Preserving Histories of Resilience to Inform Future Generations

Kim Ozano: 00:00:05

Hello and welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science, a podcast about connecting people and communities to science or research

Kim Ozano: 00:00:15

I'm Dr.

Kim Ozano: 00:00:16

Kim Ozano and in this episode we are talking about the FEPOW Research Group.

Kim Ozano: 00:00:21

FEPOW stands for Far East Prisoners of War, and it focuses on capturing the history of civilian captives during the second World War and the impact that this has had on subsequent generations.

Kim Ozano: 00:00:33

The group brings together veterans, their families, writers, and academics to create a friendly space to capture stories that we can learn from and apply to research now.

Kim Ozano: 00:00:42

I have a wonderful new co-host with me today, Geoff Gill from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where he has been involved

Kim Ozano: 00:00:53

He has led the medical history inquiries into Far East imprisonment, resulting in two recent books, Captive Memories, and Burma Railway Medicine.

Kim Ozano: 00:01:03

We also have two great guests with us today Brian Spittle and James Reynolds, but before we hear from them, let's hear from our co-host.

Kim Ozano: 00:01:10

Geoff, welcome to the podcast.

Kim Ozano: 00:01:12

We're really excited to have you here.

Kim Ozano: 00:01:14

It would be great if you could start off by explaining why is it important now to share histories of captivity and how does this link to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine?

Geoff Gill: 00:01:25

thank you very much and it's, real pleasure to talk about this fascinating and rather unusual topic.

Geoff Gill: 00:01:31

So the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine became involved by accident in late 1945, where local Far East POWs were returning, from their captivity, and

Geoff Gill: 00:01:48

Um, and shortly after returning home and started having relapses of malaria, dysentery and so on, which were clearly unusual and couldn't be coped with by general practitioners.

Geoff Gill: 00:01:58

So the local schools started seeing them and treating them and what started off as a very informal small process snowballed over the years and became more formalised and became a national, scheme.

Geoff Gill: 00:02:11

and since those days we've seen over 4,000 Far East POWs for, diagnosis management of continuing physical and psychological problems related to their imprisonment.

Geoff Gill: 00:02:23

I, of course wasn't around in, in 1945, but in the mid 1970s as a very young raw junior doctor, I worked, clinically at the Liverpool Tropical School prior to working in

Geoff Gill: 00:02:45

This totally new to me as a British trained young doctor and I became fascinated by this and after traveling and after further training, I came back to the Liverpool School as a, an academic,

Geoff Gill: 00:03:18

So we certainly learned, a huge amount medically from these men and from their experiences.

Geoff Gill: 00:03:23

And I think, and I'm sure we can explore this later, is that also there are.

Geoff Gill: 00:03:28

The lessons of history as well, and, the stories that have evolved and, to this day are being told and retold and hopefully, informing and educating new generations.

Kim Ozano: 00:03:41

It is really quite incredible.

Kim Ozano: 00:03:43

and just a very quick question, before we meet our guests, were other people around the world doing something similar or was the Liverpool School of

Geoff Gill: 00:03:55

So I think it's true to say that we did, lead the field in, researching and in publishing the results of our work, defining these long-term conditions.

Geoff Gill: 00:04:05

but after our first publications, we were going back to, the early 1980s, but through to the late 1990s, then other areas did become involved, because of course there were

Kim Ozano: 00:04:32

That's great.

Kim Ozano: 00:04:32

Thank you very much.

Kim Ozano: 00:04:33

And speaking of these stories, let's meet our guests who I think have quite a lot to share.

Kim Ozano: 00:04:38

Brian Spittle.

Kim Ozano: 00:04:39

welcome to the podcast.

Kim Ozano: 00:04:41

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you relate to this work.

Brian Spittle: 00:04:45

it's a rather recent story and it's a very old story, both at the same time.

Brian Spittle: 00:04:49

I think one of the first things that I remember was my mother sitting me down at the kitchen table and telling me that my father had been a prisoner of war in the

Brian Spittle: 00:05:04

then followed a silence because the other thing she told me was that we weren't supposed to talk about this, and I was never supposed to ask

Brian Spittle: 00:05:16

He died in 2004, and it was only a couple of years before he died that he pulled me into his study and said, I've got something to show you.

Brian Spittle: 00:05:26

He pulled out a, an article that he'd written for the uh, bulletin of the Raffles Museum, in Singapore, on the birds of Singapore.

