Download or read book The Burma Railway and PTSD written by Kim Wheeler and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2023-10-12 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books and memoirs have been written on prisoner of war captivity in the Far East during the Second World War. Some contain incredible detail concerning the fall of Singapore and are full of military historical facts. This book is not like that. Instead, it is written from the viewpoint of a young girl who experienced the bittersweet homecoming of her traumatized father, Jack, following the end of the war. June and her mother, Beatrice, had lovingly prepared for Jack’s long-awaited return from his imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese out in the Far East. June recounts that they quickly realized how ill-prepared they were to deal with Jack’s post-war traumas. The man who returned home did not resemble the man who had left in 1941. It proved to be a troubled journey as they navigated a path back to a semblance of normal family life. Their only way to cut through Jack’s decompression from three and a half years of intensely cruel mental stress in the notorious POW camps was by exercising incredible patience and, ultimately, talking it through with brutal honesty. Jack was not a man who would have sought out help, especially concerning how he felt inside. Today, we comfortably talk about mental health and, in Jack’s case, PTSD. Following recent conflicts across the world, the topic of mental suffering has been thrown wide open. It has become part of our everyday language and is viewed with compassion. There is no shame in any type of mental health issue. However, June admitted that thirty years ago she would have been nervous to put her story down on paper. We are now acutely aware of what those unfortunate returning prisoners of war were suffering back in 1945. There is no shame to call out what it was – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This was a psychological trauma gained in horrific circumstances. Invisible injuries that became imprinted on minds. The military and government put the traumatized returning prisoners of war under immense pressure not to speak of their experiences in captivity. Sadly, many of them took the instruction seriously and never discussed it with their families or friends. The message that had been conveyed was that they were nothing more than an embarrassing inconvenience. Jack recalled how they were told Britain was over the war and that people were moving on with their lives. No one would be interested in their tales of horror and, indeed, they may not even have believed them. Jack told us they were given leaflets concerning the matter on board their repatriation ships as they sailed homewards. Those returning POWs had already been dubbed The Forgotten Army, and then they were told to just disappear into society without recognition.

Download or read book The Burma Railway and PTSD written by Kim Wheeler and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2023-09-30 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books and memoirs have been written on prisoner of war captivity in the Far East during the Second World War. Some contain incredible detail concerning the fall of Singapore and are full of military historical facts. This book is not like that. Instead, it is written from the viewpoint of a young girl who experienced the bittersweet homecoming of her traumatized father, Jack, following the end of the war. June and her mother, Beatrice, had lovingly prepared for Jack’s long-awaited return from his imprisonment at the hands of the Japanese out in the Far East. June recounts that they quickly realized how ill-prepared they were to deal with Jack’s post-war traumas. The man who returned home did not resemble the man who had left in 1941. It proved to be a troubled journey as they navigated a path back to a semblance of normal family life. Their only way to cut through Jack’s decompression from three and a half years of intensely cruel mental stress in the notorious POW camps was by exercising incredible patience and, ultimately, talking it through with brutal honesty. Jack was not a man who would have sought out help, especially concerning how he felt inside. Today, we comfortably talk about mental health and, in Jack’s case, PTSD. Following recent conflicts across the world, the topic of mental suffering has been thrown wide open. It has become part of our everyday language and is viewed with compassion. There is no shame in any type of mental health issue. However, June admitted that thirty years ago she would have been nervous to put her story down on paper. We are now acutely aware of what those unfortunate returning prisoners of war were suffering back in 1945. There is no shame to call out what it was – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This was a psychological trauma gained in horrific circumstances. Invisible injuries that became imprinted on minds. The military and government put the traumatized returning prisoners of war under immense pressure not to speak of their experiences in captivity. Sadly, many of them took the instruction seriously and never discussed it with their families or friends. The message that had been conveyed was that they were nothing more than an embarrassing inconvenience. Jack recalled how they were told Britain was over the war and that people were moving on with their lives. No one would be interested in their tales of horror and, indeed, they may not even have believed them. Jack told us they were given leaflets concerning the matter on board their repatriation ships as they sailed homewards. Those returning POWs had already been dubbed The Forgotten Army, and then they were told to just disappear into society without recognition.

