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“We were still young and adventurous…”: James Gee, UNT interview, March 19, 1972, 4. Colonel Nagatomo, “Very cocky, a king-of-the-walk type”: H. Robert Charles, UNT interview, 98. Welcoming speech: Otto Schwarz and Howard Brooks, interviews with the author; Dan Buzzo, UNT interview, 131; and Gee, 13. “It is a great pleasure to us to see you at this place…”: Nagatomo, “Speech Delivered at Thanbyuzayat,” quoted in La Forte and Marcello, Building the Death Railway, 287–289. “We will build the railroad if we have to build it over the white man’s body…”: This last paragraph does not appear in the September 15, 1942, text of the speech found in the collection of Japanese POW documents edited by John C. Sharp. Nor is it included in Maj. W. E. Fisher’s diary, which contains a transcript of Colonel Nagatomo’s speech, nor in Rohan Rivett’s Behind Bamboo. It is included in the text of the October 28, 1942, speech to the Fitzsimmons group, as published in La Forte and Marcello’s Building the Death Railway, and also appears in Kyle Thompson’s memoir, A Thousand Cups of Rice. Perhaps “We will build the railroad if we have to build it over the white man’s body” may thus have been a special flourish for the Americans’ benefit. “Thanbyuzayat turned out to be the beginning of a real nightmare”: Gee, 18–19. “I knew this guy meant business…”: Charles, UNT interview, 99.

Part 4: In the Jungle of the Kwai

CHAPTER 36 (pp. 249 to 252)

Japanese designs for the Burma-Thailand Railway: Davies, The Man Behind the Bridge, 91; the civilian consultant’s name was Kuwabara. For background on the Imperial Army’s attitude toward prisoners, see Herbert P. Bix’s Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, 359–360. Regarding Japan’s treatment of its POWs, see Bix, 207, where he discusses Emperor Hirohito’s cover-up of the Army’s 1929 atrocities in Manchuria and the privy council’s failure to ratify the full Geneva Prisoner of War Convention. “The groundwork for the future commission of war atrocities by the Japanese military was also being laid during this period,” Bix writes. Native Asian laborers on the railway: see Boggett, “Notes on the Thai-Burma Railway,” 42.

CHAPTER 37 (pp. 253 to 256)

My basic chronology of Branch Three’s activities derives from the diary of Brig. Arthur L. Varley. Establishment of Branch Five: Harold S. Hamlin, “Statement,” 4; Varley diary, 88. Maj. W. E. Fisher, the Australian doctor, observed the nomenclature “Thai POW Branch” for Burma railway construction units tended to keep the subsequent public focus on the Thailand end of the railway. In fact, in several respects the average prisoner’s plight in Burma was worse. See Fisher, “Medical Experiences,” 2. Prisoners’ duties on the railway: See Charley L. Pryor, UNT interview, Jan. 22, 1973, 91–95; H. Robert Charles, UNT interview, 100–109; and the author’s interviews with Howard Brooks and Otto C. Schwarz. “You might spend a whole month making one fill…”: Brooks, interview with the author. See also Lanson Harris, speech to Long Beach Yacht Club. “There was a lot of rock…”: Melfred L. Forsman, UNT interview, 144–145. “We got beat up more for bending a shovel…”: Brooks, interview with the author.

CHAPTER 38 (pp. 257 to 266)

Branch Three: Per Brigadier Varley’s diary entry for March 28, 1943, Branch Three had 9,534 men, including 4,465 Australians, 481 British, 194 Americans, and 4,394 Dutch. Background on Brigadier Varley: Ramsey, “Courage Writ Large in a Steady Hand,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 23, 2005. “They all spoke cheerio and good luck messages…”: Varley diary, June 6, 1942. POW pay: Varley diary, Feb. 19, 1943. “Were there any good Japanese?”: Fisher, “Medical Experiences,” 47. “If you poked your finger into your leg…”: Otto C. Schwarz, interview with the author. “You feel like your mind is a closed circuit…”: Parkin, Into the Smother, 155. “The J’s require absolute proof…”: Varley diary, entry for Nov. 11, 1942. “A little quinine would have saved a lot of lives…”: Schwarz, Ibid. Henri Hekking’s parley with Major Yamada: Charles, Last Man Out, 78–79. Rice