John Leonard Wilson

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Leonard Wilson was the Bishop of Singapore from 1941 to 1949. Following the fall of Singapore, he was captured by the Japanese in February 1942 and imprisoned in the notorious Changi prison. Here he kept morale going and at the end of the war even succeeded in converting a number of his Japanese captors to Christianity. He was one of 57 civilians who were tortured by the Japanese authorities in the "Double Tenth" case, so called because it started with a raid on the Changi internment facility on 10th October 1943. The Japanese were seeking evidence that the internees had assisted in Operation Jaywick, in which Australian and British commandos operating from Australia sank several Japanese warships in Singapore's Keppel harbour on 26th September 1943. Bishop Wilson was one of those who gave evidence of the nature of the torture to the investigation commission set up by the authorities of the Sime Road Internment Camp following the Japanese surrender in August 1945.

From 1949 to 1953, Wilson was Dean of Manchester, and from 1953 to 1969, Bishop of Birmingham. In his time as a bishop, he was frequently called on to give a Christian perspective on issues of peace and war, his wartime experiences giving him a powerful moral platform from which to do so.

In 1966 he gave the address at the memorial service for the wartime c-in-c Malaya, Arthur Ernest Percival, which was held in St Martin-in-the-Fields.