Andy Coogan

Andy Coogan (1 April 1917 – 22 March 2017) was a Scottish author, World War II veteran and middle-distance runner.

Biography Coogan was born in Glasgow, the oldest child of poor Irish immigrants.

His promising athletic career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. As a young man, he was a mile runner and his goal was to compete in the Olympic Games for Great Britain, but the consequences of war and imprisonment left him physically unable to continue this pursuit.

Captured during the Fall of Singapore, Coogan was interned at the Changi camp (site of the modern day Changi Prison) before being transported to Taiwan, where he worked as a slave in a copper mine and was twice ordered to dig his own grave. He was later sent to Japan on a hell ship voyage that nearly killed him.

After the war, Coogan returned to Scotland and founded Tayside Amateur Athletic Club, competing in veteran athletics, coaching, and devoting himself to encouraging everyone in the community to participate in sport.

In August 2012, Mainstream Publishing published Coogan's autobiography Tomorrow You Die: The Astonishing Survival Story of a Second World War Prisoner of the Japanese - the story of his 'poverty-stricken boyhood in the slums of the Gorbals to the atomic wasteland of Nagasaki'.

London 2012 Olympic torch relay On 12 June 2012, Coogan took part in the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay. Nominated to be one of 8,000 torchbearers by Hoy, Coogan carried the flame on a leg near Dundee - to 'rapturous applause' from the watching public.

Works Tomorrow You Die: The Astonishing Survival Story of a Second World War Prisoner of the Japanese (Mainstream, 2012)