James Percival Whitham (1907-1942)

J.P. Whitham, Sherborne School 1st XV, 1924.

James Percival Whitham (1907-1942), athlete, soldier, casualty of the sinking of the Lisbon Maru.

James Whitham, known as ‘Jim’ to his friends, attended Sherborne School (Abbeylands) from May 1920 to July 1925, having previously attended Cathedral School in Shanghai and Beechmont Preparatory School in Sevenoaks, Kent.

Jim was born in Shanghai on 26 January 1907, where his parents, Mary Adelaide Whitham (née Birch) (1870-1963) and Robert Percy Whitham (1873-1931), were living when his father was working for the American Trading Company in the Hankow Road, Kowloon.

Jim had an outstanding career at Sherborne School, being Head of Abbeylands (1925), a School Prefect (1924-25), and a member of both the 1st XI cricket (1925) and the 1st XV rugby teams (1923-25), Captain of Fives (1925), Captain of Gym (1925), and Drum Major in the OTC. He was also a great athlete, breaking in 1923 the School record for the 100 yards open (10 1/5 secs) and in 1925 breaking the School records for both long jump (20 feet 8 inches) and putting the weight (16 lbs) (37 feet 2 ½ inches).

During his final season in the 1st XV, Jim was described in the Characters of the XV 1924-25 as ‘A great School full back, possessing every requisite for the position. With coolness, pace, strength and neatness, he has sufficient knowledge of the game to avoid the unorthodox in bigger football. His career at Oxford will be watched with great interest here.’

In 1925, Jim went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge, intending to study modern languages prior to going into the cotton trade. However, he disappeared from the printed University calendar between 1928-1929 and there is no record that he completed his degree. During his time at Cambridge Jim excelled in College athletics and in 1927 was part of the winning college team (100 yards and putting the weight) in the inter-college competition. He also represented Cambridge against Oxford in 1927 in putting the weight, for which he was awarded a half blue, and in 1928 in the 600 yards race.

Jim’s hopes for a rugby blue were dashed on 17 November 1926 when he broke his thigh during the Cambridge v. Dublin University match which prevented him playing in the Oxford v. Cambridge Varsity match at Twickenham on 14 December 1926. However, the injury did not ruin his rugby career and he went on to play in the 1928/29 season as a full-back and wing for Richmond Rugby Club.

In 1935, Jim attended the first Old Shirburnian dinner to be held in Hong Kong where he was then working for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. He later became Acting Branch Manager in Hong Kong of the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada. In 1935 Jim had married Janet Orr, but they later divorced, and on 18 January 1941 he was married in Hong Kong to Beatrice (Betty) Lenola Brouwer (1917-2020), daughter of Jacob Brouwer of Grand Haven, Michigan, USA. On 30 November 1941 their son, Jonathan Glendaye Whitham, was born in Hong Kong. However, on 7 December 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the United States naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing the United States into the Second World War. The following day, Jim, having previously served with the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps, was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant (service no. 221895) in the 1st Battalion The Middlesex Regiment, with whom he served defending Hong Kong until he was captured by the Japanese on the Fall of Hong Kong on 25 December 1941.

Beatrice & Jonathan Whitham pictured at the Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong, 1942. (*Daily Record*, 21 September 1942)

Before the Fall of Hong Kong, Jim had taken his American wife Betty and their baby son from their home at 10, Shek O, Hong Kong Island, to safety at the Governor’s house at Stanley Prison, but on 5 January 1942 all ‘enemy civilians’ were ordered by the Commander of the Japanese forces in Hong Kong to assemble and they were interned at the Stanley Internment Camp on the southern end of Hong Kong Island. Betty and Jonathan remained at the Stanley Internment Camp for six months until the Japanese authorities announced that the American internees would be repatriated as part of a civilian prisoner exchange. On the 29 June 1942 the American internees sailed on the Asama Maru to Lourenco Marques (now Maputo) in Mozambique from where they departed on 28 July 1942 on board the SS Gripsholm, arriving in New York City on 25 August 1942.

On 27 September 1942, Jim and 1,816 British and Canadian prisoners from the Sham Shui Po POW camp in Kowloon were told that they were to be transported from Hong Kong to Japan on the freighter SS Lisbon Maru. The prisoners were crammed into three overcrowded forward holds, but the ship bore no sign that she was carrying prisoners of war. On 1 October 1942, when six miles from the Chinese island of Tung Fusham, the ship was torpedoed by American submarine USS Grouper. The Japanese soldiers were taken off the damaged ship, but the prisoners were left on board with those in no.3 drowning when the stern began to sink after she was taken in tow. The prisoners in the other holds managed to get out into the water where many were machine-gunned by the Japanese soldiers with only 977 of the 1,816 prisoners surviving the ordeal.

Incredibly, Tony Banham in The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (Hong Kong University Press, 2006) includes an eye-witness account which mentions that Jim was one of those who managed to get out of the ship’s hold into the water:

‘Robert Wright: “It was then that I heard someone calling my name. It proved to be Lieutenant Whitham who, completely naked, was hanging on to a flimsy piece of wood.” Wright swam off to find a lifebelt for Whitham, who had been wounded in the legs in the Hong Kong fighting, passing Sergeant Green and other man hanging onto a floating latrine from the deck. When he returned, there was no sign of Whitham …’

Jim is believed to have drowned on 2 October 1942.

By January 1944 Betty and Jonathan were living at Cobble Hill, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, but tragedy struck on 18 January 1944 when 2-year-old Jonathan accidentally drowned in a creek near their home. Beatrice remarried in 1945 to Major John William Humphries and they had two children. Betty died in Herefordshire on 24 March 2020, aged 103.

Lieutenant James Percival Whitham is remembered on the San Wan Memorial, China, column 13; on the Pembroke College, Cambridge war memorial; and at Sherborne School on the war memorial staircase, in the Book of Remembrance, and on the Abbeylands roll of honour.

With grateful thanks to Betty’s family for their generous help and contributions to Jim and Betty’s story, and also to Elizabeth Ennion-Smith, Pembroke College Archivist.

Rachel Hassall
School Archivist

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