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My Grandfather Harry Foster
By
Dr Nick Sutcliffe SFHEA (Harry’s Grandson)
My grandfather, Harry Foster, was of military service age between the wars and so had been a farrier in a cavalry regiment in the 1920's. He was too old for military service at the time of the Japanese invasion so was a civilian, working as a manager on the Federated Malay States railway and lived in a colonial bungalow in the Sentul district of Kuala Lumpur. His family, a wife and two daughters, the youngest of whom was my mother, were evacuated from Malaya on the 1930’s ocean liner, ‘The Emperess of Japan’ (although this was the name that my grandmother gave me, by that time in all probability, the ship had been re-named ‘The Emperess of Scotland’ [for obvious reasons!], by that point when they were evacuated back to the UK in late 1941 or early 1942. Post war, it was subsequently sold, re-fitted and renamed again as ‘Hanseatic’ and continued to sail until 7th September 1966, when it was gutted by a fire whilst berthed in New York).
Using his farrier skills with working metal, he made the flower vases for the chapel at Sime Road Camp, out of brass artillery shell cases, my parents still have them at home on their fireplace.
Apparently a Japanese officer at Sime Road saw the highly polished shell case vases and was impressed with his handy work to the extent that he asked him to make him a sword but he declined. That seems like either a brave (or perhaps very foolhardy) thing to do but so many years later, and having heard these stories only as a child myself from my grandmother, it's hard to know if these are accurately related real events or embellished family myths. Guess that I'll never know now.
Malayan Currency
Camp Currency
Issued by the Japanese 1942
(Banana Currency)
Leaflets were dropped by plane on the Sime Road camp after liberation on 28th August 1945.
Below the above leaflet drop Harry has written his diet in the camp.
My grandfather, a three packs a day smoker after returning from the camp, in an era where the dangers were far less well known and appreciated than they are now, sadly died of lung cancer in August 1957 in his mid-60’s, just 6 months before I was born. So I never knew him, however, he was aware that his daughter was carrying me and spoke to her about it, hoping that she enjoyed her first child, shortly before he died.
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