From the Gaeltacht to Galicia - A Son's Tale

As a POW of the Japanese for 42 months in Singapore and Japan between 1942 and 1945, the author's father - Major Francis J. Murray - kept a secret diary in the form of love letters to the woman who was to become his wife. In this unique document, apart from one month, he wrote every single day expressing his love for her, as well as describing his experience as a MO and a CO of 350 British prisoners of war. 

In 2017 Paul used this diary to follow in his father's footsteps to both countries, and with the help a guide and an interpreter, visited what remains of the six camps on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido where the men were imprisoned. 

In this personal quest, he also explores idea of reconciliation and prayer, linking his journey with three long-distance walking pilgrimages he made to the tomb of St. James in the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.

From Co. Donegal and a wreck of the Spanish Armada, to his experiences as a Belfast teenager growing up during some of the worst years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and his later struggle with the painful arthritic condition of axial SpA, Paul's journey, both physical and spiritual, is uplifting and fascinating to read.