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 Last Man Out written by H. Robert Charles and published by Quarto Publishing Group USA. This book was released on 2006-11-15 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American Marine recounts his ordeal as a World War II POW forced by the Japanese to build the railway immortalized in The Bridge on the River Kwai. From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai. One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, such as a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author. Praise for Last Man Out “A remarkable story, long overdue, of the treatment of POW’s captured by Japan.” —Arthur L. Maher, USN, Senior officer to survive sinking of the USS Houston, POW of the Japanese in World War II “In World War II, to move materials and troops from Japan to Burma by avoiding the perilous sea route around the Malay Peninsula, the Japanese military built a railroad through the jungles of Thailand and Burma at great human cost to its prisoner laborers. Last Man Out is an effective addition to the history of this tragedy.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Medical Officers on the Infamous Burma Railway written by and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1944, a compilation of medical reports from the main prisoner of war work camps along the infamous Thailand-Burma railway was submitted to General Arimura Tsunemichi, commander of the Japanese Prisoner of War Administration. The authors stated that the reports were neither complaints nor protests, but merely statements of fact. The prisoners received only one reply – that all copies of the documents must be destroyed. As one officer later recalled, ‘Of course, this was not done’ and copies of these reports survived, stored away in dusty files, for future generations to learn the truth. Work on the railway began in June 1942, the Japanese using mainly forced civilian labour as well as some 12,000 British and Commonwealth PoWs. Such is well-known. So are the stories of ill-treatment and brutality, many of which have been published. The vast majority of these accounts, however, were written after the war, colored by the sufferings the men had endured. The reports presented here are quite unique, for they were written by the medical officers in the camps as the events they describe were unfolding before their eyes. The health and well-being of the PoWs was the medical officers’ primary concern, and these reports enable us to learn exactly how the men were treated, fed and cared for in unprecedented detail. There are no exaggerated tales or false memories here, merely facts, shocking and disturbing though they may be. We learn how the medical officers organised their hospitals and dealt with the terrible diseases, beatings and malnutrition the men endured. As the compilers of the reports state, 45 per cent of the men under their care died in the course of just twelve months. But equally, we find that the prisoners did have a voice and had the facilities, and the courage, to write and submit such reports to the Japanese, perhaps contradicting some of the long-held beliefs about conditions in the camps. Through the words of the Medical Officers themselves, some of the detail of what really happened on the Death Railway, for good or ill, is revealed here.

Download or read book One Fourteenth of an Elephant written by Ian Denys Peek and published by Doubleday UK. This book was released on 2004 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Denys Peek and his brother were just two of tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers and citizens taken prisoner. Six months later, he and his comrades were packed into steel goods wagons and transported by rail to Siam. They were to become part of the slave labour force destined for the massive construction project that would later become infamous as the Burma Thailand Railway. He would spend the next three years in over fifteen different work and 'hospital' camps on the railway, stubbornly refusing to give in and die in a place where over 20,000 prisoners of war and uncounted slave labourers met their deaths. Narrated in the present tense and written with clarity, passion and a remarkable eye for detail, Denys Peek has vividly recreated not just the hardships and horrors of the railway and the daily struggle for survival but also the comradeship, spirit and humour of the men who worked on it.

Download or read book Towards the Setting Sun written by James Bradley and published by Timothy Bradley. This book was released on 1984 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Blue Haze written by Leslie G. Hall and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of POW's on the Burma Railway as told by one of the survivors.

Download or read book Railroad to Burma written by James Boyle and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 25 year old Australian, James Boyle, was one of thousands of prisoners of war who worked in inhuman conditions to build the Thailand/Burma railway. He was determined to record his experiences, and those of his mates, at the limits of human endurance.

