Little did I realise when my dear late father was taken to a military hospital in 1987, to at last be cured of tropical worms in his blood, that this in fact would change my own life so very much. My father carried these worms in his blood because of what he had suffered at the hands of the Japanese in World War Two. Yes like so many he suffered all the tropical illness, and malnutrition, that went hand in hand with being a prisoner of the Japanese at that time.

To give you an insight, at the tender age of just twenty, my father was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore, he was one of the few to survive the massacre at Alexandra hospital. He then began three and a half years of hell on earth, being used as slave labour. On the day he was captured he weighed a healthy 13stone 10Ibs, the next time he was weighed was when he was flown to Rangoon hospital some three and a half years later. This time I am sad to say that he weighed in at only 4stone 10Ibs, and as you can imagine was very near to death.

It seemed so strange to me that here we were some 42 years after the war and at last we had hope that my father would at last be cured of these tropical worms. Sadly it was not to be for long though, for the medical team found his heart was so badly damaged that they could only give him three months to live. This came as a shock to all of our family as you can imagine, but for my father here he was once again looking death in the face as he had so many times during his days in World War Two. The doctors offered my father a psychiatrist to speak to, knowing of all that he had gone through in the war, as the drugs they would be using on him would bring back all the bad memories my father had by at least ten fold. My father was not a man to really use bad language but he soon told them where they could stick the psychiatrist, and asked them where was the psychiatrist when he could have really done with him when he arrived home all those years ago from his trip into hell. I now realise what a privilege my father gave me when he told the doctors "If I talk to anyone it will be to my son Michael".

This is what he did in those last three months of his life, and I relived all those nightmare days with him. I must point out that he was not only my father but was also my best friend. I will never forget the emotion that we shared in those last three months of his life. I think the nurses must have thought we were a couple of cry babies, for we did cry a lot. I am so grateful to him though that he did not take all his memories to his grave with him. He told me how he had to drive and assist the main Japanese executioner for Singapore, for seven months, when he had the job of putting heads on poles, and burying the bodies. I knew at once why he had suffered so many nightmares all his life since those times. The stories he shared with me, I feel many would just not believe but, sadly to say, they are all true. He shared his story with me of his time on the notorious death railway, and how he had been just one of the few to travel it's entire length staying in most of the death camps that the Japanese had to keep their slave labour in. My father managed to steel six photos from the truck that he drove the executioner in, these the executioner had taken of his killings. My father buried them in a piece of hollowed out bamboo, in Singapore, and after the war he retrieved them, may I say when I finally did get to see them, how glad I was that they were in black and white. When I lost my dear father, I knew that I had to tell of his time in world war two, not only as my tribute to him but to help mark the paths of history, for I knew that he and his comrades had certainly done just that.

The rest as they say is history, for I wrote my book My Dad My Hero and it went on to be a best seller. Over the following year I received some 5,000 letters from people that had read the book, many wanted to share their story with me, and so I went on to visit them in their own homes, to take down their stories, hence my books Forgotten Heroes, A Will To Live, War Time Women, and Waving Goodbye were all written and published. In total their are 23 main true stories plus, with the exception of My Dad My Hero, the other four books all finish with a letters section which all tell true stories, these bring you about another 100 true stories. Plus the books feature many rare photos of that period in time. I have had the great privilege to meet so many wonderful people, and I am so pleased to say that every ones story that I have written has become a dear friend to me. Thanks to these dear people and of course the books, I have been able to raise a few thousand pounds, for my chosen charities which are Far Eastern Prisoners of War, Breast Cancer Research and after care, and The National Blind Children's Society. Yes my father really did change my life the day he opened his heart and mind to me, and thanks to him I have been able to help others. I also thank you my readers for your support with my books and for your kind words about those that gave so much for our today. One thing my father stressed on me was not to hold any bitterness, or hatred, in my heart for the things the Japanese inflicted on him in those dark days of World War Two, for as he so rightly said the young Japanese of today are not to blame for what he had to suffer at the hands of his hateful captors in World War Two. Will mankind ever learn?

Michael Bentinck.