Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary

David Mundell Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

Last weekend I met my constituent Margaret Barbour, of Rosefield farm near Annan, to hear about the experience of her father, Sergeant Major Jock Wylie, and to look through the letters, paperwork and photographs that she has kept. A riding instructor in the Lanarkshire Yeomanry Territorials, Jock was deployed in 1940 to the far east. By 1942, after the fall of Singapore, he was taken prisoner by the Japanese. Thus began three years and eight months of unimaginable suffering. Jock was not a “guest” of the Imperial Nippon Army, as their propaganda called it, but their slave. Jock spent time in Changi prison in Singapore before being sent to the notorious Kinkaseki jungle camp on Formosa—now known as Taiwan. Hundreds of Jock’s fellow prisoners died on that journey.

There, along with hundreds of others, he was forced to work in copper mines in horrific conditions, often up to 18 hours a day. Starved, beaten and stripped of dignity, men were tied to stakes under a burning sun, given salted rice or left in bamboo sweat boxes without water. Every day they were forced to take a walk past prisoners who had been beheaded for alleged misdemeanours and had their heads placed on poles, with their full military headgear still worn as the flesh around it decayed. Jock and his colleagues were reduced to skin and bone. He was over 12 stone when captured, and barely 6 stone when released. The first person to see him at the local railway station on his return burst into tears at the sight of him.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman is telling a vivid story—one that would be very familiar to a former constituent of mine, George Money, whose daughter, Pam Gillespie, leads the VJ Day commemorations every year in my constituency. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that it is so important to tell these stories so that our generation and the next generation recognise the sacrifice of these men, as well as the experiences of their families when they returned to them in that way?

[David Mundell]

I absolutely agree, which is why this debate is so important. Many of those men did not feel able to speak about their experience, or found when they returned to the UK that the public wanted to move on, now that the war was over. It is incumbent on us to relay these experiences, which is why I want to tell Jock’s story tonight.

Red Cross parcels rarely arrived in the camp, and dysentery, beriberi and malaria ravaged the prisoners. Somehow, Jock managed to stay alive, and he became a beacon of hope for other prisoners as, in the dark nights, he sang a song called the “Dumfriesshire Foxhounds”, a tune that lifted spirits and became so well known that even the Gurkhas and Australians joined in.

Jock never gave in to bitterness, but the scars he carried—both physical and emotional—never truly healed. When he returned to Lockerbie, he embraced his family and the life he had left behind, becoming a major part of the annual Lockerbie gala. He shared his stories not to gain sympathy, but to honour truth and bear witness. He spoke of the Gurkhas—the “bravest little men”, who moved like ghosts in the jungle. He never forgot the cruel warnings prisoners were given, after being forced to dig potentially their own burial pit, that if the Americans came, the prisoners would all be burned alive, as he had seen happen to Gurkhas in Singapore.

Let us take this opportunity to remember not just what Jock and his fellow prisoners of war endured, but what they stood for: duty, dignity and decency. We owe Jock—a man who, despite everything, found the strength to go on—and the men and women like him, more than monuments. Let us not allow the fading of photographs or the yellowing of old newspaper clippings to erase stories like his. Let us speak them aloud, share them and learn from them. When the last witnesses are gone, all that remains is what we choose to remember.