Brian Spittle: 00:05:34

He'd studied the birds, at the Changi camp and another camp where he was.

Brian Spittle: 00:05:38

My mother had initially told me that he had, managed to survive largely by keeping himself active and studying the birds in the camp.

Brian Spittle: 00:05:46

I just had an idea that maybe he was scribbling some things on the back of an envelope, which actually he was, I learned later.

Brian Spittle: 00:05:53

I didn't realize it was systematic.

Brian Spittle: 00:05:55

I, I suppose after he died, that becomes the second part of my curiosity here.

Brian Spittle: 00:06:01

I found a large box of materials that he brought back from Singapore, the bird notes and many other notes that he made.

Kim Ozano: 00:06:09

Thank you.

Kim Ozano: 00:06:09

When you listen to Geoff in the work that's been going on at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, is it really interesting cuz you have that link there?

Brian Spittle: 00:06:20

yes, doubly In fact, really my father should be here because, he wasn't a trained doctor, he was a self-trained biologist, an entomologist.

Brian Spittle: 00:06:27

for eight years before going to Singapore, he had, been a lab assistant in the, Imperial Institute of Entomology, just outside of Slough in, in England,

Brian Spittle: 00:06:42

so he was quite well versed in, in biological topics.

Brian Spittle: 00:06:46

He then trained as a sanitary inspector, right before the war, and so was very much involved in the early issues of sanitation and hygiene as the prisoners of war coalesced around Changi

Brian Spittle: 00:07:04

So he was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, a very lowly position, just a private, he was out there doing anti-malarial work and did do that in the few weeks before the, fall of Singapore.

Brian Spittle: 00:07:15

But then was very much involved with, I, I suppose you like the, the hygiene and sanitation and medical issues connected with, the prisoners as part of his work.

Brian Spittle: 00:07:25

He was also sick for a long time.

Brian Spittle: 00:07:27

From that point of view, the kind of work that the Liverpool, School has done, I think, it would be of enormous interest to him.

Brian Spittle: 00:07:33

Sadly, he never knew about it while he was alive and came back with pretty serious, what we would now call, P T S D issues and never really got any treatment for that or any recognition of it.

Brian Spittle: 00:07:44

So that was one of the things that I wrestled with growing up.

Geoff Gill: 00:07:48

I only know a little about Jack Spittle his work, but a couple things that you mentioned there; one is, A lot of what he did was all about preventive medicine,

Geoff Gill: 00:08:03

Our primary taught course is the Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, so it's not just about diagnosis and treatment, it's about prevention.

Geoff Gill: 00:08:13

and it seems to me that your dad was all about that.

Geoff Gill: 00:08:16

and I read about remarkable things about his fly proof latrines and, and malaria work and so on, and amusing those that they sound, these things save lives.

Geoff Gill: 00:08:28

So I think his work was remarkable.

Kim Ozano: 00:08:31

Absolutely.

Kim Ozano: 00:08:32

And what's coming across here is that systematic mindset of documenting things no matter what the conditions are.

Kim Ozano: 00:08:39

But before we go any further, James, welcome to the podcast.

Kim Ozano: 00:08:43

Tell us a bit about your experience and link to the work here please.

James Reynolds: 00:08:47

So I'm the representative of the next generation, of the second generation down.

James Reynolds: 00:08:52

My late grandfather was a Far East prisoner of war.

James Reynolds: 00:08:56

His name was Eric Cordingly.

James Reynolds: 00:08:59

He was a chaplain and we have some of his writings to help us piece together what he lived through.

James Reynolds: 00:09:05

He died in 1976 and as, Brian was saying, it was not something spoken about a lot with, my mother's generation.

James Reynolds: 00:09:14

My mother's one of four, and my grandfather died when I was two.

James Reynolds: 00:09:17

So it's been a process for our family of putting together those years, done so in the way I think that so many other families have done by finding bags in the attic, by finding documents and by

James Reynolds: 00:09:44

I think, and I wonder if that was a way of saying, if we don't talk about it, you can look at it when the time is ready.

James Reynolds: 00:09:52

and for us, that time has been over the last decade.

