The Second Map: 3. The Battered Suitcase

Summary

The History Podcast – The Second Map: Episode 3 – "The Battered Suitcase"
Date: September 5, 2025
Presenter: Kavita Puri
Series Producer: Ellie House
[Focus: Britain’s war against Japan in WWII, the Asia/Pacific front, memory, and family legacies.]

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Episode Overview

Episode 3 of "The Second Map" confronts the aftermath of WWII on the Asian front, spotlighting the experiences of British and Commonwealth soldiers, POWs, and civilian internees under Japanese captivity, and how individual and collective memories of this conflict have faded—or been “forgotten”—in Britain and beyond. Through often-untold firsthand testimonies and new conversations with descendants, host Kavita Puri explores how the end of the war did not bring immediate freedom or closure and reflects on why these stories remain so much less prominent in the nation’s consciousness compared to the European theater.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. VE Day vs. VJ Day: Recognizing the "Forgotten" War (01:33–04:48)

• Peter Knight recalls being on duty during VE Day celebrations in Britain (01:33–02:32), while his map-keeping as a boy tracked battles in Europe and Asia.
  • “There was no point in trying to keep order. Everybody was going mad, but we were on the receiving end of all the goodwill.” (02:15)
• Morris Naylor (POW) contrasts the euphoria in Europe with the ongoing suffering in Asia. Rumors of German surrender reached their camp, but it brought “no hope. No idea of when this world was going to end. Apparently forgotten by our friends.” (03:21)
• Puri introduces why the Asian theater—specifically Britain’s war against Japan—is so absent from British collective memory, and frames the episode as a quest to bridge that gap.

2. Prisoners of War and the Thai-Burma Railway (04:49–07:06)

• Morris Naylor details the grueling routines and brutal conditions for POWs building the Thai-Burma Railway:
  • “For three years, it was dawn just before seven o’ clock... Tenko is what was the Japanese word for roll call. We then had a meal which consisted of rice, and that was it.” (05:07)
  • “I had chronic diarrhoea... that wasn’t considered bad enough, normally, to stop you going out on a working party.” (05:57)
  • “If we didn’t do it properly, the Japanese guard, they’d just beat you on the head.” (06:20)
• Emotional toll: the death and despair among POWs is palpable—“A lot of the prisoners just gave up and died.” (06:55)

3. The Atomic Bomb and Moral Ambiguity (07:54–10:22)

• News clip announces the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The impact of this unprecedented weapon is described: “The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.” (07:54)
• Personal reactions:
  • “Every civilized person thought, oh, how horrible. There’s thousands being killed at one go.” (08:39, Peter Knight)
  • “But it resulted in the war ending and that must have saved millions of lives, Japanese as well as American and British.” (08:55, Peter Knight)
  • Acknowledgement of moral complexity: “Do you think that maybe some of the reason that we don't remember VJ Day as well is because of the morally ambiguous way that the war ended?”—“You could be right. Yes.” (10:22)

4. The aftermath in Japan and POW Liberation (10:28–16:40)

• Captain Java Abbas (British Indian 14th Army) describes postwar Hiroshima:
  • “I saw the wasteland and people in all kinds of terrible state with their skins coming out. And those who died were the fortunate ones.” (11:05)
  • “I think it was a crime against humanity to have dropped the bombs.” (11:48)
• The British homefront: On return, POWs and Asia veterans did not receive a hero's welcome.
  • “There was no, let’s have the flags out. Here come the boys. Each of them went as individuals to a depot where they were demobbed.” (13:00, Peter Knight)
• Sheila Brown (civilian internee): Describes camp liberation, the muted relief (“There was no great excitement... we hadn’t the energy”), and the challenge of telling her father her mother had died in camp. (16:11–17:41)
• Margie Caldicott (Sheila’s daughter): Notes the total absence of local recognition for VJ Day compared to VE Day: “Nobody asked me why I’d done that... I was celebrating VJ Day, but... I was the only one.” (18:55–19:33)
• Sheila’s legacy: Her camp music performed in the UK was “a fitting tribute to their endurance in the worst of times.” (19:55)

5. Long Shadows: Psychological and Intergenerational Impact (21:02–27:27)

• Morris Naylor, on returning from POW camp: “I became completely aloof. I couldn’t bear to be in company... I’d go up to my bedroom and burst into tears.” (21:02)
• The culture of silence:
  • “Each sister found these pictures separately and they never even spoke about them with each other.” (25:11)
  • “When they came back there was a conspiracy of silence. I think that the prisoners themselves had been told not to talk about it. Their families had been told separately not to ask about it. And then that got passed on.” (25:18)
• Morris’s breaking of silence only after visiting the war graves in Thailand (26:06): “He owed it to those men to tell the story of what had happened.” (26:06)

