80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

Friday 9th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, it is very humbling to speak after 20 such excellent speeches, of course including the maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough. I shall centre my remarks on VJ day, a victory that is further from the minds and memory of many in Britain. Comparatively little has been said about the war against Japan, yet it was arguably even more brutal, contributing to more than 30 million deaths.

It is not just the numbers: it is the method of warfare. The torture and cruelty inflicted by the Imperial Japanese Army were among the most sadistic in modern history. The experiences of those who endured those atrocities were so horrific that many, like my father, never spoke of them. My father survived only because of the atomic bomb, as awful as it is. He never spoke of his experiences, except once briefly on a chairlift in the mountains. The conversation lasted no more than 10 minutes. In that short time, I glimpsed the horror, sadistic beatings, disease, medical experiments, malnutrition and inhuman conditions. He kept his mind alive only by teaching French to a fellow prisoner, who in turn taught him Russian. He was one of the lucky ones and was released after seven months. He weighed 46 kilos. He was convinced that, had the war lasted any longer, he would not have survived. Yet these stories remain largely untold.

The memories differ vastly between nations. Germany has confronted its past through Auschwitz memorials and public remembrance. Japan’s memories tend to centre primarily on Hiroshima. Its memorials honour the dead, but not the crimes. Perhaps this reflects the deeper cultural divide between western guilt culture, rooted in Christianity, and Japan’s reverence for its emperor. In Germany, Hitler was viewed as a monstrous aberration; in Japan, the emperor was worshipped. Japan did not issue an explicit apology until 1992. The silence around Japan’s war crimes was sealed over, with experiences left unspoken and often unresolved.

That silence came at a cost. For my father and many like him it meant a life marked by trauma never healed. He died at the age of 97 in 2009. I knew very little about what he had endured. Once a lively, outgoing and sportive man, as photographs testify, the father I knew was quiet, solitary and often unwell. The toll of what he had endured was written into his body and his soul. Apart from that conversation, he never spoke of his experiences, but the images I retain from that brief exchange told me all I could ever need to know.

Like most Allied prisoners of war held in Japanese camps, he received no mental health support. Post-traumatic stress was neither recognised nor discussed. Seeking help, especially for a man raised by the Jesuits, was seen as weakness, so he, like many others, carried his burden in silence. He never complained, he simply carried on. My father received several distinguished decorations for his war service and bravery. I discovered his medals tucked in a drawer only after his death. He never sought recognition.

His quiet resilience and that of his fellow prisoners reminds us of a different kind of endurance, forged in unimaginable hardship. Their generation bore suffering with remarkable dignity. Were my father here today, he would tell us that we need to spend more on defence. How often when I was a child did he tell me that all the signs were there in 1936, but no one wanted to believe that war was about to happen again. So will the Minister say what steps this Government are going to take to ensure that future generations understand the lesser-known sacrifice made by those who fought and suffered in the Far East, so that no child forgets what our parents and grandparents went through?