More than 70 years after they tried to kill each other on a battlefield in north-east India, two veterans from Britain and Japan marked their reconciliation on Thursday with a handshake and a cup of tea.
In 1944, Roy Welland, a former sergeant from the Royal Berkshire Regiment, and Taiji Urayama, who was a lieutenant in the Japanese imperial army, were on opposite sides during the battle for Kohima, one of the bloodiest clashes of the second world war.
They were joined at the British embassy in Tokyo by Mikio Kinoshita, a former Japanese army sergeant who worked as an engineer on the notorious Thai-Burma railway. More than 12,000 allied prisoners of war died building the “death railway”, a 250-mile stretch of track the Japanese imperial army used to transport troops and supplies to Burma.
But on Thursday, the three men met as old soldiers and friends, aware that this, the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, was likely to be their last opportunity to meet.
“I am very grateful for being invited to today’s reconciliation event,” Kinoshita, 95, said. “It is a great pleasure for me to meet Mr Welland, Mr Urayama and their families.” While the 93-year-old Urayama remained largely quiet, his daughter, Akiko McDonald, said she had been deeply moved by her father’s meeting with Welland.
Welland, 94, said it was wonderful to be in Japan. He said: “Everyone has been so friendly. As for today’s meeting; well, there are no words. It’s rather overwhelming. But this is why we do it. It’s about these simple moments, which carry a lot of meaning. I’d like to thank everyone involved in making this happen and I want to keep doing things like this for a few more years if I can. It just keeps getting better.”
As the three veterans drank tea and ate cake, Tim Hitchens, Britain’s ambassador to Japan, said: “Today we can remember the past, but we can also honour the change through reconciliation between people.”
Three Australian former PoWs are also in Japan this week at the invitation of the foreign ministry. The men were due to visit the commonwealth war cemetery in Yokohama, as well as revisiting the locations where they were held during the war, the ministry said.
