From Burma to Nagasaki: the man who walked through hell

At 92 he thinks this surfeit of empathy comes from having witnessed appalling violence as a young man. From the formative ages of 18 to 21, Jan Bras was a Japanese prisoner of war. When the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies during the second world war, he was transported by “hell ship” and cattle wagon to work on the construction of the Burma railway. Later, he was interned in a camp and sent to work in the perilous coal mines at Fukuoka. After liberation in 1945, he was one of the first to walk through a decimated Nagasaki after the detonation of the atomic bomb. He witnessed unimaginable terror, brutality and death. Throughout it all, Jan Bras survived.

In many ways, his is the story of the second world war in the Pacific – a conflict overshadowed by memorialisation of events in Europe. With the 70th anniversary of Victory in Japan Day on 15 August, stories like his are becoming rarer. Bras is one of only a handful of survivors.

For years Bras did not talk about what had happened to him and this is the first time he has ever shared it publicly. Like many survivors, he found it impossible to convey his experiences to others after the war. The words did not exist.

“He never really talked to us, to my mother or me, maybe until the last 10 years or so,” says his daughter, Gina Jennings. “I think they [the survivors] do feel that nobody understands, so they don’t bother to talk.”