The terrors of Japanese captivity and the legacy seen through the stories of 22 POWs. The harrowing story of the brutality and cruelty of life in a Japanese POW camp has been told in many books but this is a novel and sensitive presentation. – Highly Recommended.
NAME: A Cruel Captivity, Prisoners of the Japanese, Their Ordeal and the Legacy FILE: R2714 AUTHOR: Ellie Taylor PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword BINDING: hard back PAGES: 208 PRICE: £19.99 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: WWII, World War Two, Second World War, WW2, World War Two, Far East, South East Asia, Japan, POWs, war crimes, brutality
ISBN: 1-52673-261-0
IMAGE: B2714.jpg BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.com/y73msvsk LINKS: DESCRIPTION: The terrors of Japanese captivity and the legacy seen through the stories of 22 POWs. The harrowing story of the brutality and cruelty of life in a Japanese POW camp has been told in many books but this is a novel and sensitive presentation. – Highly Recommended. The war in Indo China and the South China Seas was a largely forgotten story even if the island hopping fight back was familiar to Americans. Britain was focussed on war in Europe and North Africa. What resources were left over went to the war against Japan, usually too little too late. What happened to POWs in Japanese captivity is harrowing and an outrage, yet there was no appetite for war crimes trials after the Japanese surrender. Some of the photographic evidence gathered by Allied Forces liberating camps is unbelievable. It was no better than German excesses and far worse than typical German treatment of POWs. It is understandable that many prefer not to read about this stain on humanity but this is a must-read book. In many respects it is the finest study to be published. In particular it looks in detail at 22 POWs that are representative of the thousands of fellow prisoners held in camps across South East Asia, Hong Kong the Spice Islands and the Japanese Home Islands. Much coverage before has looked at generalized captivity on the Burma Railway, in Singapore and Hong Kong. That is a statement of fact of captivity during the period of the war. In this account, the author has been able to follow the story of the example POWs through their captivity and on to their lives beyond war. This is a moving account and presents the picture of the will to survive and the obstacles of integrating back into society after liberation. Although only 22 example POWs are featured, their stories stand for the thousands who perished and lie in unmarked graves and for those who also survived and had to find ways of picking up their lives. It is more than a story of this, also presenting the stories of wives, girlfriends, children and family who had an equally difficult task living with the legacy of inhumane treatment of their loved ones by the Japanese. It was sad that those fighting in the Far East were a Forgotten Army but it is a crime that the survivors were such a forgotten group and this book is a very welcome correction of the neglect.