Dear Prime Minister,

It is our understanding that you are meeting the Emperor of Japan today. We would ask that in the course of the meeting, you use the opportunity to give a message of support from your government to the members of our two organisations.

In February 1942, 50,000 soldiers were forced to surrender to the Japanese in Singapore. For the next three and a half years the PoWs were subjected to torture, beatings, starvation and degradation of the very worst kind. Death came on a daily basis. Of those 50,000 one in three died in the ensuing years at the hand of the Japanese.

A great deal has been written regarding the Japanese character that brought about this savagery. However, this is not the time or place to discuss this or other than to make it clear that these events were real and were events ordered at the very highest level of Japanese society.

For the civilians living in the Asian Pacific Rim countries, immediately prior to war breaking out with Japan, they received letters from the British Government telling them to stay where they were. Therefore, when the Japanese mounted their invasion some 20,000 had their homes, businesses, and assets taken and they were interned for the duration of the war. When they were finally freed in 1946, virtually all of them were left with nothing.

When the prisoners of war and internees returned to Britain, following the war, they were given a few pounds, a train ticket home and told to get on with their lives (the PoWs back pay came later). For them there were no 'victory parades'; there were no Churchillian speeches; there was no heroes' welcome. For most people in Britain they felt that once the war had finished in Europe these strange, wafer thin men and women, returning months later, were irrelevancies.

These ex-prisoners of the Japanese, therefore, returned home physically and mentally scarred to a Britain that had no appreciation of what they had been through, of what they had sacrificed. As a result the prisoners of war and internees, almost to a man, bottled up their terrible, terrible memories, not talking to their spouses, children or even friends about those three and a half years. Over the following year they tried to live their lives, they found jobs, married, brought up their children, and above all they tried to forget those haunting memories. But no matter how hard they tried they would not be forgotten.

Many times have we been awakened to be told of our shooting and screaming as the memories come back to haunt us in the form of a nightmare, night after night, year after year. Many ex-prisoners became so insular as to be almost total strangers to their families, unprepared to let go of their feelings for fear that far more would emerge than could ever be controlled. Indeed so many have felt their lives have been partially destroyed as a result of those three and a half years.

Whilst we were fighting to control the turmoil that was our lives we found that our interests, in terms of being compensated for what we had been through, were being sold short by successive British governments for the "wider good" of developing Japan to stand against the advance of communism, or not to annoy the Americans. In more recent times to develop our economic relations with Japan.

Recently we have discovered that following the signing of the 1951 Treaty Britain had the legal right to claim from Japan greater compensation than the pittance we had received under the terms of the treaty, in accordance with some of the 17 bilateral treaties signed by Japan between 1951 and 1976. The right to make that claim was not implemented by successive Conservative and Labour governments and we were specifically not told about those decisions. When we raised the matter with your government minister a few weeks ago we were told that it is legally too late for you to reopen the Treaty.

Our lawyer, Martyn Day, has advised us that this is not a narrow reading of the legal position and that such a claim would stand a reasonable chance in the courts. However, even if the chance was slight does not the moral imperative make you feel it is worth exploring? Particularly as it was the British government that decided not to make a claim in 1955 and then made the decision not to inform us. To be frank, it seems incredible to us that your government is now saying to us that the claim cannot be made not because it is 'out of time'.

For most of us, in the decades following the war, we had nothing but hatred and contempt for the Japanese and what they had done to us. However, time and experience has enabled most of us to come to terms with this, whether through the buying of goods in the shops of through meeting ordinary Japanese men and women in the street as tourism has progressed. However, what we have not come to terms with has been the failure of the Japanese government to accept that what they did to us in the war was wrong. All this at a time when their wealth has increased enormously and they have been become more of an influence of the world stage.

It is very difficult for us to express, in writing, how significant it is for us to have the Japanese government properly and fully atone for what they did to us. That is why we have been so keen to meet with you to explain, personally, what we feel. We trust you will give urgent consideration to such a meeting.

Since the decade of war in Malaysia and Singapore, with so many men sent almost straight into the hands of the Japanese and so many civilians told to stand their ground in Asia, we do not feel that the PoWs and internees have been treated with much more than contempt by the Japanese and British governments.

It is with no small regret that we have to say that your apparent decision, following your January meeting with the Japanese prime minister, not to assist us any further in pursuing our claims was just the latest in a long line of similar decisions over the years.

Do you not feel that it is now the time to repair some of the wrongs that have been done? An announcement that you were intending to explore, with the Japanese government, ways of resolving this issue to the satisfaction of the PoWs and internees would be a major way of encouraging us to the view that this 53-year history of betrayal can at last be ended. We sincerely hope you have the courage to take this stance.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur Titherington, Chairman JLCSA