VJ Day

[Viktoria]

Oooh, a lovely lot to watch there ,it say only moving footage but I was sure
at VE Day footage was shown of her,in Burma talking and singing to the troops .
Well I will enjoy  that later .
Many thanks .
I expect her family might have been upset, had it been shown, very understandable.
Thanks again.
Viktoria.

[Joy Dean]

I think there has been quite a bit of publicity about it - with regard to today’s events. This morning’s programme was very good. In the relative quiet of the National Arboretum, the interviews and memorial service were so interesting and often very moving.
For the VE Day commemorations, I made a bit of bunting as we were going to sit at the end of the path and see the neighbours.
I decided to put it out again today, I am the only one to do so , to remember my dad. He would probably be a bit irritated as he remained definitely Irish in his loyalties.
As has been said so often and was repeated again today, the men generally did not tell of their experiences. I remember my mother telling me that he used to have nightmares and on at least one occasion, she thought he was going to go through the bedroom window as he leapt up to ‘charge’.

Apart from the painful memories too much to bear at times, they would have been told not to talk about it upon their return home; there had been euphoria at the time of VE Day and people were beginning to build their lives again

[Rena]

It amazes me that given the conditions and horrors of WWI ,and those of the war in Burma and Japanese’s prison camps etc ,the second world war in Europe ,then Korea ,Malaya and Cypress and Israel and Aden  ,The Falklands, that  there were not so many men with PTSD.
I know “ Shell shock “ was a blanket term ,but ordinary men like my father had no help, just had to get on with life, and a very deprived life given the economic conditions prevailing in the 1920’s and 1930’s .
Why is it then that so many present day ex soldiers suffer so badly from PTSD?
Surely what they see and experience is not different ,it is all hard and horrible .
Can it be that the openness that is encouraged is not necessarily better?
That is a genuine question and not a judgement.
Many men have changed, you never saw a man pushing a pram ,or shopping
for food. They had hardly any part in their babies’ lives ,change a nappy!!!
So is it their feminine side which gives them more sensitivity?
I am just curious , but it took some bottle to bottle up the experience of WWI
and all the following conflicts ,until relatively recently .
Perhaps someone knows if there were many more men affected psychologically than we generally are aware of.
Whatever, PTSD is a great tragedy .
Viktoria.

I've heard of a few men who didn't say anything to their families because when they returned home to Blighty and saw the very extensive damage done by the WWII blitz they thought their families had had it harder than they did.  Unbelievably even in the Great War many towns suffered from damage by bombs manhandled out of flimsy bi-planes !!

I think the only ones who didn't know how to survive were the rich who had to rely on servants to prepare meals and look after their babies.   My grandfather born 1886 always cooked his family's Sunday breakfast consisting of; bacon, sausage, eggs and toast.   My OH and my father born 1912 knew how to bake pies and could put a cooked 3-course meal on a table.  Although my parents took turn in bathing us, I do recall my father failing miserably to pin a nappy on my younger brother and he was hesitant to push a pram, however, his childless older brother could often be seen pushing a niece or nephew in a pram - and I've a photo which proves my OH knew how to push a pram      It wasn't until  I was a stay-at-home mum in the late 1960s that I shopped during the day, which I discovered was the time to see old men doing their own shopping.  I remember once standing behind two old men in a queue and hearing one saying to the other that he'd just returned from visiting his daughter for a week's holiday.  Apparently he felt obliged to go because "she worries that I can't look after myself", ..... then came the sound of two old men chuckling. [/i]

[River Tyne Lass]

For a while now I have been taking photos at two local cemeteries and adding these to Find A Grave, here and there, as I get time.  One of these is a beautiful old cemetery at Preston, North Shields. 
On Friday evening I had been adding a few more photos and then spent a bit time browsing. 
I was astonished to come across this memorial for a local Tyneside man and his biography which related that he and other service men and a group of nurses had been massacred on Radji beach by their captors.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/187396472/robert-trewhitt

This was the first time I had ever heard mention of Radji beach and what happened there.
Somehow I felt very affected reading about this man and thinking that at one time he would have been living a quiet, ordinary life on Tyneside as I do. It literally felt that this had come close to home. I have since added a virtual flower for Robert Trewitt on Find A Grave. 

