ONE of the few remaining survivors of the Japanese Prisoner of War camps was among those who bowed their heads in remembrance at the VJ Day Commemoration in Poole.

Robert (Bob) Hucklesby, from Poole was joined by a handful of others around the Mountbatten Memorial in Poole Park at 11am to remember Victory in Japan Day - the end of WWII.

The 95-year-old president of the National Far East Prisoner of War Fellowship Welfare Remembrance Association laid a cross for those who lost their lives serving, as he did, with the 18th Division Royal Engineers.

Bob spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war of the Japanese, enduring unimaginable conditions and forced to work on the infamous 250-mile Burma Railway, which cost more than 12,000 Allied lives.

It was with obvious emotion that he told the Echo of the profound life-long obligation he feels to remember those who never made it home.

He said: “My VJ day was August 28 when a plane flew over our camp and the Air Force personnel opened the side door and waved. It was something I will never forget. I was standing there in skin and bones and I thought ‘I made it’, after three and a half years.”

Bob arrived home in October 1945 suffering from severe malnutrition, malaria, dysentery and lockjaw. In 1950 he got involved with Far East prisoner welfare and for 23 years was chairman of the local branch of the PoW association.

“I have always felt an obligation to remember those who didn’t make it back home. I was very, very fortunate - and I appreciate it.”

He recalls one of the moments when, close to death, he was sent to a ‘death hut’ in the camp. “That evening a couple of mates - three of you always worked together to help keep each other alive, boiling water and so on - they came to see me, and I thought I must be in a bad way. I said ‘will you cut me some bamboo and make a back brace - I’m going to sit up.’ So they brought me the back brace and I sat up and kept my eyes open all night.

“I was the only one alive in the morning. Twenty men around me were dead - so you can see my obligation to them.”