Download or read book POW on the Sumatra Railway written by Christine Bridges and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-08-11 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Geoffrey Lee (always known as Geoff) joined the RAF on his 20th birthday in June 1941. He left Liverpool on a troop ship in December 1941, with no idea where he was going. He eventually arrived in Java, where he was captured by the Japanese, along with many others. During his time in captivity, he survived several camps in Java, Ambon and Singapore and three hell ship journeys. After being washed ashore in Sumatra, (as a ferry he was being transported on blew up), he was then recaptured and suffered sheer hell as a slave on the Sumatra Railway. Enduring bouts of malaria, beri beri, tropical ulcers and a starvation diet was bad enough, but this was exacerbated by the searing heat and extreme cruelty meted out to the prisoners by the Japanese and Korean guards. Geoff miraculously survived, weighing just 6 stone when he arrived back in Liverpool in December 1945. After his release he found he had difficulty in convincing people where he had been as no one had heard of the “Sumatra Railway”, only the other one, thousands of miles away in Burma. Letters to newspapers were returned as ‘Just another Burma Railway story’. The Ministry of Defence, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and The Imperial War Museum had no records of POW’s building a railway in Sumatra. So began Geoff’s journey, his aim... to prove to the establishment what he already knew to be true. This is Geoff's story of his captivity, release, and subsequent efforts in achieving his aim.
Download or read book Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway written by Lizzie Oliver and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway is the first book to detail the experiences of British former prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced to construct a railway across Sumatra during the Japanese occupation. It is also the first study to be undertaken of the life-writing of POWs held captive by the Japanese during the Second World War, and the transgenerational responses in Britain to this period of captivity. This book brings to light previously unpublished materials, including: · Exceptionally rare and detailed diaries, notebooks and letters from the railway · Memoirs from Sumatra, including detailed recollections and post-war statements written by key personnel on the railway, such as Medical Officers and interpreters · Remarkable original artwork created by POWs on Sumatra · Contemporaneous photographs taken inside the camps Employing theories of life-writing, memory and war representation, including transgenerational transmission, Lizzie Oliver focuses particularly on what these documents can tell us about how former POWs tried to share, preserve and make sense of their experiences. It is a wholly original study that is of great value to Second World War scholars and anyone interested in 20th-century Southeast Asian history or war and memory.
Download or read book POW on the Sumatra Railway written by Christine Bridges and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2022-08-11 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Geoffrey Lee (always known as Geoff) joined the RAF on his 20th birthday in June 1941. He left Liverpool on a troop ship in December 1941, with no idea where he was going. He eventually arrived in Java, where he was captured by the Japanese, along with many others. During his time in captivity, he survived several camps in Java, Ambon and Singapore and three hell ship journeys. After being washed ashore in Sumatra, (as a ferry he was being transported on blew up), he was then recaptured and suffered sheer hell as a slave on the Sumatra Railway. Enduring bouts of malaria, beri beri, tropical ulcers and a starvation diet was bad enough, but this was exacerbated by the searing heat and extreme cruelty meted out to the prisoners by the Japanese and Korean guards. Geoff miraculously survived, weighing just 6 stone when he arrived back in Liverpool in December 1945. After his release he found he had difficulty in convincing people where he had been as no one had heard of the “Sumatra Railway”, only the other one, thousands of miles away in Burma. Letters to newspapers were returned as ‘Just another Burma Railway story’. The Ministry of Defence, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and The Imperial War Museum had no records of POW’s building a railway in Sumatra. So began Geoff’s journey, his aim... to prove to the establishment what he already knew to be true. This is Geoff's story of his captivity, release, and subsequent efforts in achieving his aim.
Download or read book Death and Deprivation on the Forgotten Sumatra Railway written by James H. Banton and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Henry Banton was born in Burton on Trent in 1920. He worked as a driver of a steam locomotive used to used to transport beer and supplies to breweries around the town. When war broke out Jim joined the RAF, eventually becoming a Leading Aircraftsman as part of the RAF's ground crew. During this time Jim had met the love of his life Dorothy Mason. Jim didn't know that when he left Gladstone Dock in Liverpool he would not see home or his family including Dorothy for another four and a half years. Eventually posted to the Far East he was captured by the Japanese in the hills on the island of Java. Used as slave labour, starved, beaten and witnessing death on a daily basis he was later put to work on the building of the Sumatra Railway. The Far East Prisoners of war became known as the Forgotten Army, however there has been little reference paid to the Sumatra Railway compared with other theatres of WW2. With this in mind the prisoners who worked on the Sumatra Railway could be considered to be the 'Forgotten of the Forgotten Army'. In August 1945 the world celebrated victory in Europe, however for the FEPOW's the war dragged on. As parts of the world were trying to return to normality Jim and his colleagues were being made to dig their own graves in the Sumatra jungle. The FEPOW's lives hung in the balance as orders had been issued to murder all POW's should mainland Japan be invaded by the Allies. This book is Jim's story and it is hoped it will also be a reminder not only of the sacrifice of the Forgotten Army but also highlight the suffering of the 'Forgotten of the Forgotten Army' - The Sumatra Railway POW's.
