Allied Chaplains and spiritual resilience in Japanese Captivity, 1942-1945

Battey, Alexander 2025. Allied Chaplains and spiritual resilience in Japanese Captivity, 1942-1945. MPhil Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis analyses the contribution of chaplains to the resilience of British, Australian and Dutch personnel held by the Japanese during the Second World War. The aim is to demonstrate the distinctiveness of the ‘spiritual resilience’ their ministry was able to offer. The personal testimony of chaplains and other troops is held alongside modern theories of resilience as a means of demonstrating how personnel coping with high levels of stress and trauma were supported by their ministry. In their work of establishing churches as nodes of community, fostering religious belief, facilitating worship, visiting the sick and burying the dead, chaplains are shown to have worked both indirectly as catalysts for others supporting resilience, and directly as agents of a spiritual resilience rooted in Christian faith, recontextualising negative experience within a biblical narrative of meaning and hope. This is shown to be characteristically longer in term and broader in scope than other means of coping, thus offering a valuable complement to other avenues of wellbeing in the army of today.

Item Type:	Thesis (MPhil)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Global Humanities
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BL Religion D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D731 World War II
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	18 August 2026
Date of Acceptance:	10 July 2026
Last Modified:	19 Aug 2026 11:44
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/189067

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