Author interview: Untold story of Irishman who survived a slave labour camp

Don Ferguson, an accountant in Singapore during the Second World War ended up in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, and was lucky to survive to tell the tale

Fergus Kennedy tells Sue Leonard his parents fell in love in Ballybunion, Co Kerry, and got engaged in 1940: ‘All my father had wanted was to get married, start a family, and have an income. And he ended up in a prisoner of war camp. His is an extraordinary story.’

• Ballybunion to the River Kwai 
• Fergus Kennedy
• Gill Books, €18.99

During the Second World War, Fergus Kennedy’s father Don was a prisoner in a Japanese camp in Thailand. 

A slave labourer working on the River Kwai railway, commonly known as the death railway, he was extremely lucky to survive. 

But how did the accountant from Ireland — a neutral country — end up being captured in the first place?

It all began on holiday in Ballybunion. Don fell in love with Nora Ring, becoming engaged in early 1940. 

Recently qualified from University College Dublin, there were no jobs for accountants in Ireland. And that’s how Don ended up in Singapore.

The plan was for Nora to join him a year later, but by then it wasn’t safe to travel. 

And while Don was captured, suffering untold trauma and deprivation, the love of his life neither knew where he was, nor whether he was alive or dead.

“All my father had wanted was to get married, start a family and have an income,” says Fergus, on zoom from Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

And he ended up in a prisoner of war camp. His is an extraordinary story.

It’s one that Don and Nora’s seven children, brought up in Co Waterford, were barely aware of.

“The prescription given to men at the end of the war, was ‘shut up! Don’t talk about it. Drink yourself into oblivion if you have to’.

“So many men ended up with alcoholism and marriage breakdown, depression, and suicide.

“But Dad was fortunate. He had a strong faith and a good woman by his side.

“This book is also my mum’s story,” he says. “And it would not have happened without the stories she told me.” 

Don, Fergus says, was a gentle person who was highly respected in the community. He was fair, and scrupulously honest. And he was a wonderful father.

“In a way, he was ahead of his time,” says Don. 

“He recognised that seven children was a bit of a challenge for my mum, and he would take us off on these trips to a path in the mountains or the beach so that she could have a well-earned rest.”

And returning from work, he was always interested in how our day had gone.

Don had suffered from terrible nightmares on his return, and, with no counselling available, he shared his experience with his wife.

“If we asked him about the war, he said, ‘let’s talk about something else’. He wanted to forgive and forget and to never be angry or mean.

“He was successful in compartmentalising his life,” says Fergus. “But he never bought a Japanese car, I guess.”

After Don’s death in 1989, Nora, an excellent storyteller, felt able to share her husband’s stories with her children. And, as the family historian, Fergus wrote them all down. 

Over the past 40 years he’s been reading and researching the background of his father’s war. The resulting memoir makes for an extraordinary and engrossing read.

Largely starved, overworked, and enduring quite appalling conditions, it’s something of a miracle that Don survived. When cholera hit the camp, Don had to bury 11 of his colleagues in a single day.

That, surely, must be tattooed on his brain forever. 

That he didn’t die is due in part to a few extraordinary human beings. People like Dr Pavillard, who was resourceful in gaining supplies for his patients — and who was prepared to stand up to the Japanese authorities.

“He got slapped around for his insolence, but when you look at his figures, far fewer deaths happened under his watch compared to those under any other medical officer. 

“There were several people like that,” says Fergus, “like Boonpong, a Thai trader who helped with supplies to the prisoners, and the Swiss consul, Walter Siegenthaler. They did heroic things behind the scenes.”

There was one memorable time when Don was saved by sheer good luck. 

He was suffering with a severe case of beriberi, and confined to a hut with other sick prisoners, came up with a plan to pass the time. 

Every day, each of the men would entertain the others for five to 10 minutes. They could tell a joke, sing, recite a poem, or tell a story.

“Here they were getting basically no medical attention because the medical officers were dealing with more life-threatening illnesses, and doing amputations on infected ulcers, so they had to come up with some way of maintaining morale.”

Life saved by Ballybunion

One day, Don told of his love for Ballybunion, extolling the natural beauty of the Co Kerry town, when a stranger who’d arrived, accompanied by a Japanese guard, stopped at the bottom of his bed. 

He turned out to be an Irish doctor who was carrying out an inspection for the International Committee of the Red Cross — the first of its kind.

“He’d heard the Irish accent, and the mention of Ballybunion, which he knew well.” 

They spoke for some time, and when, leaving, the doctor shook Don’s hand, he slipped him some Vitamin B1 tablets.

“That mention of Ballybunion was possibly the difference between life and death for my father,” says Fergus. 

“He had advanced beriberi and would most likely have deteriorated further without the vitamins.”

Don had suffered from malaria and dysentery too — and ended the war malnourished and emaciated. 

And as the allied troops advanced, the news that a local Japanese commander had been ordered to shoot the prisoners in the case of an allied attack must have caused much anguish. But Don survived.

If he’d expected a warm welcome in Ireland, he was to be sadly disappointed.

“When he stopped at other ports on the way home, like Liverpool, there were great celebrations for the prisoners. There were marching bands.

“But arriving in Dun Laoghaire there was no fanfare. Just their loved ones there to meet them.”

Some of his colleagues, returning home, found themselves without their girlfriends or wives.

“They called themselves the jilted lovers club,” says Fergus, explaining that his mother had had a few potential admirers.

“But she would show them her engagement ring to quieten them down,” he says.

The economic situation hadn’t improved since Don had originally left Ireland, so after marriage the newlyweds returned to Malaya — staying there until 1950, when they returned from Kuala Lumpur with their first two children to settle down to life in Ireland, where jobs were then more plentiful.

A pathway to medicine

Many of Don’s siblings had gone into medicine, and this was the path chosen by Fergus. 

Graduating from UCD, then gaining his qualifications to become a GP, he travelled to Canada with his wife, Maggie, settling in practice first in Alberta, in a town in the Rocky Mountains, and then, fed up with the long cold winters, on Vancouver Island.

“I loved what I did,” he says, explaining that, along with normal general practice, he also took part in emergency work. 

“I delivered nearly 600 babies in 10 years,” he says, “and after that there was a lot of challenging work.”

It was after he retired that he decided to turn his research on his father’s war into a book.

“Initially I wrote it for my grandchildren, and hopefully future great-grandchildren, to keep the story alive, but thinking it might be of general interest, I sent it out, and this is the result. I’m over the moon about it.”

The book launch back in Waterford was intensely emotional.

“Over 100 people came, and so many of them had known my mum and dad.

“Some were in their late 80s and 90s and came up to say what a wonderful mum and dad I had. That was so moving to me — but none of them knew this story.”