ABSTRACT
Just as doctors had a unique experience of captivity, their experience of postwar life cannot be equated with that of the general ex-POW population. The knowledge that the war was over filtered through to the camps throughout Asia at different times. In many, the Japanese commander called the senior Allied officers to his office and announced the news, reading Japan’s formal statement of surrender. Assessments of ex-POWs’ behaviour during repatriation was judged according to their prewar position as soldiers and hence did not apply to doctors. For decades after the war, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine continued to see many British ex-POWs who had strongyloides worm infestations that civilian doctors misdiagnosed, attributing the strange skin patterns produced by the worm to stress. Also, many former prisoners did not seek medical help in the early postwar period, wishing to put the experience behind them, and not wanting to be a ‘parasite’ on the government.
