The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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225842 Able Sea. Stanley Reader Merchant Navy SS Empire March from:Barrow in Furness My father's ship, SS Empire March, was sunk in the South Atlantic by the German raider Michelle. The surviving crew were rescued by the raider and off loaded at Singapore. The crew were transferred to Changi prison where they stayed for six months. In mid 1943 my father, Stanley Reader, was taken by "hell" ship to Japan and eventually landed in Hakodate. After a short time he was moved to the cement plant at Kamiiso just outside Hakodate. The camp closed in mid 1944 and all POWs were sent to the coal mine at Bibai POW camp until liberation in September that year. I visited both camps in 2013. The cement factory at Kamiiso still operates and the staff made great efforts to take us around the site and where the camp had been situated. The ground is bare. The Bibai camp is now a Japanese Defence Force anti missile battery base. During the visit in May we waded through 2 feet of snow to visit the desolate camp site. Only some mounds and foundations remain. David Reader Add to this record.  Related Content: Merchant Navy Battle of Singapore Changi Prison Prisoner of War Camp Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.