SURVIVING THE SWORD: PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE 1942-45
by MACARTHUR, BRIAN;
List Price: HK$ 150.00
¡@ISBN
9780349119373
¡@Subject
HISTORY (NON-ASIAN)
¡@Publisher
ABACUS UK
¡@Publication
2006
¡@Edition
Paperback
¡@Version
Original
¡@Description
Many of the British, Australian and American prisoners held by the Japanese during the Second World War were so scarred by their experience that afterwards they could not discuss them even with their families. They believed that their brutal treatment was, literally, incomprehensible. But some prisoners were determined that posterity should know how they were starved and beaten, marched almost to death and used as slave labour, and how thousands died from tropical diseases. They risked torture and execution to keep secret diaries and make sketches and drawings that they hid form the guards wherever they could, sometimes burying them in the graves of lost comrades. Drawing on these diaries, and on interviews with former Far East Prisoners of War, Surviving the Sword tells of inhumanity and degradation, but also of inspirational examples of courage, comradeship and compassion.