Download or read book The Sumatra Railroad written by H. Hovinga and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the gripping historical tragedy of the 220 km railroad that bored its way through the hot, humid Sumatran jungle during World War II. The railway was commissioned by Japan and built with the blood and tears of Allied prisoners of war and press-ganged Javanese romushas. Henk Hovinga interviewed nearly one hundred former railroad workers and did painstaking archival research. The result is a moving book, richly illustrated with numerous authentic drawings of life in the internment camps, charts and photographs.
Download or read book Traces of War written by Jan Banning and published by Trolley Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dutch photographer Jan Banning has interviewed and photographed 24 of the survivors of the Burma and Sumatra railways. The haunting images in this book show them as they worked, naked from the waist up. The words elicit, with a matter-of-fact disinterest, the misery of their constant understanding of death.
Download or read book Captured written by Brenda M. Tranter and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2022-08-03 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Australian Lieutenant, A.E. Tranter, from Heathcote, Victoria, (Australia) spends time in Malaya training young soldiers during the waiting period prior to WW2 in Asia. He survives the battle against the Japanese in Muar and the fall of Singapore, before escaping by boat to the wilds of Sumatra. However, his luck fails and he becomes one of the thousands of prisoners of war in the slave labour camps in Sumatra. He writes a tender book for his little daughter which he manages to keep hidden from the guards throughout his ordeal. Remarkably the book is all about the pleasant and beautiful things he has seen and learned in his enforced travel, even if witnessed from the heat and stench of locked box cars “ ... in spite of the discomfort , we saw much that was interesting and beautiful”. Despite this long ordeal, his writing conveys a message of tolerance, understanding and responsibility. Tranter is amongst those put to work building a road through the jungle in Atjeh, then later, the second death railway - the Pakenbaroe/Moeara Railway, ironically completed on the day WW2 ended; never used and now forgotten in Australia by all but a few. Here the Japanese and Koreans’ treatment of the prisoners becomes increasingly brutal with death and disease common, especially amongst “ the Romushas” - Asian enforced labourers - 80 000 of whom die. Meanwhile his little daughter is growing up in his hometown, under her mother’s care, both unaware of her father’s whereabouts.
Download or read book The British Sumatra Battalion written by Ann A. Apthorp and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Building the Death Railway written by Robert Sherman La Forte and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1993 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generosity amid the greatest cruelty, Building the Death Railway gives the American perspective on events that shocked the world.
Download or read book Railwaymen in the War written by K. Tamayama and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-11-30 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Japanese railway soldiers, who built the notorious Burma-Thailand railway in 1942-43, earned an unenviable reputation for brutality, but they have not hitherto told their own story. This is the first book to bring to light the testimonies of the soldiers of the Emperor, who worked with 55,200 British, Australian and Dutch prisoners of war in the construction of the 415 kilometre railway.
Download or read book Ambushed Under the Southern Cross written by George W. Duffy and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2008 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When George Duffy and his twenty-five classmate graduated from the Massachusetts Nautical School (MNS) on September 23, 1941, an era came to an end. Never again would the three-masted barque Nantucket to go to sea in her role as a sail training vessel for future merchant marine officers. They, also, became the last class to make two summer sail training cruises aboard, thus making the end of the school's tradition extending back to 1891. Those hardened young sailors were immediately recruited as deck and engineering officers into a rapidly growing United States merchant marine. Not quite a year after graduating from MNS, and just ten months into World War Two, George Duffy's good fortune came to an end, when his ship, the American Leader, was sunk by a German commerce raider. George and forty-six of his shipmates were plucked out of the South Atlantic Ocean and taken prisoner. This book relates his two spartan years in the Nantucket, the next rewarding year in the American Leader, and cover three years as prisoner in two German warships, and ten Japanese labor camps scattered over the southeast Asian islands of Java, Singapore, and Sumatra. In addition, a parallel tale recounts the life and career of a young German naval officer, Konrad Hoppe, who served in George's nemesis, the Hsk Michael. Many years after the war they met in Germany in, as Konrad expressed it, "Great delight that the fateful enmity has changed into a sincere friendship."