James Reynolds: 00:09:54

So I've worked with my mother, Louise, on editing her father's papers, and the reason I'm speaking to you is because in one of the projects that we did, we put together

James Reynolds: 00:10:15

Eventually my grandfather did come back and, it brings us onto a wider point beyond prisoners of all, every family has stories they pass on Geoff, in your introduction, you're

James Reynolds: 00:10:35

Perhaps as a spur to other families out there.

James Reynolds: 00:10:38

Write down your own myths.

James Reynolds: 00:10:39

Write down your own legends.

Kim Ozano: 00:10:41

I think this is a really important message that passing down those stories is vital, so that we have that connection to history, but also we know, our own progression where we came from.

Kim Ozano: 00:10:51

I have a question for you, James.

Kim Ozano: 00:10:53

Tell me about the moment you and your mother sat together and thought, okay, we're putting this story together.

James Reynolds: 00:10:58

It was a gradual process.

James Reynolds: 00:11:00

We'd done together two previous books.

James Reynolds: 00:11:03

One, we'd found a manuscript left behind by my grandfather about his time in Changi, and we found documents of his time on the Burma Railway, which were, as I'm sure you all know,

James Reynolds: 00:11:19

So we done that.

James Reynolds: 00:11:20

Those were very much for grownups.

James Reynolds: 00:11:22

the subject matter is be beyond awful, even though humanity shines through and the title of the first book, we decided almost down to bedrock about the fact that when you

James Reynolds: 00:11:36

But then we thought, let's do something else as well.

James Reynolds: 00:11:38

So we'd always been telling the story of the dog who waited for, for my grandfather.

James Reynolds: 00:11:43

I heard about it for years, I said let's just get it down.

James Reynolds: 00:11:45

It just felt like something that would be fun to do.

James Reynolds: 00:11:49

And it was.

Kim Ozano: 00:11:51

It sounds like a really good route to talk about something that's really difficult, but to maintain those messages and make sure

Kim Ozano: 00:12:02

I'll hand over to Geoff now to talk a little bit more about how these kind of two narratives link with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and research now.

Geoff Gill: 00:12:10

it is very interesting, isn't it, that a of these myths and stories have completely skipped a generation, that the, returning POWs themselves, mostly just said nothing.

Geoff Gill: 00:12:22

Then a lot of these stories have come to light either very late in their lives or even after their deaths.

Geoff Gill: 00:12:28

I can think of lots of examples, sons and grandsons, granddaughters and so on, giving to us at the School of Tropical Medicine, all sorts of memorabilia and

Geoff Gill: 00:12:41

Was that a sort of a stiff upper lip?

Geoff Gill: 00:12:44

Was that a kind of no one will be interested or what's your take on that?

Brian Spittle: 00:12:47

The strange thing for me is, I've been very aware that my father, when he made all these notes in, in, in captivity, he buried them, he kept them buried because they were

Brian Spittle: 00:13:04

So he buried them.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:05

But then he came back and he buried them again.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:08

Not actually buried them, but he put them in the attic,

Brian Spittle: 00:13:11

We, we never talked about Singapore.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:14

For the longest time, I forgot that he was even in Singapore, even though I'd been told that as a young child, I thought he was in Burma until about, oh, I don't know, in my forties or so.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:24

That was the level of disconnect that was going on in the household.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:29

He didn't talk about it.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:30

He didn't join any sort of the associations that were out there that could have been helpful, and he retreated into his study.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:37

Within his study, he was doing work that connected him with people.

Brian Spittle: 00:13:43

In, in, in some cases all around the world, so there was an outwardness and an inwardness that, that, that remains a mystery to me, but a, about this, no, we

James Reynolds: 00:13:56

Brian, the question I wanted to ask you was, do you understand the silence?

James Reynolds: 00:14:00

And I'll maybe come back to that question, but on a practical level, Geoff, there was an instruction given to the returning, FEPOWs, and I'm just gonna read some of it to help us

James Reynolds: 00:14:23

If you'd not been lucky enough to survive and had died unpleasant death, you would not have wished your family and friends to been harrowed by lurid

James Reynolds: 00:14:30

details of your death."

James Reynolds: 00:14:32

In other words, don't talk about it.

James Reynolds: 00:14:34

That was the order, perhaps even the last order that they were given as they returned firstly to Liverpool and then to the rest of the country and, I can get that, I can understand

James Reynolds: 00:14:50

And one was from, I think the brother of someone who died, who wanted to go and see my grandfather in late forties, early fifties, to hear about his brother's death.