6. Memory, Race, and Unrecognised Contributions (28:18–35:06)

• Dr. Diya Gupta on racial dimensions: “There were far greater casualties in Europe of white British men. I think because less white lives were lost in Burma, it’s remembered less.” (28:51)
• Lt. Ali Akbar Raja (14th Punjab Regiment) recalls exclusion from the British Legion after the war: “A lot of us were there. We fought for king and country.” (30:06)
• Lack of memorialization and oral histories for Indian/Commonwealth soldiers both in Britain and South Asia. (31:47–33:39)
• Peter Johnston (Imperial War Museum): “It’s a mistake... it is a very unfortunate mistake that we weren’t able to [record more testimonies].” (33:16)

7. Japan’s Postwar Memory and Shifting Narratives (34:31–37:27)

• Yoshikuni Igarashi (Vanderbilt University): “Early on... what's left out is Asian experiences. What Japan did in Asia. Because war was defined as Pacific War, not Asia Pacific War.” (34:53)
• Occupation and narrative change: immediate postwar focus on US-Japan relations, not confronting Asian atrocities. (35:06–36:06)
• How terminology (like Shusen no Hee, “the day the war ended”) can obscure the true historical events. “As if this is natural disaster.” (37:09)

8. Living Memory, Generational Change, and Rediscovery (38:58–42:17)

• In Yorkshire, a daughter opens her father’s “battered suitcase” and discovers medals and documents from his service in India. He had never spoken of his experience.
  • “People were very modest then about things. No, pride doesn't come into it. It's a fact of life.” (39:57, Peter Blythe)
• Kavita Puri underscores the urgency of recording firsthand accounts before the last witnesses pass away.
• Professor Lucy Noakes: “Foundational myths definitely change over time. They are not fixed. They're shaped very, very much by the kind of needs, the concerns of contemporary society.” (41:31)
• The imperative for multicultural, post-imperial Britain: “If we're going to understand how we got to who we are today, that is a really important part of the story that deserves and needs to be better known.” (42:17)

9. Closing Reflections on Memory and History (42:41–44:55)

• Peter Knight, looking back: “It was a different world, it was a different world. The Pacific was a different world.” (42:41)
• Across Britain, new generations are uncovering buried family stories—creating new questions from old maps, medals, and memories.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Despair, illness, no hope. No idea of when this world was going to end. Apparently forgotten by our friends.”
  – Maurice Naylor, POW in Thailand, (03:21)
• “Every civilized person thought, oh, how horrible. There's thousands being killed at one go... But it resulted in the war ending and that must have saved millions of lives, Japanese as well as American and British.”
  – Peter Knight on atomic bomb, (08:39–08:55)
• “I saw the wasteland... with their skins coming out. And those who died were the fortunate ones. I think it was a crime against humanity to have dropped the bombs.”
  – Captain Java Abbas, on Hiroshima, (11:05–11:48)
• “No, we had a job to persuade him to claim his medals. He said, I don’t want that rubbish.”
  – On Ken, a Burma/Malaya veteran, (13:44)
• “There was a conspiracy of silence. I think that the prisoners themselves had been told not to talk about it. Their families had been told separately not to ask about it. And then that got passed on.”
  – Anne, Morris Naylor’s daughter, (25:18)
• “I think because less white lives were lost in Burma, it's remembered less. That's putting it quite starkly.”
  – Dr. Diya Gupta, (28:51)
• “Japan and the US used to be the two mutually most hated enemies... but comes the end of the war, Japan and US became the closest allies in the Pacific... In that relationship, there’s no necessity to talk about Asian experiences.”
  – Yoshikuni Igarashi, (35:37)
• “I think we owe it to the people who fought and often died on the Asian front to remember them as much as everybody else... That is a really important part of the story that deserves and needs to be better known.”
  – Professor Lucy Noakes, (41:56–42:17)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------|------------------| | VE vs. VJ Day, setting the scene | 01:33–04:48 | | Life as a POW, Thai-Burma Railway | 04:49–07:06 | | Atomic bomb & moral considerations | 07:54–10:22 | | Aftermath, liberation, public response | 10:28–16:40 | | Psychological scars & silence | 21:02–27:27 | | Race and memory, India’s story | 28:18–35:06 | | Japan’s postwar narrative | 34:31–37:27 | | Family legacies & rediscovery | 38:58–42:17 | | Final reflections | 42:41–44:55 |

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Summary Tone & Style

The episode is poignant and reflective, blending vivid firsthand accounts with thoughtful historical analysis. Kavita Puri’s narration draws out not only facts but emotions, generational gaps, and the moral gray zones of war and remembrance. Voices of survivors and their families are central—measured in tone but deeply affecting. There’s a recurring theme of silence—official, familial, and national—and a call to act before memory fades entirely.

