Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway: Narratives of History and Memory

Description

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 This book brings to light previously unpublished materials, including: Exceptionally rare and detailed diaries, notebooks and letters from the railway Memoirs from Sumatra, including detailed recollections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. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Preface: The Man in the Photograph Acknowledgements Note on Text List of Abbreviations Introduction 0.1 Interpreting Memories 0.2 Remembering Sumatra 1. Building the Sumatra Railway 1.1 Shipwreck and Forced Marches: Arriving at the Railway 1.1.1 The Atjeh Party 1.1.2 POW Transport Ship Sinkings 1.2 Building the Railway 1.2.1 The Romushas 1.3 The ‘Other’ Railway 2. Writing the Sumatra Railway 2.1 Diaries of Captivity 2.1.1 Self- Censorship and Exhaustion: Keeping a Diary in Camp 2.1.2 The ‘Mini- Memoir’ of Captivity 2.2 ‘Always Three Months Away’: Memoirs of a Railway Line 2.2.1 Authorizing the Memoir 2.2.2 Narrating the Non- Narrative 2.3 ‘A Life for Every Sleeper’: The Poem of Hell’s Railway 2.4 Lists and Libraries: Alternative Imaginaries of the POW 2.4.1 Camp Libraries 3. Guard Your Tongue 3 .1 L earning a New Language 3.2 Code- Switching in Camp 3.3 Control and Resistance 3.4 Communicating the Untranslatable 3.4.1 The Kongsi 3.5 The Camp Interpreter 4. The Body of the Prisoner 4.1 Medical Treatment on the Sumatra Railway 4.1.1 The Hospital at Camp Two: John Wyatt 4.1.2 The Medic in Art: Patrick Kirkwood 4.2 Accepting the POW Body as One’s Own 4.3 ‘Nil Abnormal Detected’: The Haunting of the ‘FEPOW’ Body 5. Aftermath 5 .1 Repatriation and Resettlement 5.1.1 The Claim for Compensation 5.1.2 Creating ‘the FEPOW’, Continuing the Kongsi 5.2 The Postmemory of ‘the FEPOW’ 5.2.1 The Charles Thrale Exhibition 5.2.2 Post- War Responses 5.2.3 Transgenerational Perceptions of ‘the FEPOW’ 5.3 The Postmemorial Archive Afterword Appendix: Research Resources Notes Selected Bibliography Index