Keep the Men Alive: Australian POW Doctors in Japanese Captivity

Description

Part title -- Title page -- Contents -- Author's note -- Introduction -- 1 The road to captivity -- 2 Changi: the beginning -- 3 Making bricks without straw: the Burma-Thai Railway -- 4 Untold stories: the other camps -- 5 A complex relationship: doctors and captors -- 6 Doctor and officer -- 7 Beyond the call: coping in captivity -- 8 The long shadow: after the war -- Glossary of medical terms -- Appendix A: Australian POW doctors -- Appendix B: Doctors' deaths in captivity -- Endnotes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgements -- Index.;The thing that haunts me most to this day is that blokes were dying and I could do bugger all about it - do you look after the bloke who you know is going to die or the bloke who's got a chance?' - Australian ex-POW doctor, 1999. During World War II, 22 000 Australian military personnel became prisoners of war under the Japanese military. Over three and a half years, 8000 died in captivity, in desperate conditions of forced labour, disease and starvation. Many of those who returned home after the war attributed their survival to the 106 Australian medical officers imprisoned alongside them.