Remembering

On Saturday I met up with four people who were in the Japanese internment camp with my grandparents and mother, near Kuching, 1942-1946. Two of these were brothers in their late sixties whom I've not met before, only seen as small blond boys in photos and film footage from the liberation of the camp. It was an amazing experience to meet and talk with them. On 17 August it will be exactly 62 years since the Australian forces liberated the camp, saving hundreds of men, women and children who would otherwise have been executed under orders from the Japanese. Hundreds more had already died by that time, and some of the survivors would face premature deaths from illnesses, physical and mental, resulting from their incarceration.

My mother is the girl held in the soldier's arms on the left of the photo, with her hand on her head.