Andy Coogan

Who is Andy Coogan?

Andy Coogan is a Scottish author, World War II veteran and former champion runner.

Born in Glasgow, the oldest child of poor Irish immigrants, Coogan's promising athletic career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. As a young man, his goal was to compete in the Olympic Games for Great Britain, but the terrible 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 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 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'.