Letters to Changi

Sybil numbered each envelope so I know that she wrote at least 120 letters to my father over a three year period. The last envelope among his notes was dated March 1944.   Still, there is some mystery to the numbering because in at least one instance it is out of sequence with the postage dates. Perhaps this could have been cleared up easily enough if all the envelopes had survived but only a few of them did. This in turn is also a bit of a puzzle because my father kept every scrap of paper he could to write on, including the envelopes of other prisoners.

The letter illustrated here was sent in December 1942. It is clear from the address (British Prisoner of War, C/O Japanese Red Cross) that she didn’t know which camp he was in.  She was using the same basic address convention in March 1945 which implies that she still did not know of his whereabouts or condition even then.