William Sprague, a Ship Surveyor in the Harbour Office in Hong Kong, served as a private soldier in the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps and was a Prisoner of War in Hong Kong from Christmas Day 1941 until the end of the war in 1945. During this time he kept a Diary day by day, with a few gaps in it. This unique document, written "in the moment", has been transcribed and a copy was lodged with the Imperial War Museum in London in February 2011. It runs to some 450 pages of typescript and is a remarkable description of how a very ordinary man and his fellow POWs survived a very extraordinary experience.

To mark the 70th Anniversary of the ending of the war in the Far East and the release from Hong Kong we propose to blog the 1945 Diary entries daily from the 2nd August to the end of the month to demonstrate how this momentous month was seen from inside the barbed wire in Hong Kong - rather than the better known outside view.

Jenifer (née Sprague) & Philip Burton.