STAN Vaisey is one of Oxfordshire’s last remaining survivors of the prison camps in the Far East.

The 93-year-old, from Witney, survived the “death railway”, which claimed the lives of 16,000 allied troops.

Mr Vaisey, 19 at the time, had to work in intense heat to build a 258-mile track between Thailand and Burma.

He signed up in 1940 to become Leading Aircraftman Vaisey at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, serving as a radar technician.

He was captured during the fall of Singapore in February 1942, when the Japanese bombed the boat he was in.

The former civil servant then spent the next three-and-a-half years working on the death railway and watched his friends die while he survived.

He said: “It was really hard work and there was a lot of hunger. There was rice and that was it – I was awfully thin when I came back.”

The grandfather-of-four, who worked at Witney Labour Exchange after returning from the war, said his ordeal didn’t go away when he was freed.

He said: “I used to go out and get drunk a lot. They were so many of us but now I’m probably the last one. I still hate the Japanese for what they did and have not forgiven them.”

During his time as a prisoner he conducted funerals in the camp.

He said: “I had the unique job because I was a choirboy and had a prayer book. We had do to it to show the Japanese that we were Christian and civilised and they were not.”

Mr Vaisey said he would not be doing anything to mark the anniversary but was honoured that people nationwide planned to commemorate it.