went back to Liverpool. These men were generally in poor physical condition and were often traumatised, but their official welcome was somewhat low key and they were encouraged not to discuss their frequently brutal treatment in the Japanese prison camps and not least on the Burma-Siam Railway.

To commemorate the 75th anniversary of this repatriation FEPOW 75 is launching a website: www.fepow75.org.uk on 7 October to highlight some of the aspects of the captivity of British Forces throughout S E Asia and will feature interviews with survivors, individual case histories and studies and a gallery showing artwork created in the various camps and mostly never seen by a wide audience.

There will also be a section on poetry written in or about the camps and camp life, as well as about the sinking of the Hell-Ship Lisbon Maru by a survivor. FEPOW 75 wishes to invite school children and older students to write their own poetry, based on what they have seen and learned from www.fepow75.org.uk and submit it, so that the best examples from each age group can be published on the site at a later date.