Surviving The Sword: Prisoners Of The Japanese 1942-45 [Hardcover]

Brian MacArthur (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2005

Many of the prisoners held by the Japanese during the Second World War were so scarred by their experiences 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 or transported on 'hellships', used as slave labour - most notoriously on the Burma-Thailand railway - and how thousands died from tropical diseases. They risked torture or execution to keep secret diaries and make drawings that they hid wherever they could, sometimes burying them in the graves of lost comrades. The diaries tell of inhumanity and degradation, but there are also inspirational stories of courage, comradeship and compassion. When men have unwillingly plumbed the depths of human misery, said one prisoner, the artist Ronald Searle, they form a silent understanding of what solidarity, friendship and kindness to others can mean. The diaries and interviews with surviving prisoners drawn on in SURVIVING THE SWORD will tell a new generation about that solidarity, friendship and kindness.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Brian MacArthur has made a significant contribution to the literature of the war in the Far East, which is still much less known to us than the matching struggle in Europe SUNDAY TELEGRAPH MacArthur does justice to these men. He lays bare the horrors, so awful that, reading of them, one is amazed that there were any survivors. But he also pays tribute to the courage the vast majority showed in their determination not to die, and especially Allan Massie, TIMES Commendably, in this first essay into military history, he has allowed the voices of these veterans of the Far East Prisoners of War Association to speak to us directly across the 60-year void; they echo from the mouth of a tropical hell with an awful eloquence ... a deeply moving read John Crossland, SUNDAY TIMES Brian MacArthur's compelling story of the extraordinary suffering of British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of the Japanese provides excruciating detail ... the capacity of men to inflict misery on each other is almost balanced by their abil TLS --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Brian MacArthur is associate editor of THE TIMES. He was founder editor of TODAY and THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT and has been a journalist for forty years. He is the editor of three books on journalistic themes for Penguin.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T) (February 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316861421
• ISBN-13: 978-0316861427
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,830,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wartime Atrocity, November 10, 2008

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Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Surviving The Sword: Prisoners Of The Japanese 1942-45 (Hardcover)

To read Brian MacArthur's book is to get a glimpse into hell. There was one chapter in fact I couldn't even read, and how often does that happen. That's the story of the North Borneo camp Sandakan where thousands of Australian prisoners of war were kept for years while they completed work on an airfield (slave labor), and then, when their work was done, they were systematically starved to death by their Japanese captors, in the waning months of World War II. Only six men survived. The book makes you wonder about what happens during war and how do the people in power lose all their humanity and show such inventive cruelty to their captives?

It wasn't only the guards and camp commandants... Each camp had its own collaborators, and some of the black marketers were as nasty and brutal as the Japanese. And then there were the captured Koreans or Thais who, forced to act as guards by the Japanese, rivalled their own captors in cruel games perhaps believing that, if they were more sadistic towards the British and Australian prisoners, they might curry favor with those above them. One thinks of Hannah Arendt's argument about the banality of evil, and wonders how one would have held up oneself under such horrific conditions. Well, I would have died within a few days I'm sure. And maybe conditions in US prisons are just as dehumanizing, ands the picture is too global to see it, but something about the particular set of circumstances in Singapore, Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia that staggers the imagination. Based on the contemporary diaries of more than 150 prisoners, diaries kept in secret, some of them buried and re-buried after each entry made, SURVIVING THE SWORD reconstructs a world of contradictions, a world in which cruelty was matched by compassion, infighting by camaraderie, people hurting each other by people helping each other, ignorance by ingenuity. I liked the story of the Rolex firm, after the war, examining a watch that kept perfect time despite having all its parts redone carved out of bamboo by resourceful prisoners with a magnifying glass. And the story of how one remarkable doctor found a way to grow yeast, to save the eyesight of hundreds of suffering prisoners, is the stuff heroic movies are made of.

But don't mention movies to author Brian MacArthur or he'll sit you down and tell you at length about what a bad movie THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVE KWAI was with its Alec Guinness character a libel on the great man the part was modelled on. He estimates that 27 percent of Fepows (Far East Prisoners of War) died in camp, compared to somewhere between 4 and 6 percent of their counterparts held by the Germans or Italians. The figures speak for themselves, but he is an eloquent spokesman as well.