Download or read book Surviving the Death Railway written by Barry Custance Baker and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ordeals of the POWs put to slave labor by their Japanese masters on the 'Burma Railway' have been well documented yet never cease to shock. It is impossible not to be horrified and moved by their stoic courage in the face of inhuman brutality, appalling hardship and ever-present death. While Barry Custance Baker was enduring his 1000 days of captivity, his young wife Phyllis was attempting to correspond with him and the families of Barry's unit. Fortunately these moving letters have been preserved and appear, edited by their daughter Hilary, in this book along with Barry's graphic memoir written after the War. Surviving the Death Railway's combination of first-hand account, correspondence and comment provide a unique insight into the long nightmare experienced by those in the Far East and at home. The result is a powerful and inspiring account of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of mankind which makes for compelling reading.

Download or read book The Burma Railway Hellships and Coalmines written by Anthony Gilbert Carter and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book No Mercy from the Japanese written by John Wyatt and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2009-04-21 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the laws of statistics John Lowry should not be here today to tell his story. He firmly believes that someone somewhere was looking after him during those four years. Examine the odds stacked against him and his readers will understand why he hold this view. During the conflict in Malaya and Singapore his regiment lost two thirds of its men. More than three hundred patients and staff in the Alexandra Military hospital were slaughtered by the Japanese he was the only known survivor. Twenty six percent of British soldiers slaving on the Burma Railway died. More than fifty men out of around six hundred died aboard the Aaska Maru and the Hakasan Maru. Many more did not manage to survive the harshest Japanese winter of 1944/45, the coldest in Japan since record began. Johns experiences make for the most compelling and graphic reading. The courage, endurance and resilience of men like him never ceases to amaze.

Download or read book Survivor on the River Kwai written by Reg Twigg and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Survivor on the River Kwai is the heartbreaking story of Reg Twigg, one of the last men standing from a forgotten war. Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the worst military defeat in modern British history - the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway for the all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army. Some prisoners coped with the endless brutality of the code of Bushido by turning to God; others clung to whatever was left of the regimental structure. Reg made the deadly jungle, with its malaria, cholera, swollen rivers, lethal snakes and exhausting heat, work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber. That Reg survived is testimony to his own courage and determination, his will to beat the alien brutality of camp guards who had nothing but contempt for him and his fellow POWs. He was a risk taker whose survival strategies sometimes bordered on genius. Reg's story is unique. Reg Twigg was born at Wigston (Leicester) barracks on 16 December 1913. He was called up to the Leicestershire Regiment in 1940 but instead of fighting Hitler he was sent to the Far East, stationed at Singapore. When captured by the Japanese, he decided he would do everything to survive. After his repatriation from the Far East, Reg returned to Leicester. With his family he returned to Thailand in 2006, and revisited the sites of the POW camps. Reg died in 2013, at the age of ninety-nine, two weeks before the publication of this book.

Download or read book Burma Railway Medicine written by Geoffrey V. Gill and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 'Death Railway' was very well named. More correctly called the Burma or Thai-Burma Railway, it was a major project during Allied Far East imprisonment under the Japanese. Over 60,000 prisoners worked on its construction, the majority of whom were British, and some 20 per cent died before release in 1945. Working conditions were appalling, the climate inhospitable, and food supplies grossly inadequate, making the POWs terribly vulnerable to a plethora of tropical infections and syndromes of malnutrition. No medical care was given by their Japanese captors, and it fell to the Allied POW doctors and medical orderlies to treat the sick, which they did with little in the way of medical equipment or drugs.

Download or read book The Burma Thailand Railway of Death written by E. R. Hall and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Surviving the Death Railway written by Hilary Custance Green and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-08-31 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ordeals of the POWs put to slave labour by their Japanese masters on the Burma Railway have been well documented yet never cease to shock. It is impossible not to be horrified and moved by their stoic courage in the face of inhuman brutality, appalling hardship and ever-present death.While Barry Custance Baker was enduring his 1000 days of captivity, his young wife Phyllis was attempting to correspond with him and the families of Barrys unit. Fortunately these moving letters have been preserved and appear, edited by their daughter Hilary, in this book along with Barrys graphic memoir written after the War. Surviving the Death Railways combination of first-hand account, correspondence and comment provide a unique insight into the long nightmare experienced by those in the Far East and at home. The result is a powerful and inspiring account of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of mankind which makes for compelling reading.

Download or read book Coping with Crisis written by Geoffrey Victor Gill and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: