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Ernest Warwick | |
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![]() Ernest Warwick with his book 'Tamajao 241: A camp on the River Kwai' | |
Born | Brighton, England | 12 April 1918
Died | 14 January 2009 90) | (aged
Occupation | Author |
Nationality | British |
Genre | War |
Subject | Captivity on the Burma Railway of death |
Notable work | Tamajao 241: A POW camp on the River Kwai |
Military career | |
Service/ | British Army |
Years of service | 1939–1945 |
Rank | Private |
Unit | Suffolk Regiment |
Battles/wars | Second World War |
Website | |
tamajao241 |
Ernest Warwick (1918-2009) was a British author, prisoner of war and survivor of the Burma to Siam death railway.
Ernest Edward Lawrence Warwick was born in Brighton in 1918 towards the end of the first World War. He had a tough upbringing through the slump and poverty of the thirties. The eldest of eight children, with four brothers and three sisters, he was forced to leave school at 13 years of age after his father had been killed the day before in a road accident.
At the outbreak of World War 2 in 1939, he was called up and, after eight weeks basic training in the Essex Regiment, he was posted to the Fourth Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, HQ Company, Intelligence Section for the duration of World War 2. This formed part of the 18th Infantry (Combat) Division of the British Army.
Serving as a private soldier, fighting on the streets in the brief and bloody 17-day battle for Singapore (which ended in the ignominious surrender of the Island – the 'fortress that never was [1] '), he was wounded in action and taken Prisoner of War on the 15 February 1942. He spent 3 years and 8 months as a Japanese Prisoner of War, [2] the majority of this on the infamous "railway of death" in Thailand. Saved from virtually certain death by the timely dropping of the Atom Bomb on Japan, which led to the almost immediate unconditional surrender of the Japanese. In August 1945 he was flown to a hospital in Rangoon, Burma weighing just over 6 stone (84lbs).
He was awarded The 1939–1945 Star, The Pacific Star (for the 17-day bloody battle of Singapore) and the 1939–1945 War Medal.
Throughout the post-war years he had a variety of jobs in industry, culminating in his position as deputy head porter at the General Hospital in Rochford for eight years until his retirement in 1983. He lived with his family in the village of Ashingdon in Essex.
Ernest was haunted by his years in captivity all his life and was confined to a wheelchair as a direct result of brutal torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the Japanese in the grim jungle death camps alongside the River Kwai.
"Mr. Ernest Warwick, suffered badly at the hands of the Japanese and came out of a Japanese camp, as my right hon. Friend has described, broken in health. But the remarkable thing about such men is that they were not broken in spirit and managed to survive because their spirit was not broken." [3]
In no way did he glorify war, but felt that as a proud nation we should always remember and honour our dead, who gave so much that we might live.
Between 1985 and 1987 Ernest wrote, and then in 1987 published, his first and only book Tamajao 241 : A POW camp on the River Kwai. It is based solidly on his own experiences in captivity. His story was written as a tribute to his dead comrades and to expose to the world the appalling inhumanity of the Japanese and Koreans during World War 2.
Daily work parties were sent from Changi to the city of Singapore in overcrowded lorries, to work on the docks loading and unloading ships.
At the docks Ernest witnessed an armed guard force an old Chinese lady, who had been giving cakes to Ernest and some of the other prisoners, to hold a metal bar above her head while he beat her about the face with his belt until she bled.
Ernest intervened by striking the guard, which subsequently resulted in him being punished by being roped to a tree for 5 days and 5 nights [4] without food or water. At sunrise every day the Japanese guards would pray to Emperor Hirohito and then beat Ernest into unconsciousness.
They threatened to behead Ernest by a sword, but changed their minds and instead sentenced him to 28 days in a metal tomb at the Japanese punishment centre.
The portrait of Warwick by Ashley George Old here featured in an article in The Echo (Essex) on Monday 12 August 1985 that recounted how Warwick and Old were reunited after 41 years.
