News-Info-Alerts

Re: 60 Years Later

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 18, 2002

"Former PoW to go to ceremony

By Alan Harris
 
A former Japanese prisoner of war in Coventry has welcomed an act of reconciliation in the city.

Les Dennison will be among Second World War veterans at Coventry Cathedral on Sunday for the first visit to the city by the Japanese Ambassador.

The 87-year-old, of Westmorland Road, Wyken, was captured in Singapore in 1942.

For the next three-and-a-half years he endured daily beatings, starvation and back-breaking work on the infamous Burma railway.

But the great-grandfather welcomes the visit by Masaki Orita who will take part in a wreath-laying ceremony in the Cathedral Ruins at 4pm.

Mr Dennison said: "I welcome any sort of reconciliation whatsoever.

"I had a rough time on the Burma railway for three years and seven months but what's passed has gone.

"Quite a few of my comrades try to hang on to their twisted bitterness but if you want a decent world the only way forward is reconciliation.

"I don't want to pass on my bitterness to my grandchildren because it's a bad enough world as it is with all the conflict going on."

Coventry Lord Mayor Cllr Ken Taylor and the Bishop of Warwick The Rt Rev Anthony Priddis will also attend the short service in front of the statue Reconciliation by Josefina de Vasconcellos.

An identical statue exists in the Peace Garden at Hiroshima.

Following the ceremony, the ambassador will join the cathedral community at Evensong at 5pm in the new cathedral.

Mr Dennison said: "I was invited by Canon White to attend the service and I am pleased to be going."

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