Memories Of The Killing Fields

The Railway Man is the memoir of a young officer who was tortured and brutalised as a prisoner of the Japanese in Singapore, Burma and Thailand during the Second World War. When the Japanese gaolers discovered several tiny radio receivers some British prisoners had made in order to listen to the BBC, a group of drunken Japanese sergeants beat each of the suspected radio-makers in turn with axe-handles, fists and boots. Lomax watched while other British prisoners were beaten to an inch of their lives in fact two died until his turn came.

Then I went down with a blow that shook every bone and which released a sensation of scorching liquid pain which seared my entire body. Sudden blows struck me all over. I felt myself plunging downwards into an abyss with tremendous flashes of solid light which burned and agonised. I could identify the periodic stamping of boots on the back of my head, crunching my face into the gravel; the crack of bones snapping; my teeth breaking, and my own involuntary attempts to respond to deep vicious kicks and to regain an upright position, only to be thrown to the ground once more.

 

And when he felt damage to his hips and pelvis, he raised his hands to protect himself. This seemed to focus the clubs on my arms and hands. I remember the actual blow that broke my wrist. It fell right across it, with the terrible pain of delicate bones being crushed.

Lomax says that the doctor examined and counted 900 axe-handle strokes to his body. But this was just Round One. Round Two was interrogation by the Kempitai, Imperial Japans Gestapo. Lomax was interrogated through an interpreter about radio sets and a map he had drawn to use if he escaped. The interrogations lasted 18 hours and he developed a particular hatred for the interpreter, whose voice would torment him for years later. Lomax, you will tell us why you made the map. You will tell us why you made a map of the railway. Lomax, were you in contact with the Chinese?

The questioning continued for days. Each question from the NCO by my side was immediately followed by a terrible blow... to my chest and stomach. It is so much worse when you see it coming like that, from above, when it is slow and deliberate. I used my split arms to try and protect my body, and the branch smashed on to them again and again. The interpreter was at my shoulder. Lomax, will you tell us. Then it will stop.

It stopped when the water torture began. The NCO forced a hosepipe into Lomaxs mouth and nostrils. Water poured down my windpipe and throat and filled my lungs and stomach. The torrent was unimaginably choking. This is the sensation of drowning, on dry land, on a hot dry afternoon. Lomax does not remember how long the torture lasted because he passed out.

Lomax returned home after the war a shattered man. He married his pre-war fiancee and took up various jobs in Africa and Britain. The marriage did not last, presumably because the nightmare of memories haunted him all the time. Quite naturally, Lomax hated the Japanese and would not speak to any Japanese man or woman, until much later, when, rather unexpectedly, he was strangely redeemed by his own act of mercy.

And this is the other half of the story. An article appeared in the Japan Times of August 15, 1989 about Mr Nagase Takashi, the interpreter who had acted as the go-between between Lomax and his torturers. The article described his ill-health and how he suffered flashbacks of Japanese military police torturing a POW who was accused of possessing a map of the railway... One of their methods was to pour large amounts of water down his throat. Nagase had atoned for his guilt by helping Allied groups trying to locate graves along the railway line across the river Kwai bridge.

For Lomax, Nagase was the man who symbolised all he had suffered in the war against Japan. I felt triumphant that I had found him, and that I knew his identity while he was unaware of my continued existence. I had been haunted by what he described for half a century, but so, it now seemed, had one of my tormentors... He too had nightmares, flashbacks, terrible feelings of loss... (But) my moment of vengeful glory and triumph was already complicated by other feelings. This strange man was obviously drawn on in his work by my own cries of pain and fear. (Nagase had visited Kanchanaburi, the POW camp, over 60 times since 1963 and laying wreaths at the Allied cemetery. Guilt invariably takes you back to the scene of the crime.)

Reluctantly, Lomax contacted him. If you are interested in the outcome you must read Lomaxs account of the confrontation between the former torturer and his victim. For that alone, this book is worth a read because memory has a style, a plain way of telling that leaves the emotions and drama to emerge from the events themselves. There is no plot, no climax, no happy ending to this book. It is narrative, plain, unvarnished, without heroics and true. It is a picture of war without comment. Simply marvellous.