Liverpool pays tribute to prison camp survivors

A monument commemorates the pioneers who came home from Japanese captivity, but often had a second, psychological warfare, to win

Liverpool prepares for a difficult week, the House of Commons debate in Hillsborough, on Monday night, another type of memory must be released on Pier Head.

It is sobering, and perhaps a little optimistic, given that the only public tribute to thousands of men, women and children who survived captivity in camps Japanese POWs of the war with their notoriously cruel regimes.

more than 37,500 prisoners of war and civilians from more than 2000 returned to Britain, at least 20,000 of them see their friends and family for the first time at the Pier Head, for eight weeks when transport ships arrived between October and December 1945. Many of them had their last stage in the UK in the Mersey River, famous in the five years prior.

a score of them and their families, including several grandchildren, will join local residents Saturday, October 15 to celebrate the opening of the granite monument that was paid for by public subscription . The prize goes to Maurice Naylor CBE, 91, a former prisoner of war of the 135th Field Artillery Regiment. The grandchildren of his former commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. Zach and Eliza Parsons, who are nine and seven years, laid a wreath before the bugle sounded the last post.

Naylor said:

is 66 years since our return in this great port of Liverpool to the sound of sirens of ships and the cheers of a crowd of onlookers and well wishers. Not many of us left now, and soon there will be no.
• is a monument, too, girlfriends, wives, parents and grandparents who had to put up with us and our culture. And remember the thousands of our fellow prisoners, unfortunately, died during his imprisonment in appalling conditions. Their families are suffering too much and sacrifice should never be forgotten.

The prisoners of the Far East had first hidden by a focus on Europe and the horrors of the Holocaust. Since then he has become famous for survivors who have achieved success in spite of treatment, including writers JG Ballard and Laurens van der Post and artist Ronald Searle. However, others have also been marked to discuss the experience of years, and in many cases still. The research was a test case and the patient, the following, including a long-term study by the Medical Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

More than 50,000 British forces were caught between the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941, followed by Singapore in February 1942 and the Dutch East Indies, a month later. A quarter died from brutal treatment or neglect, including the untreated disease. Among the victims of the famous Olympic runner Eric Liddell. Other sports personalities have survived, including cricket commentator for the Olympic Games of the coin "jump" EW Swanton and1948 winner Jim Halliday, who weighed 38 pounds (six stone) when he returned to the Pier Head. He worked and Searle Swanton as forced laborers in the notorious Burma railway. Hermance van den Wall Bake, the mother of the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, is another survivor, admitted to Indonesia, where she was born.

The plaque was the idea of ??the Far East Prisoner Research Group of military history, including President Meg Parkes, the daughter of a prisoner in Java and later in Japan, said:

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