James Reynolds: 00:14:56

So there was this need to know among those that we don't know about, and it may have just have been a different generation following that order.

James Reynolds: 00:15:05

It may have been the weight of time.

James Reynolds: 00:15:07

We're lucky that in my grandfather's case, in 19 67, 68, he did write down an account and a reflection some 20 odd years later about his thoughts.

James Reynolds: 00:15:18

I think one of the things my mother and I feel on this is we don't have any unanswered questions.

James Reynolds: 00:15:24

All the questions that we had, there were answers to it, and that's given us a lot of peace for those who weren't able to give answers, maybe that silence is also

James Reynolds: 00:15:40

Silence can be peace as well.

Geoff Gill: 00:15:42

I think that, yeah, those are really good points, James.

Geoff Gill: 00:15:44

I'm aware of those orders, which were given to returning POWs "don't talk", I just sometimes wonder as the years went by, whether those orders

Geoff Gill: 00:15:56

There's no question about that.

Geoff Gill: 00:15:57

Some did, but many did not.

Geoff Gill: 00:15:59

One thing that impressed me with many of the, Far East POWs that I saw at the Liverpool School was that they were very self-facing over their experiences.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:08

That they've been through terrible experiences.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:11

in Singapore, Java, the Thai Burma railway, whatever, malnutrition, recurrent malaria, dysentery and so on, mistreatment, and they just made light of it.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:23

They said, oh, I was lucky, I got through.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:25

and so on and talking of getting through, I wanted to ask you both about survival because we've enquired historically and medically about,

Geoff Gill: 00:16:38

And we can come up with medical answers.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:41

Yeah.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:41

They were lucky.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:41

They were in a good camp, they got better food.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:43

They, there, there were more, treatments and drugs.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:46

The doctors were better or it was less remote and so on.

Geoff Gill: 00:16:49

And you can medicalise the experience to some extent, but time and time again, many people, talked a lot about this, about, about the actual

Geoff Gill: 00:17:01

I wonder if you might comment on those

James Reynolds: 00:17:03

On that point.

James Reynolds: 00:17:04

the thought that we've always had as a family is that one of the reasons my grandfather was able to survive was because he had a very important job that being a chaplain,

James Reynolds: 00:17:23

But suddenly when they got captured, all of a sudden there was firstly nothing in Changi, and then obviously horror on the railway.

James Reynolds: 00:17:31

His job became really important as a place of solace, and on a practical level and on burying people and being with them in their last moments, the meticulous records he had to take as

James Reynolds: 00:17:46

and that's suddenly become from what was an rather non-essential job he felt before the war to an absolutely essential job in captivity.

Geoff Gill: 00:17:55

Brian, do you think that your father's knowledge of public health at preventive medicine, do you think that might have

Brian Spittle: 00:18:06

Yes.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:07

I th I've thought quite a lot about this.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:11

I've read your grandfather's book, James, I, and, I, I was very struck by it.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:16

It's a wonderful testimony.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:18

My own father was I think by character almost at this point, a researcher.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:24

He'd gone through a nine years as a lab assistant.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:27

He was immersed in research techniques.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:30

From this, I think he wanted to document what was going on.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:35

Yes, some of it was just keeping up time.

Brian Spittle: 00:18:37

He was bored and he, he needed to fill time and fill the day, and he did that through writing down everything, I think, but one of the things he wrote

Brian Spittle: 00:18:53

He wrote an article on fly swatting, which I mean, there was a sort of slightly humorous take on the hygiene, if you like.

Brian Spittle: 00:19:01

I don't think it was ever published, but he wrote these drafts of these short articles, and I think that what's implicit in that is two things; one is the discipline and the focus and the ability

Brian Spittle: 00:19:19

It implies that you are going to publish this, hopefully, at some point, as he did with one or two of the pieces.

Brian Spittle: 00:19:27

Even though towards the end of his time there when he was at Kranji in the northwest, coast of, Singapore.

Brian Spittle: 00:19:33

I'm not sure he thought he was ever gonna survive at that point.

Brian Spittle: 00:19:35

That was a very bleak period.

Brian Spittle: 00:19:37

But still, I think those two pieces, the discipline of the research, which he'd learned so well, at, the Imperial Institute of Entomology, and then I, to me, the sense of the future.

