A true story of World War II in the Pacific (in the words of the survivor, with essays by his son, who edited and published it): how Indian soldiers in the British army became Prisoners of War and were shipped by their Japanese captors in "torture ships" to New Britain (the largest island in present-day Papua New Guinea), and how just a fraction of them, including the author, survived 3 1/2 years of horrific imprisonment, beatings, starvation, bombings until peace was declared, they were handed over to Australian soldiers and then began the slow return home to India, after the author's brief assignment to a War Crimes Commission.
John Baptist Crasta's story, written in 1946, was discovered and published 51 years later by son. At the time, John was 87 years old. He died less than 2 years later, after having seen his book in print. It was by reading his father's memoir that the son not only discovered his father; but decided to do all he could to make the world know about it. This book contains not just the father's memoir, but the son's essays about rediscovering his father and his feelings about the memoir.
This shocking and poignant story of World War II and its forgotten Indian Prisoners of War has never been told before from the viewpoint of an ordinary Indian soldier who was there as one of its actor-victims. Nor has it ever been coupled with a moving story of fathers and sons.
"A classic in military history, telling the story of men trapped in a world of torture, starvation, and death"—Roger Mansell, War historian, in Tameme Magazine
"You see the horror of war, without a trace of artifice, through the eyes of one who was there, the writing a simple act of catharsis. A war memoir that ranks with the best."—Professor Mark Ledbetter, Nisei University
"Striking and raw, an antidote to myth. Something to be treasured. This is the kind of record that this generation is losing fast, and we need to hold on to this. It made me think of what had happened to my own father's memoirs, which were lost."--Professor Barry Fruchter.