I think well done to the person who has taken the time to add his biography and in so doing has helped fulfill 'lest we forget' for this poor man (and the others who were needlessly slaughtered instead of being taken prisoner of war as they should have been).

Added: Here are some links to the story about what happened to the nurses.  Be warned -  it is grim reading. 

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-nursing-tragedy-massacre-at-radji.html?m=1

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6897211/Australian-nurse-Vivian-Bullwinkel-pressured-silent-1942-rape-murder-Japanese.html

[heywood]

Thank you for this. It is , as you say, grim reading.
The gravestone shows his son, Robert Trewhitt,  who was killed in 1944
https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2810911/TREWHITT,%20ROBERT/

His father’s details are here,
https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/2073370/TREWHITT,%20ROBERT/

What grief for the poor wife and mother, Louisa Trewhitt.

[River Tyne Lass]

I agree about the grief that must have been suffered by Louisa.  She lived to a good old age and it is beyond me how she must have carried this grief all her life.  It must have been torturous.  It is so tragic not only for those massacred but for those who had to come to terms with what had happened to their loved ones.  I think it must have taken so much courage for those left behind (like Louisa) to carry on. 

Lest We Forget.

[Nanna52]

RTL I found that story about Vivian Bullwinkel confusing as I knew about it.  Perhaps because I am an Aussie and my father served they heard about it.  I didn’t know or remember the name of the beach but have known the story since a teen. 

A friend of my parents was a prisoner of the Japanese and his wife said that he would have nightmares and try to pull her off the bed to ‘get down and hide as the Japs were coming’. Some dreadful stories.

[Viktoria]

Thankyou, River Tyne Lass .
Grim indeed, and sad it is not well known .
It is true to say the war in the East was overshadowed by the conflict in
Europe , and VJ celebrations were less than those for VE .

The troops named themselves The forgotten Army in a forgotten war.

And here we are at odds with the EU yet have secured a big tariff free trades deal with Japan!

Thanks again, we should know about these things ,remembering is not vindictive,  but it is all  we can do and the least we should do.
Viktoria.

[Shiny1]

Robert and his son were both members of my scout group, the 3rd Tynemouth (Ritson's Own) which is based near the cemetery. We have an old photo dated around 1917 which shows Robert senior and a few of his family members as well as other scouts.

I started researching the people on the photo a few years ago and that is when Robert's story started to come out. The connection with the massacre only came to light a couple of months ago when I was contacted by Michael in New Zealand who was researching the evacuation of Singapore and thought Robert may be someone who was named in a set of memoires he had recently got hold of. Between us and with the help of another of his colleagues, Jonathan, we managed to confirm that Robert was in deed one of the unidentified victims.

A service is held on the beach every year where the names of the victims are read out (they have a facebook page with photos on from past years) and Michael has told me that Robert's name will now be included in that list.

As far a Louisa's story goes, when the family first returned home they went to stay with Robert's sister Isabella, her husband George and her father in law, also called George, at 123 Queen Alexander Road. George was the man who formed our scout group and was the scout leader at the time that Robert and his brother Richard were there as scouts.

George died during an air raid on the 30th of September 1941 when a bomb landed just around the corner from his house on an air raid shelter he was near. His story is on our group website but during the raid his house had all the windows blown out. Five months later is when Robert would have been reported missing in Singapore. A year after that her father in law George died and then six months later is when her son Robert died as a pilot under training when the aircraft he was flying crashed during an aerobatic maneuver.

She really had a rough few years. I believe she went back to her parents home in Hull for a while but obviously returned to North Shields as she is buried with her son. She obviously didn't remarry as she still had the name Trewhitt when she died.

Like so many other families they really had it rough. I doubt Louisa ever knew the real story of how her husband died but I am in contact with some of her family and have shared it with them. I know they have been to the memorial in Singapore where Robert is named.

The story I put on Find a Grave is a watered down version of the events, as River Tyne Lass said the full story is pretty harrowing but if anyone does want to read more I can recommend the Muntok Peace Memorial website:

https://muntokpeacemuseum.org/?page_id=260

If you look through the website they have original source documents on there including a transcript of Vivian Bulwinkel's testimony at the war crimes trial and more detailed accounts of the events but again be warned, it is not easy reading.

Lest we forget.

Michael