NIPPON SLAVES

• Main Author: De Rosario, Lionel (Author)
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: London, England JANUS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1995
• Subjects: Prisoners of war > [Singapore]; Prisoners of war > [Thailand]
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.
• Physical Description: xix, 208 pages illustrations 23 cm
• ISBN: 1857561031; 9781857561036

Lionel de Rosario was a 20-year-old civil servant and member of the Singapore Volunteer Corps when the Japanese overran Singapore in February 1942, taking him prisoner for three and a half years. During that time he marched as one of the 1600 able-bodied British internees to Thailand where he worked on the infamous "Death" Railway. He was one of only 112 recognizable survivors of that ordeal to return to Singapore six months later. The author tells of the back-breaking 14-hour days in the monsoon-soaked jungle, the starvation, the beatings, the mlice and the cholera. He also writes about the camaraderie that developed among the prisoners: how they hoodwinked their captors by selling them a radio stolen from them only a few days earlier; how they listened to the BBC news under cover of running a radio-repair service; and how they persuaded their guard to change a sign intended for local dogs from Japanese to English as the dogs had not yet had time to learn Japanese