Col Peter Dean who lived for many years at Rougham near Bury St Edmunds and more recently at Tostock, died on 19 January after a short illness. St Mary’s Rougham was full for his memorial service.

Peter was born in Essex in May 1919 and went to school in Suffolk and Oundle in Rutland. He went to Sandhurst in 1938 and was commissioned into the Suffolk Regiment in July 1939. He served in France and Belgium before returning home via Dunkirk on 1 June 1940.

In October 1941 he was transferred to 2nd Battalion the Cambridgeshire Regiment as part of the reinforcement of the 18th Division which was to go overseas Redirected to Malaya after the Japanese invasion the 2nd Battalion was engaged in heavy fighting on the Malayan mainland before being forced back on to Singapore where after 14 days of battle they were, with the rest of 18 Division, ordered to lay down their arms.

From February 1942 to September 1945 he was, as he described it, an unwilling guest of the Emperor of Japan, firstly as a forced construction labourer on the Thai-Burma railway, then as an uninvited guest on a rather wet package tour of Japan and finally as a labourer in a badly run mine there. For those who knew him and experienced his mischievous sense of humour he must have been a very difficult prisoner.

After return from the Far East he served in Vienna, as Adjutant of 4 Suffolk (TA), at HQ Malaya, in Germany and as Training Major with 1 Cambs. In 1960 he was selected to be military attaché Tokyo.

There is a story that the Army was so concerned about the way military attachés were affected by the welcome they received in Japan that it was decided to send an ex-POW who could be relied upon to be objective about his hosts. Peter was certainly that and his tour was judged a success by both the MOD and the Foreign Office. However, despite never being able to forget what had happened in the Japanese prison camps, Peter was able, if not to forgive, to come to an understanding with the younger Japanese he met that a way forward had to be found. Thereafter he worked continuously with those who wished to foster improved Anglo-Japanese relations.

He left the Army in 1969 and thereafter devoted himself to good causes. He was a fundraiser for the YMCA, a hospital visitor and active in promoting better Anglo-Japanese understanding. He was very active in the Suffolk Regiment Old Comrades’ Association and its Chairman for over 10 years.

He met his wife Cynthia in 1941 and they married in 1946. After many happy years at The Rookery in Rougham they decided it was too big and moved to Tostock to a bungalow which had stabling and a paddock for his beloved donkeys thus enabling him to indulge his favourite pastime – driving donkeys four in hand.

He is survived by his wife Cynthia, their two daughters and four grandchildren.