This morning I received an email from Intute in the UK with the advice that they had listed the web site that I had created about my father’s experiences as a prisoner of war during the Second World War within their catalogue.

The listing is detailed with a synopsis and an excellent set of key words and key terms. I may use these terms in the meta tags of the site.

I am quite humbled by and proud of the addition of the site to Intute. Check out their blog.

Have been doing a little work on the site about my dad, Frank. Added some additional links and corrected a few others this week. Presently in the process of gathering together some students to work on a similar project.

Do you have relatives who also experienced the trials and tribulations of war? Would love to hear about them.

The Footnote site is a rich source of primary source documents and images. The majority of the files are free although some do require a subscription. The collection has an American emphasis yet there is quite useful material for students of history in Australia.

I have found the documents from the Japanese photographic archives recovered after WWII to be particularly interesting since my father was a guest of the Japanese following his capture in Malaya by the Japanese army in January 1942. A number of the photographs in the Japanese category were taken in Singapore. A tip of the hat to Larry Ferlazzo for his post pointing to this site.

I received a thoughtful email from Terry Manttan at the Thailand-Burma Railway Centre. His email reads as follows…

“Hello John

I just came across your web site and found another interesting personal story of the railway.
I am not sure if you got to visit our Museum when you came to Kanchanaburi in 2003 as we had only opened in January of that year and were not well known. We are located next door to the main War Cemetery in town and are now getting around 90,000 visitors per year including quite a number of ex PoW railway workers and many of their relatives, mostly from the UK, Australia and Holland.

Attached is a little introduction and you can also have a look at our website, listed below.
We would be grateful if you would consider adding a link to our site on yours as another means of helping connected people find where they can come for information.
Thanks for your efforts in helping keep the story alive.

Best regards

Terry

Terry Manttan
Centre Manager
THAILAND-BURMA RAILWAY CENTRE (TBRC)
(Next to the main Kanchanaburi War Cemetery)
73 Jaokunnen Rd.,
Ban Nua,
Kanchanaburi, 71000
Thailand.”

I shall add this web site to the links page on my web site. The web site is most informative and well illustrated. It also includes a rich set of links and resources.

Last year I visited the new museum at the Ford factory in Singapore. This was the site of the British surrender to Japan in February 1942. The museum has an excellent web site that is worth visiting. It is a beautifully designed web site. It is still developing however the overall look and feel is superb.

I added five galleries of photographs taken at various points in Singapore and Southeast Asia during 2001 ~ 2005. The photographs were taken in Kanchanaburi, Thailand and three points in Singapore: Kranji War Cemetery, Labrador Park and the Ford Factory Museum. I also added a gallery of photographs taken at the ANZAC Day dawn service at the Commonwealth War Graves in Singapore.

I shall try and get back into this. I have not been active on this blog and the Prisoner of War site for a year now. I added a ‘htaccess’ file to the directory to block referrer spam. The referrer spam was also affecting my home page. I will have to keep an eye on both sites.

The official history of my father’s battalion, the 2/19th AIF has been recently republished. It is entitled The Grim Glory. It is in its third edition. I hope to obtain a copy soon. I am curious to read the revisions. There are photographs of the book launch here on the ADF web site.

I removed the adverts and counter. That was an experiment. I was not overly impressed. I obtained better information about the site from stats supplied by my web host and google. I updated the links page as well and made some slight cosmetic changes to the site.

I placed a counter on the menu page. I used the ‘control panel’ facility that is part of the web hosting arrangement. Well, two hits so far. I am curious to see how many hits the site gets.