Kura! (1966) By Cornel Lumiere
 
Sixty thousand Allied prisoners-of-war were forced to slave for the glory of the Empire of the Rising Sun, without the barest necessities, without rights, forging a railway link between Burma and Thailand, while World War II continued around them.
 
In one of the world's hottest and wettest zones, more than twenty thousand Australians, English, Americans and Dutch died during the years' attempt by the Japanese Army to extend their empire to India. The story of unendurable hardships and sufferings of the p.o.w.'s is told with dramatic appeal, but with an intimacy which can only come from an eye-witness report.
 
Without bitterness, for there are many moments of mirth, 'Kura!' outlines the story of Erik, the interpreter, and follows his way in hell-ships, slave camps and along the "railway of death". Victim of vivisection, once nearly bayoneted to death and on another occasion within a hairsbreadth of being decapitated, the interpreter refused to die ... or give up trying to improve his lot and that of thousands for whom he became the mouthpiece.
 
Thus Colonel Anderson says in his introductiont to the book: "'Kura!' tells of the frustrations and the dangers of "putting over" in acceptable form our requests for more food and medical supplies, of resistance to the ever-increasing demands for more work from the captured slaves. It tells of the difficulties of standing up under the cruelty and abuse of the brutal guards; of pleading for the lives of prisoners who had committed misdemeanours. It tells of the struggle for survival."
 
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
258 pages
In Good Condition