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Millions Of POW Records Published Online

The records of more than a million prisoners of war have been published online for the first time.

The records of service men, women and civilians who were taken captive have been digitised and put onto the internet to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war and the liberation of the Far East Prisoner of War camps.

The documents, registers and photographs were previously available only at The National Archives in Kew making it complicated for people to find out about their relatives and loved ones, especially without knowing which prisoner of war camp they were held at.

One veteran who has already discovered his own documentation is Dr Bill Frankland MBE who was a prisoner of war between 1942 and 1945. The 103-year-old was held at the notorious Changi Prison in Singapore, but only recently shared his personal story.

Like many veterans, Dr Frankland struggled to open up about his time as a POW: "When I was a prisoner of war, it was very miserable," he said.

"Why should I think about a time when I was perhaps, not happy? I was alive and happy that I was alive. I decided I wouldn't talk to my wife about it or my children at all."

Now the veteran, who is an award-winning immunologist, is more open about his time as a doctor in the camp and says publishing the records is a good things for families.

"I'm over a hundred, and l'm lucky as I can still talk about it but most people who had grandfathers or fathers who've died as prisoners of war, they would very much want to know [about them]," he said.

The collection covers the period 1939 -1945 and consists of documents from Japanese and German prisoner of war camps, including the Stalag III prison known for the 'The Great Escape' attempt.

The records contain the names, ranks and locations of prisoners of war, along with the length of time spent in camps, the number of survivors, details of escapees and the nationalities of prisoners.

Paul Nixon, from the Find My Past website, says it's taken more than seven months to get the records online.

"It's a huge amount of information," he said. "The records would have been collated after the Second World War and would have gone to the war office and they've subsequently gone to the National Archives so you could view them there but it's just very difficult to find them."

The website is allowing people to search through the records but will charge a fee to look at the results.