TO THE RIVER KWAI. Two Journeys 1943 ,1979.
Bloomsbury Publishing , London, 1988. 8vo. pp. xii + 175 .map ,12p.illustrations , endpapers a little foxed else very Good hardcover in Very Good dust wrapper. Item #24426
ISBN 0747502978 "Taken prisoner in 1942 in Singapore, John Stewart learned Japanese and became an interpreter. One of the few survivors [just over one in ten!] of the Sonkurai camp, the worst on the Burma - Siam railway, he kep a diary. His notes serve not so much as a chronology as the background to meditation." He was one of the few survivors (just over one in ten) of the Sonkurai camp on the Burma-Siam railway. While a Japanese prisoner he kept a diary. His notes serve as a background to this account and as a source of meditation on his Japanese captors. What to think of a Japanese Colonel who cried when a British officer accused him of bad faith? Or a Camp Commandant who, on the point of beheading a couple of prisoners (the author being one of them), changed his mind and invited them to share his sake?;Over 40 years later, the author returned to the Kwai, going beyond Sonkurai and into Burma with the guerrillas, ostensibly to see if the report of a steel bridge still standing in the jungle was true but also to reflect on his past experiences. he was one of david Leans [mostly ignored] advisors on the filming of The Bridge on The River Kwai. John Stewart illuminates one of the darkest episodes of World War II in a memoir that is moving , shocking and wholly absorbing.
Price: $30.80