Publisher's Description
Allied victory in the Pacific celebrates its sixtieth
anniversary in August. Among the celebrants
will be a small, largely forgotten group reliving
nightmares of captivity. Dutch, English, Australian
and American prisoners of war worked among
more than a quarter of a million Asians—so
called romushas—forced by the Japanese to build
railways in Burma and Sumatra. Conditions were
desperate: between 50 and 80 per cent of the
romushas did not survive. Here, Jan Banning has
interviewed and photographed 24 Dutch and
Indonesian survivors. His haunting images show
them as they worked, naked from the waist up.
Their words elicit, with a matter-of-fact disinterest,
the misery of their constant understanding of
death. Unsurprisingly, they have hitherto been
loath to discuss their ordeals.
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