100 blips, 98 years

Well, this is my 100th blip! How fast did that come round ?!

I'd had a plan in mind for some time, as to what to blip for today, then when I brought the tin back from my parents' house at the weekend, I knew that I wanted to change my original plan.

As I mentioned in my posting on Sunday, I brought the tin back in order to do use some of its contents to do some research into my family history - well, one specific part of it.

My late paternal grandfather (Henry) served in the Royal Artillery during WWII and on 1st Feb 1943, became a Japanese prisoner of war and remained so until 17th November 1945. We know he spent time in the prison camp at Changi and also worked in the mines, but other than that a few anecdotes, we know very little of his time as a POW. I plan to use some of the documents here to find out more.

Another reason for wanting to blip these items today is that it would have been Henry's 98th birthday this week. He died when I was very small and it saddens me greatly that I have no memory of him. Despite that though, I've always felt a particularly strong bond with him and feel I owe it to him to find out more about what he went through as a POW.

Far Eastern POWs went through Hell and in many ways their plight can seem forgotten amidst the other horrors of the war.

One of the documents in the photo is a thin strip of paper on which Henry wrote a letter over several days to my Nan, as a chronicle of part of his journey home (facilitated by the Americans). Part of it is very faded and hard to read, some of it is very personal to our family, but I wanted to share on excerpt here:

"Forgot to mention atomic bomb damage coming into Nagasaki. The railway came near 3 miles of continuous immolation, every building flat, fires still burning."

ps Henry is pictured here - bottom row, far left with the bandage on his head.