Ron Bowey; naval photographer who returned to the graves of comrades who had met their deaths at Japanese hands
Hyfler/Rosner
November 25, 2009
Ron Bowey: naval photographer
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6930271.ece
Ron Bowey was a Royal Marines physical training instructor
who became a naval photographer after war injuries made it
impossible for him to continue in that specialisation. In
2004 he fulfilled a long-held intention to visit the graves
of three comrades, two Marines and a naval aviator, who had
been murdered by the Japanese in 1945.
Making his way to Singapore he sought out Kranji cemetery
where, by that time in a wheelchair and accompanied by a
nurse, he was able to pay his respects at the graves of
Major John Maxwell, Colour Sergeant Ernie Smith and Sub
Lieutenant John Tomlinson. The two Royal Marines had been
members of a special operations group captured by the
Japanese after they had landed on the island of Phuket off
the coast of Thailand to reconnoitre Japanese dispositions.
Along with the naval pilot whose aircraft had come down in
the sea, they were executed by the Japanese in 1945 after
refusing to give information under interrogation. Bowey had
become aware of their fate when he gained access to an
intelligence document of HQ Malaya Command. What he read
there haunted him for many years afterwards.
Ronald Arthur Bowey was born in 1919 and joined the Royal
Marines in 1938 specialising as a PT instructor and later
training to become a corps photographer and film cameraman.
Injuries received during the war left him badly disabled in
both legs, but he was able to transfer to photographic
duties, recording events for the Chief of Naval Information,
the Chief of Naval Intelligence and the Commandant General
Royal Marines. One of his assignments was to photograph the
Japanese surrender in Singapore in 1945. He subsequently
went to Rangoon, and then visited the Htaukkyant war
cemetery in which lie most of the 27,000 British and
Commonwealth dead of the Burma campaign.
But what particularly prompted his wheelchair-bound visit to
Burma and Malaysia many years later was a Malaya Command
intelligence summary, which described the suicide of three
Japanese intelligence officers at Rengam on December 28,
1945. The three officers had killed themselves in
circumstances described as "amende honorable" after
confessing that they had personally tortured and then
beheaded three British PoWs, Major Maxwell, Colour Sergeant
Smith and Sub Lieutenant Tomlinson in July 1945.
Maxwell and Smith had been part of a small special forces
group that had landed on Phuket by canoe from a submarine in
March 1945 to reconnoitre the dispositions of Japanese
airfields on the island and also pass back information on
the landing beaches. Smith had been badly wounded in a
battle with Japanese troops. Maxwell remained with him and
both men were captured.
They were subsequently joined in captivity by Tomlinson, who
had been picked up from the water after the Hellcat
reconnaissance fighter he was flying from the escort carrier
Empress had ditched in the sea. After refusing to give their
captors any more than the basic information required by the
Geneva Convention they were, after several months of
interrogation and torture, taken to a hill on Singapore
island and beheaded. According to their executioners the men
had given an impressive display of light banter as they said
their farewells to each other.
Bowey was increasingly affected by the account he had read,
and could not rest easy without visiting the graves of the
three men. He recalled: "When I visited the cemeteries, I
faced the headstones, closed my eyes and said a short
prayer. I felt my years slip back to my early twenties,
which would be the average age of the majority here. They
had been gently recovered from the jungles, the swamps and
the jails and brought to the cemeteries. They were no longer
in isolation scattered across the battlefields. Now they
were all together in serene peace."
Bowey, who had transferred from the Royal Marines to the RN
School of Photography in 1949, travelled the world in his
new job. Among his assignments were several state occasions,
and he accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh on a world tour.
After retiring from the Royal Navy in 1964 he worked as a
television cameraman. Latterly severe diabetes had led to
the amputation of both his legs and a number of his fingers,
and he had been wheelchair-bound, which made his Singapore
pilgrimage the more remarkable.
His wife Joan, whom he married in 1957, died in 1993. He is
survived by three daughters and a son.
Ron Bowey, naval photographer, was born on September 14,
1919. He died on November 2, 2009, aged 90