Jaberwok
My stepfather was one of the emaciated prisoners that were released from Changi Jail, captured at the fall of Singapore. He opted to return home by ship as it took longer and he wanted to put on a bit of weight before seeing his parents, so as not to alarm them too much. His father who met him at the dockside was a typical Edwardian, and not given to displays of emotion, apparently, in tears, hugged, and for the first time since childhood, kissed his son. That generation were so emotionally strange! My stepfather always felt that the war, and those in the Far East, had been forgotten when they came home. Everyone had quickly moved on, understandably, and seemed to disregard those returning from the hell that had been theirs for over three years.
People always think the war ended on May 8th, but there were still hundreds of thousands of men fighting in the Far East and thousands more would die before Japan finally surrendered on August 15th. Most people seem to forget that we weten't just fighting Germany, but Japan, whose war crimes were just as bad and whose treatment of POWs was terrible.
I had a relative who died some years before I was born in 1967, who was captured by the Japanese in Singapore in 1942 and suffered 3 years of hell as a POW. Apparently he was in a terrible condition like the men you've mentioned and never really recovered from his illnesses and maltreatment and died in his 40s. Obviously I have no issue with the modern Japanese, but many of the wartime ones were total scum.