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Conclusion

Episode 3, “The Battered Suitcase,” reveals that the “second map” of war—the Asian front—was never just about “foreign” battles. It touched British homes, lives, and memories in complex ways, yet collective acknowledgment lags behind that given to the European theater. Interwoven stories of trauma, modesty, silence, and the slow excavation of memory challenge listeners to expand their understanding of WWII and its legacies. The episode closes with an appeal—to recognize, record, and reflect on the plural history that shapes British society today.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

This is the story of the One. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Granger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

[A]

You know, he would look at these.

[B]

Men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tanzelmann for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts. You're about to listen to the History podcast, the second map episodes of this series will be released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the uk, the whole series is available right now, first on BBC Sounds.

[A]

I was on duty.

[B]

The EJ Peter Knight was working on the Isle of Man on the day that victory in Europe was declared during the Second World War.

[A]

They turned me into a policeman for a day and six of us went ashore to see that the sailors behaved themselves in this V E Day. It was bedlam.

[B]

Four years earlier, as a schoolboy, he'd put up a map of Asia and the Pacific in his living room next to the one of Europe, following the progress of the war on both fronts. Now he was 18, in the Navy, doing his bit.

[A]

There was no point in trying to keep order. Everybody was going mad, but we were on the receiving end of all the goodwill. You know, the fish and chip man ordered fish and chips for all of us.

[B]

Finally, the war in Europe was over.

[A]

We heard eventually that Germany had capitulated and that only came out as a.

[B]

Rumor thousands of miles away. War wasn't over for 24 year old Morris Naylor, who was still being held captive by Japanese forces in a camp in Thailand.

[A]

Somebody had seen a well dressed Thai who said, warrior, Europe over. You know, that sort of thing. You could believe it or not, just as you wanted.

[B]

VE Day was a day like any other from the past three years that he'd been held in captivity.

[A]

Despair, illness, no Hope. No idea of when this world was going to end. Apparently forgotten by our friends.

[B]

For Morris and the other prisoners and soldiers on the Asian front, the war carried on. But fast forward to when VE Day is commemorated. Now it can feel like this was the moment when the whole of the war ended. How many people today even know what VJ Day, Victory Over Japan Day stands for? Or what it was really all about? Why were we fighting a war over there anyway against an enemy that wasn't the Nazis? This series tells that story and explores why today it's not as well remembered as the war in Europe. I'm Kavita Puri. You're listening to the History podcast and from BBC Radio 4 and the World Service, this is the second map. Episode 3 the battered suitcase.

[A]

If you could try and imagine a typical day.

[B]

Maurice Naylor was a gunner in the 18th infantry from Manchester. We heard from him at the fall of Singapore. When he was captured in early 1942 as a prisoner of war, his mornings began exactly the same way.

[A]

For three years, it was dawn just before seven o' clock in the morning and we were woken by buglers. We'd been called out on roll call as it was getting light. Tenko is what was the Japanese word for roll call. We then had a meal which consisted of rice, and that was it. And then at 8 o', clock, we were sent out on working parties.

[B]

He was working on the Thai Burma Railway, making one of the bridges for the trains to cross. Japan wanted it built to help supply its forces in Burma today Myanmar. The forced labor they inflicted was punishing. For years, Moritz carried heavy timber up from the riverbed. The Japanese guards didn't care if the prisoners were malnourished or ill.

[A]

I had chronic diarrhoea. Most of the time I was a prisoner. But that wasn't considered bad enough, normally, to stop you going out on a working party. Although he might want to go to the toilet 10, 12, 20 times a day. Still he had to put up with that.

[B]

Thousands of POWs and Asian civilian laborers died during the construction.

[A]

It was a nightmare. And if we didn't do it properly, the Japanese guard, they'd just beat you on the head if you shout at you.

[B]

For Morris, the war against Japan didn't feel like it was coming to an end anytime soon. He was completely isolated from the rest of the world. After years of existing like this, it was getting harder to find the will to survive. And then the worst happened for Morris. His closest friend in the camp died.

[A]

He was very despondent and I Think probably he just gave up. A lot of the prisoners just gave up and died.

[B]

Morris felt if he too died out there, who would even know? For the many thousands of soldiers still fighting on the Asian front, VE Day meant little too. There were US plans for a land invasion of Japan, supported by the Allies and Britain. That would be even bigger than the D Day landings in Normandy. They estimated tens of thousands of casualties on the Allied side alone. But then, at the start of August 1945, an event happened which brought the war against Japan to an unexpected and abrupt end.

[A]

Scientists, British and American, have made the atomic bomb at last. The first one was dropped on a Japanese city this morning. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

[B]

Three days later, a second nuclear bomb was dropped. The two cities hit. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. The scale of the damage from only two bombs was unprecedented. The rain that came down was black. The rivers flowed with corpses. Hundreds of thousands would die when the.