Geoff Gill: 00:19:48

You mentioned fly sorting there and, that was a very interesting practice and, a very simple but effective method of dysentery control.

Geoff Gill: 00:19:57

particularly worked well on the, the Thai Burma railway, where it became so sophisticated that before men could have their supper, they had to produce 50 dead

Geoff Gill: 00:20:13

You cut down the flies.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:14

They stopped buzzing around the latrines.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:16

They stopped landing on food and so on.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:19

Less dysentery.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:20

It's just such a simple and clever hygiene, method.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:23

and it's interesting that your dad was involved with that.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:26

And again, I mentioned before the fly proof latrines again, something very, simple, but actually something of huge benefit.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:33

And I think that's one of the things that, we as a school of, academic tropical medicine have learned that very simple techniques can actually be enormously effective.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:43

You see that in simple things like malaria control in children in the tropics, just a bed net.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:49

A properly used bed net can be enormously effective in reducing malaria transmission and, and mortality.

Geoff Gill: 00:20:56

So I think that is, a very important point.

Kim Ozano: 00:20:59

I think what also strikes me here is the human resilience that comes out.

Kim Ozano: 00:21:04

I was listening to your stories and, having a focus and living for others and playing a role, and as we live in a world that's changing all the time

Kim Ozano: 00:21:20

James and Brian, have you found that you've learned a lot just from, not just about the stories, but also about the way you can live in the, in, current situations.

Brian Spittle: 00:21:29

I think I'm still learning.

Brian Spittle: 00:21:31

There are so many pieces that I'm still trying to piece together, I'm not gonna be able to do all of it.

Brian Spittle: 00:21:36

I've got to a certain point, but it's leading me to more questions as much as answers.

Brian Spittle: 00:21:41

Now I think there's a certain peace that comes from a period of engaging with, in my case, my father and, and what I did not know and trying to come to know some of

Brian Spittle: 00:21:58

The gap there is just too enormous.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:01

In terms of learning about resiliency and his character, of course, I've learned a lot, but I'm left with this paradox and I don't know, what to say about it, but awful though, they were,

Brian Spittle: 00:22:22

My father said there were no quarrels.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:24

People got along with each other.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:26

There was no time for, for discord.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:29

and so that's one piece that I think becomes a puzzle is that once as, and I've read one or two POW memoirs, Russell Braddon's in particular, Naked Island, as

Brian Spittle: 00:22:44

That he's lost his comrades, he's lost this camaraderie.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:47

What happens to them now?

Brian Spittle: 00:22:49

Your question, I think, gets to that a little bit.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:52

What do we learn from all of that?

Brian Spittle: 00:22:54

The other question I have is the other voices.

Brian Spittle: 00:22:57

I think one of the limits of these memoirs and it's, it's inherent in them because they're personal stories, of course, but what voices are we not listening to?

Brian Spittle: 00:23:07

What voices have we not heard?

Brian Spittle: 00:23:09

I'm finding myself more and more interested in what was the experience of the Chinese, what was the experience of the Malays, what was the experience of Indians, and for that matter, Japanese?

Brian Spittle: 00:23:21

Those are stories I would like to hear more of and engage myself more with because I think my father, thought that too.

Brian Spittle: 00:23:29

He actually was one of those people who did not have any particular malice, feel any particular malice towards the Japanese .He thought everyone was in a pretty rotten boat.

Brian Spittle: 00:23:40

Most of the Japanese he met didn't wanna be there either.

Brian Spittle: 00:23:43

That was his sort of view.

Brian Spittle: 00:23:45

I think we have some real questions to ask there and there's so much that can be added with these stories, but they need to be multi-dimensional, not just one dimensional.

Brian Spittle: 00:23:55

I can only do one story.

Brian Spittle: 00:23:57

I, I'm not even sure I can do that, but there are so many, that, I would like to engage with.

James Reynolds: 00:24:03

I've thought of others and there's my, in my work as a journalist, it's taken me to people who did know what it's like.

James Reynolds: 00:24:09

I've seen many, people caught up in war.

James Reynolds: 00:24:13

Many people caught up in disasters over the years, and it struck me that they're the ones who know not me, and that I can understand it, but I haven't lived it.

James Reynolds: 00:24:22

But it is worth knowing that out there, there are people who have lived it.

James Reynolds: 00:24:26

we talk about the FEPOWs and we can also talk about the people who cared for the FEPOWs left behind.

