For years I have struggled to understand exactly what happened to us in the jungles of Malaya, Siam and Burma. The full effects are plain to see at this late stage of my life. I have severe arthritis in my spine from the fall in Changi and the tropical diseases have caused permanent internal damage.

Now I must live on a strict diet, which is ironic considering that I spent my captive years dreaming of all the foods I loved. My friends joke that I live on a starvation diet, but I simply smile for they have no idea what it’s really like to starve.

The Burma-Siam Railway has rightly gone down in history as one of the most infamous episodes of World War II because it was built at enormous cost in human life. A total of 61,806 POWs were forced to work on the project and at least 12,400 of us had died by the end of the war.

Individual railway camps acquired particularly gruesome records. Sonkrai No.2, where I spent 12 months, had the highest death rate of them all. We lost 1,430 men out of a total of 1,680 – an astonishing figure. Yet the statistics tell only part of the story.

I am haunted by images, such as the face of a young prisoner tied to a tree and left without food and water for five days until his slow, agonising death: the sick Australian lying in hospital who did not stand to attention fast enough, so the Japanese guard kicked him in the stomach and ruptured his internal organs. He was dead within two days.

I witnessed men being battered with rifle butts and bamboo sticks, until bones broke or skin hung from their backs. Others died, racked by cholera, and there was nothing we could do to save them because the Japanese withheld vital supplies of drugs. Still more were dragged from hospital beds and forced to work, only to return at the end of the day, a little closer to dying.

This needless slaughter could have been avoided. Instead the Japanese sank to an all-time low in human terms, driving diseased and starving men to work, and taking pleasure from our suffering. How can anyone forgive such savagery?

These incidents are not isolated events. They happened every day in the railway camps. Unfortunately very few survivors are still alive to remind the world of what happened. Over recent years I have watched the rise of Japan as a world financial power and have waited for some sign of remorse or apology for what they did to us. None has been forthcoming. Japan has not even acknowledged that atrocities were committed.

At least the German nation has admitted responsibility for the Holocaust and the evils committed under Hitler – and has attempted to right some of the wrongs.

The above account has been taken from John Frank’s “My Diary from Hell” published in June 1995 in the Daily Mail.