[A]

Atomic bombs were dropped. Every civilized person thought, oh, how horrible. There's thousands being killed at one go.

[B]

Peter Knight.

[A]

And any thoughtful person didn't like the idea. But it resulted in the war ending and that must have saved millions of lives, Japanese as well as American and British.

[B]

Maybe even Peter's life, because when the bombs hit, he was in the Navy, preparing to face the enemy. How did you feel about having to go so far away from home and fight the Japanese?

[A]

I wasn't looking forward to it. In actual fact, a ship I joined later in the Mediterranean was on its way to the Far east when the bond was dropped and the ship never went past Malta. And had we got to the mainland of Japan, I dread to think. It would have been horrific warfare.

[B]

The dropping of the bombs marked an end to the conflict in Asia and the Pacific. Within a week, Japan had surrendered unconditionally. Do you think that maybe some of the reason that we don't remember VJ Day as well is because of the morally ambiguous way that the war ended?

[A]

You could be right. Yes. Yes.

[B]

Captain Yava Abbas had spent the war as part of the 14th Army. He'd been at many of the frontline battles of the Burma campaign, when the British repelled the Imperial Japanese forces from Northeast India and retook Burma. After the war, he was sent to Japan as part of the Allied occupying force.

[A]

I was there in 46, nearly six months after the dropping of the bomb, and people still walking about dazed didn't know where they were going.

[B]

In Hiroshima, he witnessed a City razed with only one building left standing.

[A]

I saw the wasteland and people in all kinds of terrible state with their skins coming out. And those who died were the fortunate ones.

[B]

I've interviewed many elderly people about traumatic events and in the telling they're transported back in time. Java told me at the age of 104 about all the battles he was at in the retaking of Burma and the bloodshed he'd seen. But it was only when he recalled the aftermath of Hiroshima that his bearing completely changed. He had a look of horror as he remembered what he saw there still gives him nightmares.

[A]

I think it was a crime against humanity to have dropped the bombs.

[B]

Did you feel that at the time?

[A]

I did at the time too.

[B]

In the weeks after the war was over, Peter Knight recalls one main demand from the public.

[A]

It was Fetch the boys home or words to that effect was a big slogan in those days, immediately following the war. Get the boys home.

[B]

For POWs, it could take weeks, maybe months before they were located in one of the many camps scattered around Asia and the Pacific. When they did return to Britain, to Peter, it felt like it was done discreetly.

[A]

I can't ever remember any scenes of cheering. Oh, look, here they all come. I can't ever remember scenes of, shall we say, pleasure having them back. They were such miserable specimens.

[B]

It wasn't just the POWs. Peter believed the soldiers from the Asian front were welcomed back differently to the ones fighting in Europe.

[A]

When it came to D day and the troops are coming back from France, they were being acclaimed as heroes. There was a completely different attitude towards them. Ken, the brother in law of mine, it was sometime like October that he was put on the troop ship. There was no, let's have the flags out. Here come the boys. Each of them went as individuals to a depot where they were demobbed.

[B]

Do you think Ken felt that? Do you think he felt that difference?

[A]

Probably, probably.

[B]

Would he tell people that he was in the war? Would he put the medals up in his house?

[A]

No, we had a job to persuade him to claim his medals. He said, I don't want that rubbish.

[B]

He never talked about that time either. Maybe he saw too much. Or perhaps he felt he wasn't in the European war, which everyone seemed to be talking about. Or maybe by the time Ken got back, the country had just moved on. Even though the war was over, it didn't always change things on the ground. Each Japanese unit had to make its own surrender and prisoners in each camp had to wait to be liberated. Sheila Brown had been a civilian Internee for three and a half years. We heard earlier in the series how she was captured while fleeing Singapore as it fell, and how she'd formed a vocal orchestra with the other women in her camp to keep their spirits alive.

[A]

I think we were more afraid of mosquitoes, probably, than the Japanese by then.

[B]

Her voice is preserved on cassette tapes kept by her daughter that have never been broadcast before. Sheila was struggling. By August 1945. She'd had numerous bouts of malaria, was malnourished, and her beloved mother had died while imprisoned in the camp at 29. She'd even written a will, thinking she'd be next on BJ Day. The war wasn't over for Sheila.

[A]

Well, it was six weeks, I think, before we knew the war was over, before we were actually told.

[B]

I think for six weeks she had no idea Japan had surrendered and that she was now free. Then one day, the women were told by a Japanese officer to gather together.

[A]

We were told to get up under the trees, which I did, and Captain Ziki came along, stepped on the chair and then stood on the table. Because obviously then he wanted to feel head and shoulders higher than the rest of us, I think. And he said the war was over and we were all friends now. And he was very sorry and we must be good and wait till the Allies came.

