Themes
Twiss POW Transcripts
Admiral Sir Frank Twiss describing his liberation from the prisoner of war camp in Mitsushima
Transcript: "On the first or second of September we got instructions from Tokyo that a train would arrive. The Japanese had been told to escort us to the train and put us on the train and we would set off somewhere to join the American forces. With enormous excitement we set off to the railway station and sure enough there was train and we got in to it with a few Japanese guards to keep out the rougher elements of the civil population, who I might say were absolutely as bemused as we were and hadn’t the slightest idea of what was going on. We chugged off down the railway line. After we’d been going for about five or six hours we came to the coast and we were trickling along the railway line with the sea on one side and inland on the other when the train halted and a whole lot of US Marines appeared and said “Come on you guys, we’re taking you off”. We were taken off in landing craft to an enormous US hospital ship that was lying off shore and went on board this ship where we were de-loused and issued with a US Marines uniform with all its bits and pieces and then we were supposed to be put into destroyers to be taken up to Tokyo bay which was about 24 hours travelling."
