Brutality behind the wire

A box of notes left by her mother led Merilyn Brason to the story of the appalling experiences her mum had endured in a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War

- Merilyn Brason

When Merilyn Brason stumbled across a box of notes, left by her mother, she began to piece together the story of her parents’ imprisonment in a Japanese camp during the Second World War. Her resulting book – The Bamboo Bracelet – is a celebration of the sheer tenacity of the human spirit under brutal conditions. Katie Jarvis spoke to her about it.

Merilyn Brason puts in front of me a mass of tiny writing, blue ink underscored with occasional blood-red pen. “C [Catherine] – now 2½ taught to lie on ground – wooden peg round all children’s necks to be put between teeth when bombing heavy,” one sentence reads.

A paragraph on, another is highlighted: “Doctors not allowed to sign cause of death as starvation or malnutrition.”