Product Description

Gavan Daws combined ten years of documentary research and hundreds of interviews with surrviving POWs to write this explosive, first-and-only account of the experiences of the Allied POWs of World War II. The Japanese Army took over 140,000 Allied prisoners, and one in four died the hands of their captors. Here Daws reveals the survivors' haunting experiences, from the atrocities perpetrated during the Bataan Death March and the building of the Burma-Siam railroad to descriptions of disease, torture, and execution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #356435 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-16
• Released on: 1996-01-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Daws (Shoal of Time) eloquently tells the story of 140,000 Allied military prisoners whom history has almost forgotten. He convincingly describes Japanese POW camps not as homogenizing institutions but as tribal societies of Americans, British, Australians, Dutch-and Japanese. The Japanese showed no mercy to those who fell into their hands, the author stresses: Thousands were worked to death; as many more died of disease and starvation; others were beaten to death or beheaded, often so clumsily that two or three strokes were required to finish the job. Daws combines archival research and personal interviews to describe inmates who did what they had to do to survive and afterward tried to live with their guilt. Their experiences highlight the scale of human pain inflicted by Japan. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The Japanese held more than 140,000 POWs from the Western Allies and India during World War II. One-third of them did not survive captivity that was always onerous and often abominably brutal. The literature on these prisoners' experiences has been growing rapidly during the past few years, which is just as well, for the number of living survivors is diminishing rapidly. Daws offers a well-written, thoroughly researched account of these POWs that, along with more familar material, covers such rarely discussed topics as the Dutch POWs in Asia and the conflicts among different nationalities over personal hygiene. He does not bash the Japanese beyond their deserts, but in this respect as in many others, it is impossible to whitewash Japanese conduct, which was nothing less than barbarous in far too many cases. An exceptionally worthwhile addition to the literature on the war in the Pacific. Roland Green

From Kirkus Reviews
A wide-angle saga that adds a chapter long missing from official and traditional histories of WW II's Pacific theater: the story of the torments endured by Allied military personnel captured when Japanese forces overran Greater East Asia. Drawing on interviews with survivors of the Japanese prison camps as well as archival sources, Daws (A Dream of Islands, 1980, etc.) effectively combines the experiences of individual American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs with a panoramic perspective. He probes why the death rate among the more than 140,000 men interned by the Japanese reached 27% (as against but 4% for military prisoners of the Germans). By the author's painstakingly documented account, the causes were legion: inhuman living conditions, starvation diets, an almost complete lack of medical care, constant beatings by brutish guards whose (heartily reciprocated) racial hatred of whites often led to summary executions, forced labor on construction projects like the Burma- Siam railroad, and workaday atrocities. Thousands more POWs perished when the ships transporting them from the fetid jungles of conquered lands to Japan were blown out of the water by Allied aircraft or submarines. Daws provides a start-to-finish narrative, tracking the battered veterans of Bataan, Java, Midway, Singapore, and other campaigns before, during, and after their captivity. While he devotes considerable attention to group bonding, scavenging, and the other stratagems it took to stay alive behind the wire, Daws doesn't neglect the surprisingly cool receptions accorded repatriated POWs. Indeed, he reports, there are precious few memorials to Allied soldiers who died in Asian camps, let alone tributes to the brutalized, sometimes bestialized, survivors condemned to make peace with their freedom after VJ day. Overdue witness, eloquent and harrowing. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Thoughtful analysis of Japan's treatment of POW's
The author, Gavan Daws, never served in the Second World War, but obviously took to writing this book as a labor of love and appreciation for what the Allied prisoners of war (American, British and Dutch) went through during nearly four years of captivity. His undertaking is an incredible hair-raising account of what the circumstances were behind the prisoners' incarceration, ill-treatment, and in too few cases, repatriation.

For those whose view of prisoners of Imperial Japan mirrors what they have seen in historically inaccurate movies like "The Bridge on the River Kwai," this book will shock them to the core. In truth, the Japanese camp commanders and guards were brutal and unmerciful. Some Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen were likely to take their own lives, if they had only known what being held captive by the Japanese would mean. The numerous stories of starvation, forced labor, bloody executions and unending barbarity will force sobriety on anyone who thinks that "River Kwai..." is the way it really was.

