Tortured wartime prisoner dies at 92

A former Japanese prisoner of war who wrote a book about his horrific wartime experiences has died at his Staffordshire home, aged 92.

Roy Yates was a member of the 6th Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment in the 59th Division of the British Army and was featured in the Express & Star in July 1942 when his parents received the news that he had been taken prisoner.

He was captured in Singapore and moved to a number of concentration camps as one of thousands of PoWs made to carry out repair work on the Kwai Bridge.

In 2001 he published his wartime memories in a book called The Forgotten Army, covering three and a half years, starting from April 1940, when he received his call-up aged 20 to Whittington Barracks, near Lichfield, to his release at the end of the war in 1945.

Mr Yates, who lived in Radstock Close, Hillcroft Park, Stafford, said at the time that he had written about his experiences because he found it difficult to talk about them.

His daughter Sandra O'Neil said: "He only spoke in his latter years of the torture and atrocities he and other prisoners suffered."

Mr Yates, who worked as a statistician for the electricity board, was deaf in one ear from the bombing of the Empress of Asia which had been taking troops to the East.During his years of capture he suffered from malnutrition and dysentery, and weighed 5st on his return.

He told the Express & Star in 2001: "I wrote the book because people kept talking to me about it and I didn't like to talk about it because I find it a little bit distressing."

Members of the British Legion will attend his funeral at Stafford Crematorium tomorrow.