Preserving Histories of Resilience to Inform Future Generations

Connecting Citizens to Science

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

Want to hear more podcasts like this?

Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.

The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.    

If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, the SCL Agency.