Surviving the sword

the long version

During World War II, there were few fates that could befall a soldier so hellish as internment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. To this day, many survivors -- most of whom are now in their 80s -- still cannot talk about their experiences without unearthing terrible memories. Surviving the Sword gives voice to these tens of thousands of Allied POWs and offers us a powerful reminder of the terror and deprivations of war and the resilience of the human spirit. In this important book, Brian MacArthur draws on the diaries of American, British, Dutch, and Australian Fepows (Far Eastern prisoners of war), some of whose recollections are published here for the first time. These soldiers wrote and kept their diaries, in secret, because they were determined to record for posterity how they were starved and beaten, marched almost to death, or transported on "hellships"; how their fellows were summarily executed by guards or felled by the thousands by tropical diseases; and how they were used as slave labor -- most notoriously on the Burma-Thailand railway (later depicted in The Bridge on the River Kwai). The diaries excerpted here make plain why the Fepows have always believed that their brutal treatment by Japanese and Korean guards was literally incomprehensible to those who did not live it. - Jacket flap.