Download or read book The Thailand Burma Railway 1942 1946 Voluntary accounts written by Paul H. Kratoska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2006 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Storm at Kalidjati written by Francis Hansen and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book follows the course of the post-Singapore campaign from its beginnings to the bitter end, woven around the story of 49th Bty, 48th LAA Regiment and other Royal Artillery units, to show how politics and military commands affected both ends of the scale, top to bottom, from the General to the Gunner, from the Brigadier to the Bombadier. What happened is often told in their own words and almost always taken from contemporary accounts. It is the true story of the fiasco in the Far East following the Allies' first attempt to set up a joint command to stop the all-conquering Japanese, as first Hong Kong, then Malaya, Singapore and the Philippines fell before them. It was impossible to resource properly from the start and ABDACOM's collapse left thousands of British and Australian personnel on the island of Java with orders to fight to the last man and the last bullet. The magic carpet out was only available for a select few. The senior officers who had staffed ABDACOM generally departed, and officers and men with particular skills or abilities that the Allies desperately needed were shipped away as the Japanese net closed around Java. Generally those left behind were those who were 'expendable'. They were left under the command of the colonial Dutch commanders, men who had never expected nor been trained to deal with such a situation. Their defence plan for the island had two parts. Firstly to try to use what ships and aircraft they had to stop the Japanese landing on Java in the first place. The second (post-invasion) plan was based on the assumption that there were only two beaches where the Japanese might land. Given this, the Allied forces would undertake a fighting retreat to delay the invaders, so that any relief force that might be around would have time to turn up. Failing this, the 'last stand' would be around the city of Bandoeng in the mountainous central spine of the island. As plans go it was not particularly ambitious but, given the circumstances and the forces at their disposal, it was the best they could do. The major flaw in this was that it relied on the Japanese landing on one or both of two beaches. Unfortunately, they also landed on a third, only forty miles away by good roads from Kalidjati, one of the two major airbases on the island. It should have been obvious that such a facility so close to the coast would be a prime target for the enemy. There was plenty of room there for their fighter and bomber aircraft and they could destroy the puny defence forces on Java within days. And the airfield was also only a few miles from a road leading to Bandoeng; a shorter route to the one the Dutch commanders hoped the invaders would take. If the Japanese took Kalidjati, the whole defence plan would be in ruins. The loss of Kalidjati is the centrepiece and climax of this book. Kalidjati was where it all went wrong and with Kalidjati lost, Java was doomed. What happened there on 1st March 1942 was a 'perfect storm' when everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. It was a microcosm of the chaotic campaign that followed the fall of Singapore: a hostile climate, no knowledge of the local language, no orders or intelligence from above, lack of essential equipment, stores and ammunition, and incompetence, indecisiveness and inadequate communications at all levels. Many men paid a terrible price for their superiors' failings in the flash-flood that swept through the airfield that day.
Download or read book Military Trials of War Criminals in the Netherlands East Indies 1946 1949 written by Frederic L. Borch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title examines and analyses the records of the Dutch war crimes tribunals from 1946-1949, which prosecuted more than 1000 Japanese soldiers and civilians for war crimes committed during the occupation of the Netherlands East Indies during World War II.
Download or read book Tjideng Reunion written by Boudewijn van Oort and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two Dutch families leave South Africa for Java, motivated by patriotism. Caught in the events of WWII, they are interned, emerging four years later as refugees, to make a new life in a changed world.
Download or read book Down and Out in the South written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Included in this book are 42 portraits of homeless men and women in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi. For these images, Jan Banning came up with an original approach: to photograph these people who are homeless as he would photograph any other member of society. That implied not scouting out the most picturesque people he could find, and not capturing them in dramatizing black and white. Instead, he worked in a studio setting, focusing on their individuality rather than on stereotypes.
Download or read book Prisoner of the Samurai written by James Gee and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Courage on the River Kwai—the inspiring true story of one marine’s resilience in a World War II POW camp following the Battle of the Sunda Strait. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, the naval cruiser USS Houston sank after taking four torpedo hits by Imperial Japanese warships. Among the survivors clinging to makeshift rafts was James Gee, PFC, USMC. Rescued by the enemy, Gee was transferred to Rangoon and subjected to hard labor in the construction of the Burma Railway. Here on the muddy banks of the River Kwai, thousands of allied prisoners succumbed to the harsh conditions. Again, Gee survived. But the worst was yet to come. A fresh hell awaited 2,700 miles away: a Japanese POW camp where the young marine would remain until the end of the war. This is the remarkable memoir of one man’s three-year ordeal amid the direst conditions imaginable—and how the compassion and companionship of his fellow allies strengthened his resolve, and turned desperation into an unbeatable will to make it back home alive.
