Hope Robinson’s husband, Major Paul Robinson, was captured in what Winston Churchill called “the biggest disaster in British military history” – the Fall of Singapore on 15th February 1942.
The Japanese entered the Second World War by bombing Pearl Harbour and invading Malaya and other territories across the Far East. Within seven weeks they had captured the whole of Malaya and the island city of Singapore. Over 50,000 British, Australian, Indian, Dutch, and other nationality troops became POWs (Prisoners of War). They were forced to work as slave labour in camps all over the Far East. Paul Robinson was one of the thousands who were forced to build the Burma-Thailand Railway, by hand through thick, mountainous jungle.
The condition were brutal. Thousands died from disease, malnutrition and brutality by the Japanese guards. the Japanese military ignored the Geneva Convention on the treatment of Prisoners of War. the Red Cross were denied access to the camps, especially on the Burma-Thailand Railway, and little information was given about the condition of the men.
Those back home were left with little snippets of communication on censored postcards.
Most families received very few of these postcards, with some families receiving none. Hope Robinson received only five cards in from Paul’s capture in February 1942 until his liberation in August 1945 – over three and a half years.
Families lived in painful limbo, desperate for any information – anything to break the silence.
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