George Muscutt was interned in a Japanese POW camp in South East Asia. Muscutt’s duties included keeping records of interviews conducted between Japanese and British officers. For example, one document entitled, “Report of the Interview between General Arimura, I.J.A. and Lieutenant Colonel S. W. Harris, Commanding 18th Divisional Area,” details the exchange between these two officers. General Arimura asked some seemingly trivial questions, like how Japanese food compared to British supplies. Even these seemingly trivial questions, however, were poignant because the first concern of Colonel Harris was that the rations provided by the Japanese were “totally inadequate to keep the men in health …”General Arimura also wanted to know, among other things, who had given the order to surrender the Singapore Fortress, who actually carried out the white flag, and if the POWs were to “return home to England to-morrow would they be welcomed by their families?”

… General [Arimura] said that a Japanese Officer would have automatically “cut belly” (the expression is the General’s) rather than obey this order. I pointed out to the General that it was as a point of dishonour for a British solider to commit suicide as an evasion of responsibility. The General remarked that different countries had different traditions. I pointed our that all other countries expect Japan surrendered when the position was hopeless to avoid useless bloodshed, and that in these circumstances it was not considered a dishonour.

On September 11, 1944 George Muscutt’s wife had caught news that American submarines had sunk two Japanese vessels carrying Allied POWs; 1,300 people died, but Muscutt was not one of them. He would return to the UK and be reunited with his wife, Molly, and son, Leslie. Together they would have another son, Keith. George Muscutt died on September 3, 1955.