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From Nagasaki to Neath Port Talbot – a Baglan man’s epic World War II troop ship voyages
26 September 2025
In the year which has seen the 80th anniversary of VJ (Victory over Japan) Day and VE (Victory in Europe) Day 99-year-old Baglan resident Raymond Jones has recorded on video his inspirational and thought-provoking World War II memories.
Raymond’s video will feature in this year’s Mayor of Neath Port Talbot’s Remembrance Concert at the Great Hall in Swansea University’s Bay Campus on Saturday, November 1st, 2025. It will also be published on Neath Port Talbot Council’s Military Heritage website pages.
At the start of the conflict, Raymond trained in Aldershot and joined the Royal Army Medical Corps which would see him working as a medic on giant troop ships carrying up to 3,000 men.
On some of his many voyages from Liverpool to the Far East, the Middle East, India and Japan, his passengers included soldiers released from notorious Japanese Prisoner-of-War Camps.
Speaking from his home in Baglan where he lives with his wife Abigail, he recalled: “They were emaciated…I don’t think they’d had a decent meal in three or four years.”
Raymond said the released troops began their recovery on the ships taking them home with the Royal Army Medical Corps providing as much help and support as they could - including breakfasts of porridge and squares of bread with a large dollop of jam “from a whopping great tin”.
On one occasion, his ship called at Nagasaki, which along with Hiroshima, had been hit with Atom Bombs in August 1945.
Raymond said his ship had great difficulty docking in Nagasaki as the port was “full of twisted metal”.
After another long voyage from the UK his ship called at Hiroshima with Raymond noting that even though this was several months after the dropping of the atom bomb “people were still walking around in bandages”.
He said: ”In Hiroshima 70,000 were killed straight off with another 70,000 or 75,000 being killed in Nagasaki. Many of them had catastrophic burns.”
While in Hiroshima Raymond bought a number of mementos including two kimonos, a German camera and a Japanese tea set – he still has the tea set in his home in Baglan.
At the end of the war Raymond attended a demobilisation centre where he said: “We got a little suit, a pair of shoes and off we went with forty-eight quid.”
For more information on this year’s Mayor of Neath Port Talbot’s Armed Forces Festival, go to Mayor's Armed Forces Festival 2025 - Neath Port Talbot Council.
