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put aboard another ship, the Enoura Maru, which took them to Formosa. It was deep winter. The Americans possessed only their shorts or G-strings. “People literally froze to death,” said Rosen. Yet still there was wretchedly little to drink: “You could have got an IOU from any man for a cup of water—and he would have paid up after the war.” When American Helldivers attacked again, Rosen was struck by steel fragments in the ankle, thigh and upper body. “There were dead and dying men everywhere. Steel deck supports fell, killing everyone underneath. After a few days, the Japanese lowered nets into the holds, to take away the dead. Then they took survivors off the hulk, and loaded us onto yet another ship, the Brazil Maru. We buried dozens of men every day.” On 29 January 1945 they arrived at Moji on Kyushu. Just 193 men landed, out of more than a thousand who left the Philippines. Rosen weighed eighty-eight pounds. The survivors were issued clothing from a stack of old British uniforms. An American doctor excavated bomb fragments from Rosen’s armpit with a penknife, before they were taken to Fukuoka to start their labours.

Working conditions in Japan were in no way preferable to those in South-East Asia. Many prisoners’ feet were so swollen by beriberi that in the desperate cold of winter, they could not wear shoes. Even under such blankets as they had, men shivered at night, for there was no heating in their barracks. At Stephen Abbott’s camp at Aomi, when prisoners begged for relief, the commandant said contemptuously: “If you wish to live you must705 become hardened to cold, as Japanese are. You must teach your men to have strong willpower—like Japanese.” Abbott demanded bitterly: “Men tortured by hunger, disease, bitter cold, and the daily fear of death?” Yet by 1944 the death rate in most Japanese camps had declined steeply from that of 1942 and 1943. The most vulnerable were gone. Those who remained were frail, often verging on madness, but possessed a brute capacity to endure which kept many alive to the end. In Hall Romney’s camp, just six men died in July 1944, compared with 482 in the same month of 1943.

THE CULTURAL chasm between captives and their jailers often seemed unbridgeable. Stephen Abbott recorded an exchange with a guard named Private Ito on a ship taking them to Japan. Ito had been consistently brutal. The POWs had no inkling that he spoke English until suddenly he addressed a terse question to Abbott: “Homesick?” The Englishman shrugged. Ito said: “I’ve been homesick for six years—first in China, then the Philippines and Timor, most lately in Singapore. I shall now at last see my family and I am happy.” Abbott said coldly: “That will be nice for you.” Ito revealed that he had an economics degree from Tokyo University. He asked curiously what Abbott thought of the Japanese, and received a cautious reply: “I don’t know them very well, so I cannot answer your question.” The guard persisted: “How do you think of what you know? How do you think of me?” Abbott said: “In our army, we do not strike and beat people as punishment. Ito is always doing so, and this blackens my thoughts about him.” The eyes of the little Japanese widened in amazement. He asked how the British Army punished wrongdoers. Abbott explained that physical chastisement was unknown. Ito never hit a prisoner again.

An enormous amount has been written about Japanese cruelty to prisoners. It should be noticed, nonetheless, that conditions varied widely in different camps. For instance, 2,000 British POWs in Saigon lived not intolerably until late 1944, sometimes even able to slip under the wire to visit local shops and brothels. It seems important also to record instances in which POWs were shown kindness, even granted means to survive through Japanese compassion. A British bugler, Corporal Leader, found himself in a Singapore hospital in 1942. Back home in Norfolk he had been a Salvation Army bandsman. Now, he was amazed to be visited by a Japanese who announced that he too had been a “Sally Army” member in Tokyo. He wanted to help the