War through the eyes of a PoW in Japan

Last Updated: 2:43am GMT 23/11/2007

Sketches by a Second World War Serviceman, tracing his experiences from RAF bases to a Japanese prisoner of war camp, are to be exhibited for the first time.

Fred Goodwin began the war servicing aircraft. After the Battle of Britain he was sent to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) with 605 Squadron.

They were to try to halt the Japanese advance, but were under-prepared. Mr Goodwin was captured. As a prisoner he witnessed unspeakable horrors.

However, throughout the war he made drawings and paintings of what he saw. The collection stayed with him until his return home and his death in 2001 at the age of 83.

He used the material that came to hand. Many of the drawings are on lined paper in ballpoint pen. Some he drew at the time and others from memory when he was able to find a pen and paper.

He painted in water colours at Changi prison in Singapore, where he could barter with the guards.

However, when he was incarcerated on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, Mr Goodwin was kept under a tighter regime and his drawing was more secretive than in Changi.

He drew pictures of the camp and the mines where he was forced to work.

Mr Goodwin had been sent to South-East Asia to help re-assemble Hurricanes, which had been shipped there.

However, the planes were equipped for desert warfare and were hopeless against Japanese Zero fighters.

Mr Goodwin drew a picture of the cruiser Exeter under attack just before the Battle of Java Sea, weeks before it was sunk.

He then chronicled his experiences as a Japanese PoW, including his time in the hold of the enemy vessel Dai Nichi Maru on a month-long journey.

The voyage was infamous because more than 50 prisoners died in the appalling conditions and their bodies were simply thrown overboard.

As the camp in Hokkaido was liberated, Mr Goodwin captured the moment when US planes dropped food parcels to the PoWs.

Now his son Bob is to exhibit the drawings and paintings at Buckfast Abbey in Devon from Monday. Bob Goodwin said: "My dad was a commercial artist from Birmingham as well as a rep for a paper firm. Before the war he went on a cycling holiday across Europe.

"He saw the Luftwaffe and was really impressed so when he came home he joined the RAF.

"Then the war started and he was with 605 Squadron and during the Battle of Britain he would sit in the cockpits of the planes and listen to the battle being fought. He loved drawing planes and never thought he would end up as a Japanese prisoner of war.

"In February 1942, he thought he was being sent to Malta and that was the day Pearl Harbour was attacked, so instead they were diverted to the Dutch East Indies.

"There was a cargo of Hurricane planes that they had to re-assemble and that's what Fred did when he got there. But the planes were designed for desert war and were outnumbered 10 to one by the Japanese Zero fighters.

"He watched the Japanese attack and it was a complete shambles from our point of view. HMS Exeter was attacked and was later sunk.

"Before they were overrun they destroyed what they could, including the Hurricanes, and fled to caves where they tried to hide. But they were caught.

"They were later put in the hold of a boat on a horrific journey and over 50 of them died and their bodies were thrown overboard.

"Fred was forced down the mines in Japan and was there until they were liberated.

"He saw some horrible things, including some who were beheaded. But he never spoke about that aspect of it. He never said anything bad about the Japanese.

"On the day in 1945 when the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki the Japanese camp commander told the PoWs: 'The Emperor gives you holiday.'

"The Japanese fled the camp and my father's war was over. He came home and within two weeks was back at work selling paper around the Midlands, though he kept up his artwork as a hobby."

The exhibition comes weeks after the death of Air Cdre Ricky Wright, one of the most talented flyers in 605 Squadron during the Battle of Britain.

The exhibition runs until Dec 2.

