John Charter's wartime journal

John's son Anthony has generously given the text of his father's journal to be made available here on Gwulo. Anthony has also published the journal in printed form as the book "The First Shall Be Last". The book version is an expanded copy, adding photographs, additional background information, and text from his mother Yvonne's memoir that add her experiences of these events. The book can be ordered from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/First-Shall-Be-Last-Journal/dp/1786233967

Here is an extract from the book's preface, where Anthony introduces his father's journal:

John’s journal was written when in Stanley Civilian Internment Camp where John and Yvonne Charter were imprisoned by the Japanese for three years and eight months.

Sadly, I never read my father’s journal fully until after he died aged 77, (25th October 1989), not because he did not want me to read it, but because the journal was written in such a tight manner, as paper was in short supply in Stanley Camp, that when he ran out of space, he wrote all around the margins, backwards and upside down, so that I thought it would be almost impossible to follow! However, my friend Bill Lake, a Hong Kong war period historian, decided he would take on the task of typing the whole journal out, and unravelling the sequence, which has, for the first time enabled me to read it comprehensively. I am very grateful to Bill for his painstaking work transcribing my father's journal, for without his dogged determination it would never have seen the light of day.