History Channel Documentary - Remembering Jaywick

It was  a real honor to have the opportunity to be involved with the History Channel & Hurrah productions documentary on Operation Jaywick - the story of the commandos who blew up 30,000 tons of Japanese shipping in Singapore Harbor. It is an incredible story and I was delighted to have been one of the people on the program given the opportunity to help share it. Lest we forget

Mick Brundle's father on the Kuala

Mick Brundle writes.... I just found your blog!

My Father was on The Kuala as well and his account of his escape from Singapore, the bombing of the Kuala and his subsequent escape to India is in the Imperial War Museum archive:  Document 9410.  The contents on their website reads:

'A very interesting ts memoir (38pp), compiled in 1995, describing his employment as an assistant architect in the Malayan Public Works Department, 1938 - 1941, including his involvement in various defence construction projects and his service in the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force, his impressions of conditions and morale in Singapore in early February 1942, the circumstances of the controversial issue to him and other PWD personnel of official 'evacuation passes' on 13 February, his embarkation on the SS KUALA, her sinking by Japanese aircraft in the Bangka Straits on 14 February, his experiences while stranded on Pom Pong island with other survivors from sunken ships, his onward voyage by small boat to Sumatra and overland journey to the west coast port of Padang from which he was evacuated on 1 March on the cruiser HMAS HOBART to Ceylon. Mr Brundle's copy of the official evacuation diary (pp 1 -4 only) of the PWD party from 13 - 27 February is appended to the memoir and is also reproduced in its text.'

My father died some years back, he went back to Singapore after the defeat of Japan , where I was born and lived until independence.

Japan's blitz on Penninsula Malaysia

Norman 'Nobby' Clark

My good friend Michael Pether writes from New Zealand...I recall when in Singapore a couple of years ago you took photographs of the original “Straits Times” I had with me covering the Japanese Surrender in 194. It was a copy kept by my grandfather ( Norman ‘Nobby’ Clark) who had been in Changi and Sime Road Camps and who was there on the day – he has actually marked himself on the photo on the last page. He was a n engineer at the Government Rice Mills in Singapore and had camped out in the Central Fire Station as an incorrectly classified ‘neutral in Japanese occupied Singaporefor five months until rounded up in July 1942.