Ernest Warwick

Ernest Warwick was born in Brighton in 1918 towards the end of the first World War, the 'Great War’—the so-called 'war to end all wars’. Like many others, 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. His father had been killed the day before.

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, he was called up and, after eight weeks of basic training in the Essex Regiment, he was posted to the 4th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, part of the 18th infantry Division of the British Army. Serving as a private soldier he was taken prisoner after the brief and bloody 17-day battle for Singapore which ended in the ignominious surrender of the Island—the 'fortress that never was'.

He remained a prisoner of war in the hands of the Japanese for three years and eight months. He was 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).

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.

Ernest remained haunted by his years in captivity and through his later years walked slowly and with painful difficulty as a direct result of his brutal torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the Japanese. 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.

Ernest lived with his family in Ashingdon, Essex, until 2009, when he died at the age of 90. Tamajao 241 was written out of Ernest's fervent desire to tell the world the real truth about World War II in the Far East. It is based solidly upon his own experiences in captivity. It is a story written from the heart.