Joyce Storey tells Diane Parkes how three gruelling years as a wartime prisoner haunted her for decades after.

It is a grainy small photograph of a group of girls dressed in their guide uniforms and neatly lined up for the camera. But what is not immediately obvious from the photograph is that it was taken in a Japanese concentration camp.

These girls were among 3,000 British children who had been living in Asia when Japan overran the continent and joined the fighting of the Second World War.

Rounded up and imprisoned in camps run by the Japanese, the youngsters suffered from hunger, cold and disease. Many were hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their parents, dependent on their friends and the adults around them.

In the years when they should have been carefree children they were forced to survive under harsh conditions and constant guard.

Released after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, many of these children were changed irrevocably by their experiences and would go on to carry the scars throughout their adult lives.

Seated on the back row of the picture, second from left, is Joyce Kerry (now Storey). Then a teenager Joyce spent nearly three years, when she was 12-15, interned by the Japanese.

Joyce is now 80 and living in Hollywood, Birmingham, and while many of the memories have faded, others remain as vivid as ever.

Joyce was a boarder at Chefoo School in the city of Chefoo, now Yantai, in north eastern China when life changed dramatically.

“Our school had huge grounds in its own compound with a girls’ school, a boys’ school, a prep and a san where you went for recuperation,” she recalls. “The Japanese took us out of there and they took us to Temple Hill on the other side of the city. It was a long walk and they put us in a compound there. This was November 1942.

“We were the girls’ school and there were a few other odd bods who must have found it really strange being with us. There were two Trappist monks, one was really friendly and he put his autograph in my autograph book.”

In the summer of 1943 the pupils were moved again, taking a two-day journey by steamer and train, this time to a more permanent construction – Weihsien camp in what is now Shandung province, northern China.

Joyce was to spend the next two years of her life there.

“There were more than 1,500 people there, all civilians, and it was more like a village than the previous camp,” she recalls.

“The Japanese had a policy of letting the internees organise themselves so it was very disciplined. Jobs were apportioned out so there were people responsible for cooking or other jobs. The Japanese were not fighting in that area but it was a bit like that film, Empire of the Sun, because you would see the planes going over.”

Joyce’s teachers soon established order and began lessons again. Also a pupil at Chefoo was Joyce’s brother Brian, who was two years younger, and although the boys’ and girls’ schools were kept separate, the siblings made sure they maintained close contact.

“In the camp we were known as ‘best brother and sister’ because we had such a good relationship.”

But daily life was hard.

“One of the problems was clothes,” recalls Joyce. “We were all growing and although clothes could be passed down they would only last so long. We made clothes out of tablecloths and out of curtains.

“And when I couldn’t wear my shoes any more I went around barefoot. That was all right in the summer but the winter was cold. I remember just walking through puddles and thinking how cold my feet were. This was northern China and it could get very cold in winter and we had barely any heat.”

Rations were also a problem.

“We used to eat all kinds of porridge. We had millet porridge and I quite liked that but they also made porridge out of gaoliang, a kind of grain they have there and that was awful. For lunch the cooks would just use whatever they had and make a stew. But there were things we really had to go without such as eggs and milk.”

The adults were concerned that the children were lacking in calcium so took to saving any egg shells which could be ground up and served to the youngsters in a drink.

“That was horrible, it was just gritty. You would try coughing on it to blow it away,” says Joyce. “But it must have worked. I think I was lucky because I didn’t have an enormous appetite so I could manage.”

Not that internees were never poorly.

“I had hepatitis when I was there so they took me off and made sure I had a proper diet to make sure I was well again. When we were in the first camp a lot of people got mumps. I had always wanted to be a nurse and that was my first experience of nursing, running around looking after them all.”