Hellfire

For months during 1943 there was no night in Hellfire Pass. By the light of flares, carbide lamps and bamboo fires, men near-naked and skeletal cut a passage through stone to make way for a railway. Among these men were some of the 22,000 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. In camps across Asia and the Pacific, struggled, died, and survived with a little help from their mates. 'Hellfire' was researched in Australia, Japan and across South-East Asia. It draws on 50 first-person interviews, ranging from former prisoners to an old Mon villager deep in the Burmese jungle, and from Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew to veterans of the Imperia Japanese Army. The result is a tour de force, a powerful and searing history of the prisoners of the Japanese.