“Although I suspect there are more documents dealing with this matter in official files, they may never be released and I am not convinced we will ever definitely know what happened,” he said.”She would be 88 now, or she may have died, but the child, who is thought to have been adopted, would be about 61 and could still be alive.”. Thousands of former Japanese prisoners of war are in line for extra compensation after Tony Blair gave his strongest hint yet that the Government would agree to a new pay-out. Thousands of former Japanese prisoners of war are in line for extra compensation after Tony Blair gave his strongest hint yet that the Government would agree to a new pay-out.
The Prime Minister told MPs yesterday that he had “a good deal of sympathy” for the cause of those 7,000 former servicemen who had suffered in the Far East during the Second World War.In answer to a question from the Labour MP David Winnick, Mr Blair said that Britain owed the prisoners of war (PoWs) a “debt of honour” and pledged that a decision would be announced during the Chancellor’s pre-Budget statement next month. “I’ve always had a good deal of sympathy with the campaign mounted by Royal British Legion for additional compensation to be paid to Far East prisoners of war,” he said.”The suffering that they endured was appalling. The nation owes them a particular debt of honour for the sacrifice they’ve made and the memories they have had to live with… for the rest of their lives.”Mr Winnick called for compensation so that Britain could honour its obligations to “what is now a very small number of people who suffered so terribly as prisoners of war of the Japanese, treated as work slaves, tortured”.He added: “Surely it is not too much to ask that at long last we honour our obligations and do what is right?”Mr Blair replied that Mr Winnick should “exercise patience” until the pre-Budget report was delivered by Gordon Brown on 8 November.In the Fifties, the PoWs were paid just £76 in compensation as part of the Second World War peace treaties, but ministers have been influenced by recent agreements around the world. Canada and the Isle of Man both agreed recently to pay-outs of £10,000 to PoWs.Ministry of Defence officials have been trying to define exactly who is entitled to payment but are said to be worried that a broad definition might open the floodgates to further claims from those who suffered in other conflicts.When Japan successfully invaded Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore in 1942, thousands of British servicemen were captured and sent to PoW camps.

Many of them were forced to work on the Burma-Siam railway, an experience described by veterans as close to a living hell and immortalised by the film The Bridge on the River Kwai.. Was there not something un peu bizarre about the photos of Pierre-Yves Gerbeau in the papers yesterday? The beaming EuroDisney loon was surrounded by five Ministry of Sound lovelies in plunging scarlet frocks as he revealed his plans to put the Dome project to rest on 31 December with a 15,000-strong rave in the surrounding buildings. Staging the party will not cost the New Millennium Experience Company a cent, as he pointed out Nor will it make a penny out of it Not that that is altogether a new experience. Was there not something un peu bizarre about the photos of Pierre-Yves Gerbeau in the papers yesterday? The beaming EuroDisney loon was surrounded by five Ministry of Sound lovelies in plunging scarlet frocks as he revealed his plans to put the Dome project to rest on 31 December with a 15,000-strong rave in the surrounding buildings. Staging the party will not cost the New Millennium Experience Company a cent, as he pointed out Nor will it make a penny out of it. Not that that is altogether a new experience.
But my eye kept being drawn back from the details of this Stygian nightmare to the image of M Gerbeau himself How pleased he looks How radiant, how content. He bears the smile of a man who has done a job well, has reaped his true reward and is entitled to his place on the sofa of lurve.So, do we all love him now? I detect a murmur in the air that P-YG is becoming better liked for having defied his political masters, who wanted to switch off the Dome lights at 6pm on New Year’s Eve and steal quietly away.

Gerbeau’s determination to go out with a 12-hour bang is a sweet, desperate echo of the gung-ho spirit that launched the Dome project in the first place.But what did he do? He came into this horror movie halfway through, when all the big decisions had been made He slashed prices He cut the queues. He improved the signs so you could now clearly tell what new classroom display of half-witted, bien-pensant environmentally friendly Euro-bollocks you were going to be entranced by next He established the Free Day Out. He was, by all accounts, very good to the staff, even helping them to find jobs after 1 January. He discussed, or began to discuss, the possibility of turning the middle section of the Dome into a football stadium, and of hosting Miss World there.Oh, and he organised a shouting competition, which was won, surprisingly, by a classroom assistant from Kent rather than an Opposition MP baying for Lord Falconer’s resignation That’s it, I think. The rest of the time Mr Gerbeau has been a sweetly-grinning cipher, a head-scratching Stan Laurel trying to run the Burning Fiery Furnace. He reminds me of that French viellarde in the French Revolution who went on knitting grimly away beside the guillotine as blood flowed, political heads rolled past her uncaring gaze, the aristocracy crumbled and rebellion howled before her.