In his later life as an author and campaigner for ex-fepow's in their plight for compensation from the Japanese government, Ernest was interviewed on the subject by national press [6] and for local and national TV news. [7] [8] [9] He appeared in channel 4's scars of war documentary recounting his experiences in captivity. Also he was flown to New York to give evidence in federal court on his experiences on the river kwai in a case against Sony. [10]
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 epic war film directed by David Lean and based on the 1952 novel written by Pierre Boulle. Although the film uses the historical setting of the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–1943, the plot and characters of Boulle's novel and the screenplay are almost entirely fictional. The cast includes William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, and Sessue Hayakawa.
The Burma Railway, also known as the Siam–Burma Railway, Thai–Burma Railway and similar names, or as the Death Railway, is a 415 km (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma. It was built from 1940 to 1943 by civilian laborers impressed or recruited by the Japanese and prisoners of war taken by the Japanese, to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. It completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma. The name used by the Japanese Government was Tai–Men Rensetsu Tetsudō (泰緬連接鉄道), which means Thailand-Burma-Link-Railway.
Hellfire Pass is the name of a railway cutting on the former Burma Railway in Thailand which was built with forced labour during the Second World War, in part by Allied prisoners of war. The pass is noted for the harsh conditions and heavy loss of life suffered by its labourers during construction. It was called Hellfire Pass because the sight of emaciated prisoners labouring by burning torchlight resembled a scene from Hell.
Changi Prison Complex, often known simply as Changi Prison, is a prison complex in the namesake district of Changi in the eastern part of Singapore. It is the oldest and largest prison in the country, covering an area of about 50 ha. Opened in 1936, the prison has a rich history.
The 8th Division was an infantry division of the Australian Army, formed during World War II as part of the all-volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force. The 8th Division was raised from volunteers for overseas service from July 1940 onwards. Consisting of three infantry brigades, the intention had been to deploy the division to the Middle East to join the other Australian divisions, but as war with Japan loomed in 1941, the division was divided into four separate forces, which were deployed in different parts of the Asia-Pacific region. All of these formations were destroyed as fighting forces by the end of February 1942 during the fighting for Singapore, and in Rabaul, Ambon, and Timor. Most members of the division became prisoners of war, waiting until the war ended in late 1945 to be liberated. One in three died in captivity.
To End All Wars is a 2001 war film starring Robert Carlyle, Kiefer Sutherland and Sakae Kimura and was directed by David L. Cunningham. The film is based on Through the Valley of the Kwai, an autobiography of Ernest Gordon, then a Scottish Captain, later the Presbyterian Dean of the Princeton University Chapel.
Brigadier Sir Philip John Denton Toosey was, as a lieutenant colonel, the senior Allied officer in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp at Tha Maa Kham in Thailand during World War II. The men at this camp built Bridge 277 of the Burma Railway as later fictionalized in the book The Bridge over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle, and since adapted into the Oscar-winning film The Bridge on the River Kwai in which Alec Guinness played the senior British officer, Lt Col Nicholson. Both the book and film outraged former prisoners because Toosey did not collaborate with the enemy, unlike the fictional Lt Col Nicholson.
The Bridge over the River Kwai is a novel by the French novelist Pierre Boulle, published in French in 1952 and English translation by Xan Fielding in 1954. The story is fictional but uses the construction of the Burma Railway, in 1942–1943, as its historical setting, and is partly based on Pierre Boulle's own life experience working in Malaysia rubber plantations and later working for allied forces in Singapore and Indochina during World War II. The novel deals with the plight of World War II British prisoners of war forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to build a bridge for the "Death Railway", so named because of the large number of prisoners and conscripts who died during its construction. The novel won France's Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1952.
