Former Prisoners of War (Compensation)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 10:44 am on 4 December 1996.

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Photo of Mr Jeremy Hanley Mr Jeremy Hanley , Richmond and Barnes 10:44, 4 December 1996

I commend the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) for raising this subject today, and all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed. We have been reminded that this Saturday will be the 55th anniversary of the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. It is right that at such a moment we should remember the terrible suffering that the war brought to millions in Asia, and in particular the sacrifices made by our countrymen and women so that we could now enjoy the benefits of peace and prosperity. This morning, moving tributes have been paid by hon. Members on both sides of the House to the heroism of those who fought and who endured captivity in the far east. I gladly add my voice to the tributes to that courage and achievement.

I believe that we shall all long remember the extraordinary emotions aroused last year by the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of VJ day: the proud veterans who marched down The Mall past Her Majesty the Queen; the moment when His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh left the stand to join them; the intense sadness of those who bore in their hearts memories of friends who did not survive; and the sense shared by many of us that those who considered themselves a forgotten army had at last been paid the tribute that was their due. We who have enjoyed the peace could not help being moved by the courage and stoicism of that wartime generation.

Today our focus is on one particular group; a group who probably suffered more brutal and cruel treatment than any other allied service men—the prisoners of war of the Japanese. I shall not repeat the accounts of the horrors to which many were subjected. Hon. Members have today reminded us with some graphic and appalling details of what was done to those prisoners. Nothing can excuse it. It is hard to believe that men could have been treated in so callous a fashion or that they could have endured it.

We must remember too that the prisoners were not all service men or women. Whole families of civilians, including women and children, were interned in prison camps in all the areas occupied by the Japanese. They, too, deserve to be remembered and honoured; they have memories of suffering which are difficult for us to imagine.

About a quarter of the service men taken prisoner in the far east did not survive. That in itself is a tragic indictment of the conditions of their captivity. Those who survived were often marked for life by their experiences. We have all seen the photographs of the sick and starving men who were found and liberated in the camps. They returned from their appalling ordeals to a Britain that had its mind on other things—on all the problems of post-war Europe. There was no counselling available for them, nor was there psychological support. They had to fend for themselves. In some ways that may have been another hard blow.

It is difficult today to re-create in our minds the conditions and emotions of that time. The allied war tribunals sentenced many of the most brutal camp guards to be executed, out of revulsion at the atrocities perpetrated on the prisoners. However, when it came to working out a peace treaty and settling the issues of claims and compensation, the allied Governments found that Japan had been shattered economically. Japan was stripped of its empire, and its overseas population was repatriated. The economic miracle was still a dream for the future.

In the discussions about a peace treaty, Britain insisted on some recognition of the sufferings of those detained by the Japanese. As a result, under the San Francisco peace treaty in 1951, the proceeds of Japan's overseas assets were taken in settlement of the claims. In Britain's case, those sums were distributed to the former prisoners and civilian internees in recognition of the unique hardships that they had endured. No other British prisoners of war received such payments.