[B]

After all these years and so much loss, it was hard to take in.

[A]

When we were told that the war was over, it didn't really register. There was no great excitement, shrieking or dancing or. I mean, we hadn't the energy. We had barely the energy to do the basics. And I went back to light up our little fire and I thought, oh, the pot's leaking. What are we going to do? And then it just dawned on me that it didn't really matter anymore if we could keep going a little longer.

[B]

Margie Caldicott is Sheila's daughter. At her Chichester home, she showed me notes, drawings and objects from her mother's time in. In the civilian prison camp. But there's one very special letter she wanted to show me.

[A]

My mother after the end of the war, after they were told eventually, three weeks later, people started leaving the camp. So Mommy quickly wrote a note because she couldn't face telling her father that Granny, her mother, had died in the camp.

[B]

She, Sheila, gave this precious note for her father to a friend who was leaving the camp with the instructions to get it to any clergyman in Singapore. They'd know if her father was still alive. Margie is holding that note.

[A]

Darling. Daddy, at last, news of peace. But Daddy darling with it. There is sad news for you and all of us. Mother died.

[B]

Didn't want talk.

[A]

On the 17th of January of this year, 1945. She was so brave and cheery all through this long internment, the shipwreck, we were bombed and then machine gunned.

[B]

You get really emotional reading that. What's that like?

[A]

Horrible. Disembark. Three and a half years. They didn't know if he was alive.

[B]

Margie's grandfather, Sheila's dad, kept this note which told him that after three and a half years of not knowing their fate, his daughter had survived but his wife had not.

[A]

I was staying with my cousin in Cumbria and we were going through his trunk which has family stuff in, and I found grandpa's wallet. And in it was this note and that was 2007.

[B]

Sheila did tell pieces of her story to her daughter, but she always felt that in the public memory, the plight of civilian internees wasn't well known. Margie still feels a distinction between how the war in Europe and the one with Japan is marked.

[A]

When it was VE Day 75, our village outside Chichester put bunting up and there was a lot of celebration and people dressed up red, white and blue. And so when it came to VJ Day, I got out the bunting and I put photos on the garage and nobody asked me why I'd done that. Nobody, none of my neighbours, nobody ever sort of. This was August 15th and I was celebrating VJ Day, but.

[B]

And you were the only one.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

She's made it her mission to keep this memory alive for her mother and the thousands of British civilian prisoners like her. Sheila had a wish before she died.

[A]

She asked me to get the music performed in this country because the British choir had not yet sung the music.

[B]

It's the music Schiele and the women sang in the camps as an act of defiance and to strengthen their will to survive. Sheila got her wish. The music was performed at Chichester Cathedral and a song that one of the women composed in the camp called the Captives Hymn was on the BBC. Songs of Praise, a fitting tribute to their endurance in the worst of times. War may have been over, but the effects of war carry on long after. When Maurice Naylor, the POW who worked on the Thai Burma Railways, eventually made it home to Manchester and stood outside his parents front door. He was 24 years old and weighed five and a half stone.

[A]

I became completely aloof. I couldn't bear to be in company and have conversations. I'd go up to my bedroom and burst into tears.

[B]

He closed off about the past, even to his closest family.

[A]

I always had the impression, wrongly, probably that they weren't very interested. Probably they were very interested, but they didn't want to upset me, so they didn't talk about it. I suspect, and I think that it's true, that when we returned, I think our editors were warned not to talk about it. It would only upset them. And. I don't know. That's what seemed to happen. I didn't talk about being a prisoner until I retired at the age of 61.

[B]

Imagine that. That's almost 40 years of keeping the horrors to yourself. This interview with Morris was recorded by my colleague Monica Whitlock for a different program back in 2013. Only a short amount was broadcast, but she kept the full interview with which we've used throughout the series. In 2020, Morris died at the age of 99. We tracked down Morris's daughters to ask them about their father and what made him break his silence after so many decades. Hello.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

Hello. I'm Kenita.

[A]

Hello, Kenita. We're going to sit in the Fed room because I'm so trifled, try to sort out some of Dad's stuff.

[B]

Oh, brilliant. So this is your dining room table?

[A]

This is my dining room table, yes.

[B]

And it's covered with the archive of your dad. I'm with Anne, his eldest daughter, who's in her 70s. She lives in a beautiful house in Birmingham, full of books and art collected over the years and covered with family photographs. It's a sunny spring day and the delicate shafts of light dappled the documents from Morris's archive that are in careful piles on the polished dining room table.

[A]

He did take a few notes when he was in the camp, mainly of just dates. But as soon as they were released and he was in Rangoon, he wrote a memoir, a diary of the whole event from the fall of Singapore onwards.