Ernest Gordon was the former Presbyterian dean of the chapel at Princeton University. A native of Greenock, Scotland, and the son of James Gordon and Sarah R MacMillan, as an officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Gordon spent three years in a Japanese prisoner of war (POW) camp during the Second World War. He chronicled his experiences on the Death Railway in his book Through the Valley of the Kwai. The book served as an inspiration to the film To End All Wars, where he was portrayed by actor Ciarán McMenamin. The film opened in 2001, and the film's DVD release, which came out after his passing, dedicated the film to his memory.
Burhan-ud-Din (1914–1996) of Chitral was a veteran of the Indian National Army. Burhan-ud-Din was the son of Mehtar Shuja ul-Mulk, the ruler of Chitral. He was by far the most famous Chitrali as a result of his service in the Indian National Army under Subhas Chandra Bose during World War II.
Percy Herbert was an English actor. He worked predominantly from the 1950s into the 1970s and became one of the most recognisable faces in post-war British cinema.
Through the Valley of the Kwai is the autobiography of the Scottish captain Ernest Gordon, and recounts the experiences of faith and hope of the men held in a Japanese prisoner of war labour camp, building the Burma Railway during World War II.
Santo Tomas Internment Camp, also known as the Manila Internment Camp, was the largest of several camps in the Philippines in which the Japanese interned enemy civilians, mostly Americans, in World War II. The campus of the University of Santo Tomas in Manila was utilized for the camp, which housed more than 3,000 internees from January 1942 until February 1945. Conditions for the internees deteriorated during the war and by the time of the liberation of the camp by the U.S. Army many of the internees were near death from lack of food.
Brigadier Arthur Leslie Varley, MC & Bar was an Australian soldier who served in the First and the Second World Wars. He was commander of the 22nd Infantry Brigade during the final stages of the Battle of Singapore in the Second World War. Having surrendered to the Japanese, he was responsible for over 9,000 prisoners of war engaged in the construction of the Burma-Thailand Railway. He was killed in September 1944 when the transport ship taking him and several hundred fellow prisoners to Japan was sunk by an American submarine.
Takashi Nagase was a Japanese military interpreter during World War II. He worked for the Kempeitai at the construction of the Burma Railway in Thailand, and spent most of his later life as an activist for post-war reconciliation and against Japanese militarism. He made over a hundred visits to Thailand, and from the 1970s, arranged several meetings between former Allied prisoners of wars and their Japanese captors, in efforts to promote peace and understanding. In 1993, he met and reconciled with British former POW Eric Lomax—in whose torture sessions Nagase had been involved—an encounter retold in Lomax's 1995 autobiography The Railway Man.
The Lost Battalion was the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery, 36th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army. The men of the battalion, plus the survivors of the sunken cruiser USS Houston, were captured by the Japanese on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies in March 1942. It is called the lost battalion because the fate of the men was unknown to the United States until September 1944. They were prisoners of war for 42 months until the end of World War II. 534 soldiers from the battalion and 368 survivors of Houston were taken prisoner. Most of the men were sent to Thailand to work on the Burma Railway, the building of which is portrayed in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. Of the 902 soldiers and sailors taken captive, 163 died in captivity. Most of the prisoners of war were from western Texas.
Mark Felton is a British author, historian, and YouTuber. Felton has written over a dozen nonfiction books. He runs several channels on YouTube covering different historical subjects of the 20th and 21st century, mainly related to World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. He has been a lecturer at the University of Essex. In 2014, he published Zero Night, a book about the 1942 mass allied escape from the German prisoner-of-war camp Oflag VI-B.
Hilton House Hotel, in Derby, England, is a building of historical significance. It is a Georgian house which was the ancestorial home of Herbert Martin Massey. He was the Senior British Officer at Stalag Luft III who authorised the "Great Escape". The hotel closed in February 2023.
Tamarkan was a Japanese prisoner of war work camp during World War II. The camp was initially used for the construction of the bridge over the Khwae Yai or Mae Klong River and not the River Kwai. The camp was located about five kilometres from the city of Kanchanaburi. In November 1943, Tamarkan was turned into a convalescent camp and hospital. By 1945, the camp was gone.
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