This is a repost of a post made on the private Facebook page, VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery. Other than contributing four photos, I am not the author or administrator of the group. The purpose of this post is to share this amazing project.

Included in the gallery are my grandfather (line 11, 2nd from right), two uncles (last line, 9th & 10th from left), and brother of an uncle (line 23, 4th from right).

Post by Pam Gillespe, Admin, VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery:

As a tribute to all Far East prisoners of war on this 76th Anniversary of VJ Day, we are pleased to unveil our FEPOW’s Gallery collage.

It contains one thousand photos of those held as prisoners in the Far East, representing the many thousands held overall by the Japanese in camps right across South East Asia during WW2.

Among the one thousand FEPOWs pictured here are many different nationalities including British, Australian, Dutch, American and Canadian. Most are of service personnel of all ranks and all branches of the services, but among the thousand are also civilian internees – men, women and children.

These thousand people were held in locations as far afield as Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Japan, Thailand, Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, the Spice Islands and elsewhere.

Of these one thousand people, over twenty per cent did not return home.Also included in our one thousand are a number of FEPOWs of whom no photo could be found.

We decided that the absence of a photo should not be a bar to being remembered in this way, since so many FEPOWs lost their lives when they were very young, and left very few, if any, photos behind to remember them by.Many thanks to all who contributed their photos of much loved FEPOW relatives to make this tribute possible. We hope you agree it is fitting tribute to those who were forced to endure immense suffering as FEPOWs and who bore the mental and physical scars of their captivity for the rest of their days.

Anyone is welcome to share the image of the completed collage of photos – our FEPOW Gallery. We ask, however, that wherever you share it, please do so respectfully and please give credit to the VJ Day FEPOW’s Gallery Group for having created it, and to those who so kindly allowed their relatives’ photos to be part of it.

Also, we have no wish to cause offence to anyone but do need to add that the image is copyrighted and may not be used in any form for the purposes of commercial gain. Please do not change the format of the collage. We will remember them.

Please note: This is the official, copyrighted version of the collage, as distinct from other images you may have seen exhibited elsewhere