[B]

And it says right at the top, not for publication. For publication, yes. So that's just for the family?

[A]

Yes. He gave it eventually. He gave us it to read it, didn't he? Yes, only. Only about 2015.

[B]

That's Liz, Morris's younger daughter.

[A]

Yes. I don't think we knew it existed before then. No, we didn't.

[B]

Both daughters remember discovering something as children that made them realize their dad had lived through a terrible experience.

[A]

I found some drawings in the desk which are here somewhere. These are the ones that we have.

[B]

They were images, sketches of malnourished labourers at work in what looked like a jungle with guards watching. And there were others which are even More upsetting men who are skeletal, basically, with virtually no clothes, ulcers on their legs, severely sick. And I remember feeling quite distressed at seeing the pictures. Do you remember how you felt when you saw them for the first time?

[A]

Well, I didn't know what they were to start with. I think at that point I had been told that he was in a camp and when, because at school we'd learned about concentration camps, so Auschwitz. And so I thought that's where he'd been, that sort of camp for a long time because it was never corrected in our minds.

[B]

Anne was around 10 when she found them. She asked her mother what these awful drawings were tucked away in her father's desk.

[A]

She said, oh, you know, Daddy was in a prison camp in the war and don't talk about it or he'll have nightmares.

[B]

Each sister found these pictures separately and they never even spoke about them with each other.

[A]

I think when they came back there was a conspiracy of silence. I think that the prisoners themselves had been told not to talk about it. Their families had been told separately not to ask about it. And then that got passed on.

[B]

The silence persisted for decades. Morris had a successful job as an NHS manager. Then after he retired, he made a trip abroad to Thailand. It was a huge crossroads for him. Tell me about that. Well, he went back with his brother who had been in the war, but in the European war, they went back with both their wives on a holiday.

[A]

To celebrate his retirement.

[B]

They stayed at the closest place to his prison camp and where he'd been forced to build the bridge for the Thai Burma Railway so many years ago.

[A]

He said he stood in the graveyard in Kanchanaburi, which is the nearest town to the bridge, and saw all these rows and rows of graves and thought that he owed it to those men to tell the story of what had happened.

[B]

And they were graves of prisoners of war.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it is very moving.

[B]

At that moment, looking at all the graves, the wasted lives of young men, people he knew. He made a decision to talk for all the prisoners who weren't able to come back with their families years later and stand where he was. Morris spent the rest of his days doing that. His daughters felt it gave him a purpose. They said he was always matter of fact, talking about his experiences, rarely emotional, but sometimes unexpectedly, it all came back to him.

[A]

We took him to see the film.

[B]

Les Miserables and the opening sequence is.

[A]

Of slaves working in a river, getting.

[B]

Partially drowned, trying to build a bridge in a river and he couldn't take it. He just had to sit there with his eyes shut until that bit of the film was over, because it just.

[A]

Brought it all back to him.

[B]

So clearly it still was there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And did you say anything to him afterwards?

[A]

I asked him what the problem was.

[B]

Because it didn't occur to me, and he told me. What did he say? Do you remember? Does he just reminded him of how.

[A]

It was in the river?

[B]

This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Hero. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Silence works in so many different ways. As we've explored throughout the series, the war against Japan in places that were once part of the British Empire isn't as well known as the war against the Nazis. We've heard many reasons for this, not least because that war was far away from home. But there's something else as well. I also wonder if there is a racialized dimension to this forgetting. Dr. Dheer Gupta. Hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers fought on the Asian front, the majority in the 14th army, also known as the Forgotten Army. Three quarters of it, if not more, were made up of men of color. So a very small percentage was, you know, white British men. There were far greater casualty numbers in Europe of white British men. I think because less white lives were lost in Burma, it's remembered less. That's putting it quite starkly. Even in the immediate aftermath of the war in Britain, Indian soldiers weren't always recognized for their role.

[A]

First, we saluted the Queen and sang the national anthem.

[B]

Lieutenant Ali Akbar Raja fought in the 14th Punjab Regiment in Malaya, now Malaysia and Burma. He remembers coming from India to attend an event just after the war. He was speaking in a BBC documentary broadcast in 1999.

[A]

When we sat down, this man came up and said to me, are you a Singh or Indian? I said, yes, I am Indian. I am Punjabi. It wasn't his fault. He didn't know. And he said, this is the British Legion only for the British. I said, what do you mean, only for the British? I am a member of the British Legion. I pay for my membership. I have a card and I renew it. It's not expired. And the other thing is that the Allied forces, the Commonwealth forces, a lot of us were there. We fought for king and country.