Sketches by a Second World War serviceman, tracing his experiences from RAF bases to a Japanese PoW camp, are to be exhibited for the first time

Fred Goodwin (far right, second row) was captured by the Japanese. He painted in watercolour at Changi prison in Singapore, where he bartered with guards for materials

While incarcerated at Changi, Mr Goodwin painted this stunning scene of the Battle of Britain

He painted the four RAF Hurricanes that went up to try and halt the Japanese advance in the Dutch East Indies

When he was imprisoned on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, he was kept under a tighter regime, and his drawing was more secretive

He drew this picture of the ship that took him to Japan. Over 50 men died in the awful conditions and their bodies were thrown overboard

Mr Goodwin drew this picture of the Battle of Britain while he worked as ground crew for the RAF. He would sit in the cockpits of planes on the ground and listen in to the battle through the radios

Bob Goodwin holds an RAF note book that his father used for some of his sketches. Fred Goodwin's paintings and sketches will be exhibited at Buckfast Abbey in Devon from Nov 26 to Dec 2

The exhibit will be at Buckfast Abbey from November 26 through December 2

Buckfast Abbey - Home to a Catholic Community of Benedictine Monks

Buckfast Abbey,
Buckfastleigh,
Devon
TQ11 0EE

Buckfast Abbey - Contacts

***************************************************************************

Readers may also be interested in these recent Free Republic threads:

Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood

(Heartbreaking photos and content warning)

Exhibition of wartime posters reveals very different Britain, with very different values

(Heavy graphics content; readers with low bandwidth connections may experience loading delays)

I may be completely wrong about this, but from a British perspective it has always struck me as slightly surprising that for every 100 times the war with Hitler is referred to by U.S. Freepers, in all sorts of contexts, the war with Japan is barely mentioned once - even though, and forgive the grotesquely crude over-simplification, the European war was ‘our’ war, whereas the Pacific war was ‘your’ war.

My suggested explanation is not meant to imply that it's the definitive one by any means; I was born well after WW2 and so I would never consider myself any sort of an authority on the subject. However, one possible explanation may be that articles at Free Republic are usually threads commenting on published news articles, as is this one. Therefore, the numerical sampling will be skewed, to a large degree, based upon what's published in newspapers. Sadly, most "journalists" seem to be eager to minimize the profound suffering caused by Imperial Japan because these "journalists" are typically Leftists who are of the opinion that our nuking of Japan was a horrible war crime and should never have been done. Usually, articles pertaining to Japan's involvement in WW2 fixate almost exclusively upon the atomic bombing and the American internment camps and only give a passing glance, if that much, toward Japan's innumerable sins. This is in keeping with the Left's desire to denigrate the USA at every opportunity, and a newspaper article accurately documenting Japan's evils would be counterproductive to the "journalists' " anti-American agenda. There's an endless flood of articles about Japan /.Hiroshima, and I think that most FReepers tend to just roll their eyes and move on to an article that's not merely written as another tired America-bashing exercise.

Most FReepers don't like anti-American articles and so they typically won't post them, except in cases where the article and the writer are being mocked.

Although that sort of sentiment also exists in regard to America's involvement in the European theater (the bombing of Dresden is incessantly harped on by the Left) it seems to be of a lesser degree, possibly because the Left has managed to portray the Nazis as "right wingers" in the modern sense / parlance and so they eagerly write about that as much as they can.

Just one possible reason among many.

Interesting, thanks.

You're quite welcome :-)

Upon reflection, I can't say that I recall seeing any American newspaper articles on Japan and WW2 that have NOT focused almost exclusively on the atomic bombing and the internment camps in the past 20 years, if ever.

I remember that in public school the only mention of Japan and WW2 was in the context of the atomic bombing and the American internment camps. This appears to be the only "accepted" template for discussion here, unfortunately.

It seems to me that many others find an honest discussion of the true evils of Imperial Japan to be remarkable and rare as well, as evidenced by over 360 posts to this thread as of this moment.

.Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood

(Heartbreaking content warning)

And this thread was not a discussion of a newspaper story per se, but of a book review.

I have yet to see the featured book discussed in the American press.....this is one of the reasons why I enjoy reading the UK press so much....quite a bit more diversity of thought, it seems.

Amazon.com Slaughter at Sea The Untold Story of Japan's Naval War Crimes Books Mark Felton

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.