John "Jack" Ford, a Mount Pearl man who spent more than three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during World War II, has died.

From that camp, Ford witnessed the dropping of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and watched as the bomb's mushroom cloud grew above the city.

Ford returned home after the war, but said what he witnessed that day in Nagasaki never left him.

"The city was flattened. It was just flattened," said Ford in an Aug. 5, 1985 CBC News story.

"I don't think a building was standing for a mile or a mile and a half from where we were standing. We thought it was the end of the world."

In 2010, he said an apology from Japan's foreign minister didn't make up for the punishment he suffered in the prisoner of war camp.

Ford was 94.