James Reynolds: 00:24:31

There are people I've interviewed who've been split up for years in different parts of conflicts, not knowing if their relatives are okay or not.

James Reynolds: 00:24:38

People who've gone through devastating tragedies of their own and there are people out there who know it's not me, but I've met them.

Geoff Gill: 00:24:47

What you both say is very interesting and the strong impression I've got from talking to many hundreds of Far East POWs is that in the vast majority of

Geoff Gill: 00:25:02

There was wonderful camaraderie, incredible support, huge gratitude to the Padres, the doctors, and so on.

Geoff Gill: 00:25:11

and incredibly clever responses to adversity, both physical in terms of camp workshops, producing amazing surgical equipment and distilling alcohol

Kim Ozano: 00:25:28

I think there's so much that I've learned in this small window.

Kim Ozano: 00:25:32

around, I, the importance of documenting and sharing these stories because there is so much to learn and apply in the current context.

Kim Ozano: 00:25:41

Unfortunately, we have to come to an end of the episode, Brian, can you just tell us what piece of advice would you give to others wanting

Brian Spittle: 00:25:55

I'm very conscious that I could have reacted very differently to that box of material that I found after my father died.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:02

I could have chosen not to open it.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:06

I chose to open it and then that obligates you to do certain things.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:11

So I think if the, if you are faced with a situation where, you have access to information that, that is important and should be uncovered, and shared, then you should do it.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:23

And it takes a certain discipline, it takes a certain commitment, and it isn't something that is done quickly.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:28

it, it happens over a period of time.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:30

I think that's the, that's one thing I think and it's worth doing, and it brings you into contact with all kinds of people, that, that will help you along the way.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:40

The other thing I would just say quickly, is try to be open to other points of view and other perspectives.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:45

Don't just stay within a received opinion about what you think the situation is because, clearly, it's the old age, old problem of history.

Brian Spittle: 00:26:54

To look at it from any one perspective is not to really do history, but you're involved in something else altogether, go beyond what you're given.

Brian Spittle: 00:27:02

That takes some commitment and you have to be, you have to be ready to do that.

Brian Spittle: 00:27:06

It took me some while to actually read the notes.

Brian Spittle: 00:27:08

Some years after I found them, I'd still not really engaged with them.

Brian Spittle: 00:27:13

That took some time to get myself in the right place to, to do that.

Kim Ozano: 00:27:17

Thank you.

Kim Ozano: 00:27:17

I think there's some great pieces of advice there.

Kim Ozano: 00:27:19

James, anything to add?

James Reynolds: 00:27:21

If there are family folk tales writing down, because they're gonna be really fun to tell to other generations and to other people.

James Reynolds: 00:27:30

And if there are somewhere plastic bags in attic, then quietly have a look at them.

Kim Ozano: 00:27:38

Wonderful.

Kim Ozano: 00:27:39

Geoff, take us home with one final message for others.

Geoff Gill: 00:27:43

I think one of the things I've learnt over the years, and I've learned more of tonight, is that there are many different ways of telling

Geoff Gill: 00:27:55

We haven't seen a Far East POW at the Tropical School for just over 20 years now with the passage of time, but, as that phase of clinical medicine and medical

Geoff Gill: 00:28:12

and so we've continued with, books and historical articles and so on in trying to keep it alive.

Geoff Gill: 00:28:18

And just finally, by perhaps final story or message, is that perhaps one of the most interesting and successful projects we've done over the last 10 or

Geoff Gill: 00:28:34

And that has been received, very enthusiastically by both teachers and students, and we've had some wonderful experiences where Far East POWs

Geoff Gill: 00:28:48

The take home message of that is that this was a unique episode in history.

Geoff Gill: 00:28:54

It's a story worth telling.

Geoff Gill: 00:28:55

It's a story worth learning from, and I think we have receptive generations to, to tell it to.

Kim Ozano: 00:29:02

Thank you so much and, a children's book is obviously another way to reach out and keep the generational knowledge going.

Kim Ozano: 00:29:08

So thank you to our co-host and to guests, that's been a wonderful conversation.

Kim Ozano: 00:29:13

I have certainly learned a lot.

Kim Ozano: 00:29:14

And thank you to our listeners.

Kim Ozano: 00:29:16

Please do rate, like, share, and subscribe so we can bring you incredible stories of how science connects with people around the world.