FREDERICK DOUGLAS RANSOME
Image from the Evening Star – 16th April 1942
Born: 6th December 1918, Ipswich.
Died: 21st September 1944; age: 25; at sea on board ‘Hofuku’ as a Japanese PoW.
Captured: 15th February 1942 – Fall of Singapore.
Residence: 28, Lindbergh Road, Priory Estate, Ipswich.
Occupation: a Wharf Labourer.
Rank: Sergeant; Service Number: 5830476.
Regiment: Cambridgeshire Regiment, 2nd Battalion – Infantry.
Final resting place unknown.
Memorial Reference:
Column 57.
Kranji,
Singapore.
Relatives Notified & Address: Son of Frederick Arthur & Rhoda Ellen Ransome, of Ipswich.
Father: Frederick Arthur Ransome, born 1882, Ipswich.
Mother: Rhoda Ellen Ransome (nee Silvester), born November 1891, Ipswich.
ENGLAND & WALES REGISTER 1939
Frederick was a Wharf Labourer. He was living with his mother & brother at their family home – 28, Lindbergh Road, Ipswich.
Rhoda, unpaid Domestic Duties.
Charles Edward Ransome, a Grocery Stores Errand Boy, born March 1925, Ipswich.
Probate to Stanley George Ransome – father, a Sergeant – H.M. Army.
The Battalions were attached to the 18th East Anglian Division.
15 February 1942: After the fall of Singapore, approximately 620 of the Battalions were taken POW and later mostly died on the Burma-Thailand Railway.
SUFFOLK REGIMENT MUSEUM
Friends of The Suffolk Regiment
21st September 1944
The Hofuku Maru cargo ship carrying 1,289 British and Dutch prisoners of war in squalid and inhumane conditions. The ship being part of a convoy consisted of 10 other ships, 5 of which caring a total of 5,000 POWs. Most of the men had been captured at Singapore in 1942 and were being used as slave labour. The Japanese decided to move the POW’s to Japan to work in factories, mines and shipyards.
80 miles north of Corregidor in the Philippines. The ship was sunk by an American aircraft, which they believed the ships to be caring cargo for the Japanese war effort. 1,047 POW’s died on board unable to escape from the hold. Those who were able to break out spent five days at sea clinging to wreckage, most were recaptured by the Japanese. All 11 ships were sunk.
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