Royal Engineers, Service no. 1873993
Born: 10th October 1916
Story
John Carver was born in Kippax, and was the son of Joseph Carver (1886-1937) and Mary Ellen Fenwick Hirst (1893-1922), who married in Kippax on 24th December 1910. They lived at 2 Helena Street. Joseph was originally from Wigan, and was a Lance Corporal in the Welsh Guards during the First World War, in which he was injured. After Mary died in 1922, Joseph re-married Elizabeth Moore the following year. In 1937, Joseph died in Kippax, and John moved to Chatham, Kent, where he married Ethel Verdun Strawson (1916-1993) the same year. John’s step-mother Elizabeth joined them in Kent. John enlisted with the Royal Engineers, but was captured and held as a Japanese Prisoner of War.
During the Second World War, the Japanese Armed Forces captured nearly 140,000 Allied military personnel (from Australia, Canada, Great Britain, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States) in the Southeast Asia and Pacific areas. The death rate among Japanese camps was 27 percent, compared to 4 percent for Allied prisoners held in German and Italian camps. Prisoners like John were forced into the hard labour of constructing railways, roads, and airfields, which were then used by the Japanese Armed Forces in the occupied areas. About 36,000 prisoners were transported to the Japanese Mainland to supplement the shortage of the work force, and compelled to work at the coal mines, mines, shipyards, and munitions factories. By the time the war was over, more than 30,000 prisoners of war had died from starvation, diseases, and mistreatment both within and outside of the Japanese Mainland.
John’s Prisoner of War records are shown above. He survived the War, and returned to Kent, where he passed away in 1978.
Below: Liberated prisoners distributing rice rations to campmates in Sumatra, 1945
Kippax Roll of Honour 