The book centers on a number of real-life captives who probably only grudingly spilled their guts to Daws, if only to get the truth out. For instance, the odyssey of American serviceman, Frank Fujita, who is partly Japanese in ethnicity, was really intriguing. Daws recounts that when Fujita was brought by barge to Japan after being so long a prisoner in the Phillipine Islands, a guard noticed (at a roll call for forced factory labor) that he had an American captive with a Japanese surname! At this, Mr. Fujita was cajoled by the Japanese military into trying to denounce his country; bravely, Fujita fought off all attempts at this farce.

Daws goes into gross detail, sparing the reader nothing regarding the dispiriting treatment of Allied POW's. He often explains that those who survived did so by using guile and trading food, cigarettes, and other items to help them over the long haul. Sadly, thousands of POW's died under the stress of prison-camp labor, tropical diseases, beatings and starvation. Not highly recommended for the most queasy among us.

The lessons are difficult to swallow, but Daws didn't write this book to gloss over what really happened in the Pacific theater...he wrote it to educate the spoiled brats who don't know what it took preserve this nation's freedom and honor. Indeed, I am sadder, but more importantly wiser, thanks to Daws' excellent work.

Maps of the Pacific theater are available for those topographically challenged, as well as a copious amount of notes in the back of the book. At 441 pages of text and notes, the account is a real page-turner. An excellent book for those interested in World War II-era human interest records.

A Comprehensive & Penetrating Look At Japanese Atrocities!
While the number of books exploring the depths of Nazi depravity and mistreatment of Allied prisoners of war number in the hundreds, fewer books have given similar coverage to Japanese mistreatment of both combatant and noncombatant Allied war prisoners during World War Two. This book remedies that situation by carefully documenting and describing, quite often in the testimony of eyewitnesses and survivors, both the scope and breath of this absolutely unconscionable mistreatment, which included systematic denial of medical treatment, widespread starvation, overwork, torture, and subjection to medical experimentation. Yet fifty years later the government and people of Japan still refuse to acknowledge responsibility or offer compensation for a stream of atrocities committed against Allied prisoners. Indeed, they seem more concerned and centered on seeking formal apologies from the United States for having used the atomic bomb to end the war than with atoning with their own trail of misdeed and atrocities.

This book also raises profound and provocative questions about the way that Allied prisoners were viewed by their own supreme commanders, who by some estimates are complicit in the deaths (primarily through shelling and bombing) of as many of 25 percent of all such prisoner casualties. This is a well-written book, full not only of the horror stories of war as an Allied prisoner subjected to atrocious mistreatment, but of individual courage, selflessness, & compassion among prisoners & other non-combatants, as well. His narrative style is compelling, eloquent, and moving, with a well-honed eye for details, a good ear for idioms, and a sense for the truly ironic. One walks away from this book feeling that the prisoners also showed a rare kind of courage under fire.

I suggest those who believe we visited an injustice on the Japanese by employing the atom bomb to end the war read both this book and also "Tennozan", about the bloody battle for Okinawa at the end of the Pacific war, where in 3 months of fighting 23,000 Americans, 91,000 Japanese, and 150,000 Okinawans lost their lives. Once one gains an informed perspective gained by understanding both the sustained campaign of barbaric treatment by the Japanese of combatants & non-combatants, and also understands how the historical and cultural roots of the Japanese toward combat in general and war in particular informed their attitudes and battle-planning toward continuing the war with the fervently expressed goal of making it as costly as possible for the Allied invaders, it is difficult to avoid the wisdom associated with dropping the bomb. I highly recommend this book.

horrifying but engrossing account of WWII POW experiences
You have probably never read a book like "Prisoners of the Japanese" because there probably has never BEEN a book like it. It's not a first-hand account, and often it reads like a novel rather than a history because Daws' style is very vivid and he tells his story with a very effective immediacy which makes it seem as if the events were taking place today instead of half a century ago, and it includes many of the personal stories of the POW's, American, British, Australian, and Dutch (from what is now Indonesia), who were held in Japanese prison camps, mostly outside of Japan, from 1941 to 1945. Whatever you may know about World War II and about Japanese atrocities, you still have much to learn if you haven't read "Prisoners." This book will take you month by month and even day by day through the hell of the camps and the appalling lives these poor men led until their liberation after V-J day. Starvation, beatings, terrible jungle diseases for which the Japanese refused to provide medical treatment, bone-wracking fatigue, ghastly tortures, and often outright murder were the daily lot of these men who suffered for Allied military blunders and lack of preparation. Not many of them are alive today, but I think we owe it to ourselves to learn about their terrible experiences and to honor them in at least this way. Shame on the U.S. government and military for keeping these stories hush-hush for over fifty years!