[B]

Things have changed over time and there is now more public recognition. In 2002, a memorial near Hyde park was erected to commemorate the 5 million Commonwealth soldiers who fought in both world wars. Though it took decades before their contribution was memorialised in Britain in this way. But a recent survey shows that many people still don't know much about the role of millions of Commonwealth soldiers from India and Africa alongside the Allies in the Second World War. But I was surprised to learn that in India there is still no national memorial to the Indian soldiers who fought and died in World War II. So I think in private memory, in individual family lives, there is quite strong memory of it. But in terms of any kind of public recognition, it's been, it's been non existent. But we know two and a half million fought. That's a lot of, that's a lot of Indians to kind of not, not talk about, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I think once India gets independence in 1947, this whole Second World War story is entirely marginalized. It's not their war and the political leadership don't want to talk about it.

[A]

August 15, 1947. Independence Day for India. An era has ended, a new epoch begins. A subcontinent larger than the whole of Europe becomes two self governing dominions within the British Commonwealth of nations.

[B]

Indians felt it wasn't their war. Finally free from colonial rule after a long nationalist struggle, the last thing they wanted to do was memorialise the men that supported their former imperial ruler, even though their role, particularly in the Burma campaign was so critical. What's been striking when making this series is that there aren't many oral histories collected of Indian soldiers, either on the Indian subcontinent or in Britain. Peter Johnston is the narrative director at the Imperial War Museum. He spends a lot of time thinking about objects, collections and the stories they tell.

[A]

Unfortunately, the days of being able to sit down with the veterans that there were from that campaign have passed and it's a mistake.

[B]

Do you. You mean it's a mistake not to have recorded them?

[A]

I think from, purely from a historical record perspective, it's, it is a very unfortunate mistake that we weren't able to.

[B]

Even in the Imperial War Museum, which has one of the largest collections of oral testimony from soldiers in Britain, there aren't many Indian and Commonwealth voices, given their contribution to the war effort.

[A]

Sadly, no museum collection is entirely objective. It's not infallible. They are the subjects of a whole host of different subjectivities, interests, availabilities, all of these things go into collection.

[B]

But the Imperial War Museum, like other institutions, has been trying to change that. Recently they issued a call out in the South Asian Diaspora for letters, objects and unofficial memoirs that they can add to their collection.

[A]

It is a race against time. You have to try and find descendants and explore how memory perhaps was passed down.

[B]

It's almost too late to record those who were there, but this is an attempt to broaden the collection and our national remembrance. While these efforts are evolving in Britain, what about in Japan?

[A]

I was born and raised in Japan and I realized how much of my makeup is done in this environment where war memories were always there.

[B]

Yoshikuni Igarashi is a distinguished professor of history at Vanderbilt University and writes about war memory in Japan.

[A]

Early on impossible period. What's left out is Asian experiences. What Japan did in Asia. Because war was defined as Pacific war, not Asia Pacific war.

[B]

It's interesting that this story about forgetting the war on the Asian front is also the same in Japan, but for different reasons. After the war, Japan's focus quickly became about its relationship with the United States.

[A]

With the precision of a well oiled machine, the occupation rolls into the city. The United States becomes undisputed master of a ruthless foe. Pearl harbor is avenged.

[B]

Japan was rehabilitated as a staunch US ally in the face of rising communism in China.

[A]

Japan and the US used to be the two mutually most hated enemies until August 1940. But comes the end of the war, Japan and US became the closest allies in the Pacific. To think about it, it's a very strange thing. Looking toward future future built around us Japan relations. In that relationship. There's no necessity to talk about Asian experiences.

[B]

As part of this shift in narrative, Mbrihiro Hito, who had led Japan into war with the Allies, was exempt from the Tokyo war trials and allowed to stay on as Japan's leader. He then shaped the nation's pacifist constitution. It took decades for some in Japan to start to confront the atrocities their country had committed.

[A]

So it took a while, 20 years perhaps to Japan pay more attention to that aspect. Japan began to grapple with, you know, Japan's behavior, Japanese colonialism in Asia. Whenever the conservative voice is dominating Japan's government now there's been effort to negate that. But when the liberals are bigger presence, then there is a push toward that.

[B]

How a nation memorializes its past is always political. This is even evident in the name for the day the war ended on August 15th.

[A]

It's Shusen no Hee. It literally means that the war ended. If you say it's like a day of defeat. Right. Is more common, which is the day war ended. As if this is natural disaster.

[B]

How we remember the war on all sides is active. It's always a choice what we remember and forget. And that shifts with each generation asking different questions. Making this series. I've realised that today, across the country, so many people, more than you'd think, both British and those of South Asian descent, have family members who fought or were imprisoned on the Asian front. It's only when you ask that you find out. And people are digging into their past, educating themselves as well as discovering stories they didn't even know were in their family. Recently I was in Yorkshire interviewing a 98 year old veteran who'd been in India during the war. His daughter Nikki sat with us listening to the conversation, hoping to learn more about her father's past. We were chatting. After the interview. He told me to go upstairs to his study and fetch a suitcase. He had something to show me. Nicky took me up to her father's large study. She said she didn't know what he was talking about. The room was well organized, full of books, files, photos from his life. And there it was in the corner. Look, we found this. Nicky's never seen this before.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

It was just him. Well, it's a battered old plastic leather look. Suitcase that's obviously seen many years of service and traveling around the world, I would imagine. Had various stickers all over it. I've never noticed it before. Behind the chair where it was kept. Never been mentioned before. Open it. I'd love to.

[A]

Open.

[B]

Was heavy, so I took some of the things downstairs to her father, Peter Blythe.

[A]

Well, that's my war medal. That was my rank. Captain Peter Egan Blyth, National Service and Territorial Army.

[B]

Peter Blythe was in the Intelligence Corps in India. His daughter Nikki was surprised the suitcase had been there all along in the house she grew up in. And he never talked about it? He never mentioned his medal?

[A]

No, no.

[B]

People were very modest then about things.

[A]

No, pride doesn't come into it. It's a fact of life.

[B]

That day I witnessed the beginning of a conversation between father and daughter about things that happened over 80 years ago. We're in a moment where the generation who were there are passing away just as the post Second World War order is shifting. Perhaps that's not a coincidence. But for those few left who saw the horrors of war, it's complicated today to think of the legacy and wonder whether we learnt from the lessons of the past.

[A]

Java, ABBAS and now 80 years after the war which was fought in the name of democracy and freedom, we seem to be caught in a web of never ending wars which threaten the very idea of freedom and democracy.

[B]

It was such a privilege to hear a war story firsthand. I find it hard to think of a time when there'll be no one left to record. When that time comes, the story of the war, both the one in Europe and the other on the second map, will pass down to the next generation. Living memory will pass into something else we don't yet know.

[A]

Foundational myths definitely change over time.

[B]

They are not fixed. They're shaped very, very much by the kind of the needs, the concerns of contemporary society. Professor Lucy Noakes. What felt far away then feels closer today. The descendants of Empire live in Britain in their millions and want to understand this shared history.

[A]

I think we owe it to the.

[B]

People who fought and often died on.

[A]

The Asian front to remember them as.

[B]

Much as everybody else. And I think that because we are a multicultural, post imperial society, if we're going to understand how we got to who we are today, that is a.

[A]

Really important part of the story that.

[B]

Deserves and needs to be better known. Over 80 years ago, a schoolboy, Peter Knight, put up a second map in his living room on the right hand side of the dresser. He followed the war in places he'd never heard of before. Why do you think we don't remember that other war as well as we remember the war in Europe?

[A]

It was a different world, it was a different world. The Pacific was a different world.

[B]

He thought it was a world away, but it wasn't. Today on a wall in his living room in Hertfordshire are the medals of his brother in law, Ken, who fought in Burma and Malaya. There's a black and white picture of a young Peter in his naval uniform about to set sail to fight Japan. Sitting with us. This is Peter's son Tony. His father in law spent years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and never once spoke of it while alive. Tony is now looking into all of this history on both sides of his family for himself and his children. Old stories with new questions today in living rooms across Britain. The Second Map is a BBC long form audio production for the history podcast. It was presented by me, Kavita Puri. The series producer was Ellie House. Script editor was Ant Addeen. The mix and sound design was by James Beard. The series editor was Matt Willis. The production coordinators were Sabine Sherrick and Maria Ogundele. Original music was composed by Felix Taylor. The archive curator was Tarek Hussain. And the commissioners were Dan Clark and John Zylke. Listen to the whole series of the Second Map right now, first on BBC Sound. We hope you enjoyed this series from the History Podcast. If you haven't already, listen to previous series including Invisible Hands with David Dimbleby and Half Life. If you want to be notified as soon as a new series drops, make sure you're subscribed to the history podcast on BBC sounds from BBC Radio 4.

[A]

They remind me of the beauty of the everyday. Illuminated is the home for creative, one of a kind documentaries that shed light on hidden worlds. You could hear the plants photosynthesizing, a place of audio beauty and joy with emotion and human experience at its very heart. You can see the people walking bewildered, absolutely bewildered. Nobody really knew what to think. The programs you'll find here explore the reality of contemporary bridge Britain and the world. It's a chance to meet voices that are not normally heard.

[B]

You don't open your mouth if you tell one person, that's it.

[A]

Illuminated from BBC Radio 4. All human life is here, just waiting to be discovered. Listen on BBC Sounds.

[B]

This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

[A]

You know, he would look at these.

[B]

Men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.