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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > Other warfare & defence issues > Prisoners of war
In 1938 Johnny Sherwood was a young professional footballer on the brink of an England career, touring the world with the all-star British team the Islington Corinthians. By 1942 he was a soldier surrendering to the Japanese at the siege of Singapore. Taken prisoner he was sent to a POW camp deep in the heart of the Thai jungle, where he was starved, beaten, and forced to build the notorious 'railway of death' on the River Kwai. Johnny kept his and his men's spirits up with tales of his footballing past, even organising matches until he and the other prisoners became too weak to play. One day, he even encountered a brutal Japanese guard, and was shocked to recognise him as a Japanese footballer Johnny had played against. Many years after Johnny's death, his grandson Michael discovered an old manuscript hidden in the attic of his mother's house. It was Johnny's own account of his wartime experiences - the story too horrific to reveal in full to his loved ones. In the tradition of bestselling memoirs like The Railway Man, Lucky Johnny is an inspirational tale of survival against the odds.
Following the North Korean assault on the Republic of Korea in June of 1950, the invaders captured more than a thousand American soldiers and brutally executed hundreds more. American prisoners who survived their initial moments of captivity faced months of neglect, starvation, and brutal treatment as their captors marched them north toward prison camps in the Yalu River Valley. Cold Days in Hell provides a detailed account of their captivity and offers valuable insights into an ongoing issue: the conduct of prisoners in the hands of enemy captors and the rules that should govern their treatment.
Women throughout the world have always played their part in struggles against colonialism, imperialism and other forms of oppression. However, there are few books on Arab political prisoners, fewer still on the Palestinians who have been detained in their thousands for their political activism and resistance. Nahla Abdo's Captive Revolution seeks to break the silence on Palestinian women political detainees, providing a vital contribution to research on women, revolutions, national liberation and anti-colonial resistance. Based on stories of the women themselves, as well as her own experiences as a former political prisoner, Abdo draws on a wealth of oral history and primary research in order to analyse their anti-colonial struggle, their agency and their appalling treatment as political detainees. Making crucial comparisons with the experiences of female political detainees in other conflicts, and emphasising the vital role Palestinian political culture and memorialisation of the 'Nakba' have had on their resilience and resistance, Captive Revolution is a rich and revealing addition to our knowledge of this little-studied phenomenon.
Among the many German immigrants to the United States over the years, one group is unusual: former prisoners of war who had spent between one and three years on American soil and who returned voluntarily as immigrants after the war. Drawing on archival sources and in-depth interviews with 35 former prisoners who immigrated, the book outlines the conditions and circumstances that defined their unusual experiences and traces their journeys from captive enemies to American citizens. Although the respondents came from different backgrounds, and arrived on America at different times between 1943 and 1945, their experiences as prisoners of war not only left an indelible impression on their minds, it also provided them with opportunities and resources that helped them leave Germany behind and return to the place ""where we had the good life.
During World War II the Japanese imprisoned more American civilians at Manila's Santo Tomas prison camp than anywhere else, along with British and other nationalities. Placing the camp's story in the wider history of the Pacific war, this book tells how the camp went through a drastic change, from good conditions in the early days to impending mass starvation, before its dramatic rescue by U.S. Army ""flying columns."" Interned as a small boy with his mother and older sister, the author shows the many ways in which the camp's internees handled imprisonment--and their liberation afterwards. Using a wealth of Santo Tomas memoirs and diaries, plus interviews with other ex-internees and veteran army liberators, he reveals how children reinvented their own society, while adults coped with crowded dormitories, evaded sex restrictions, smuggled in food, and through a strong internee government, dealt with their Japanese overlords. The text explores the attitudes and behaviour of Japanese officials, ranging from sadistic cruelty to humane cooperation, and asks philosophical questions about atrocity and moral responsibility.
Prisoners suffer in every conflict, but American servicemen captured during the Korean War faced a unique ordeal. Like prisoners in other wars, these men endured harsh conditions and brutal mistreatment at the hands of their captors. In Korea, however, they faced something new: a deliberate enemy program of indoctrination and coercion designed to manipulate them for propaganda purposes. Most Americans rejected their captors' promise of a Marxist paradise, yet after the cease fire in 1953, American prisoners came home to face a second wave of attacks. Exploiting popular American fears of communist infiltration, critics portrayed the returning prisoners as weak-willed pawns who had been "brainwashed" into betraying their country.The truth was far more complicated. Following the North Korean assault on the Republic of Korea in June of 1950, the invaders captured more than a thousand American soldiers and brutally executed hundreds more. American prisoners who survived their initial moments of captivity faced months of neglect, starvation, and brutal treatment as their captors marched them north toward prison camps in the Yalu River Valley. Counterattacks by United Nations forces soon drove the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel, but the unexpected intervention of Communist Chinese forces in November of 1950 led to the capture of several thousand more American prisoners. Neither the North Koreans nor their Chinese allies were prepared to house or feed the thousands of prisoners in their custody, and half of the Americans captured that winter perished for lack of food, shelter, and medicine. Subsequent communist efforts to indoctrinate and coerce propaganda statements from their prisoners sowed suspicion and doubt among those who survived. Relying on memoirs, trial transcripts, debriefings, declassified government reports, published analysis, and media coverage, plus conversations, interviews, and correspondence with several dozen former prisoners, William Clark Latham Jr. seeks to correct misperceptions that still linger, six decades after the prisoners came home. Through careful research and solid historical narrative, "Cold Days in Hell" provides a detailed account of their captivity and offers valuable insights into an ongoing issue: the conduct of prisoners in the hands of enemy captors and the rules that should govern their treatment.
This is the story of a young Royal Artillery officer, Lieutenant Ronald Williams, who was held as a prisoner of war in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies from 1942-45. It is a true account of the alternate horror and banality of daily life, and the humour that helped the men survive the beatings, deprivation and death of comrades. Told through the diary and papers of Williams and others, Jungle Journal includes many cartoons and poems produced by the prisoners, as well as extracts from the original Jungle Journal, a newspaper created by the men under the noses of their guards. Ronald Williams was the 'editor' of this potentially fatal 'publication'. Jungle Journal describes the survival of hope even in desperate straits, and is a testament to those men whose courage and fortitude were tested to the limit under the tropical sun.
Japanese World War II POW camps conjure up a notorious picture of deprivation and brutality. The idea that sport, of all things, flourished in such hellish conditions is hard to envisage - but the truth is, it did. Captives played Aussie Rules football and rugby at the infamous Changi prisoner-of-war camp, and tennis on the Burmese side of the Burma-Thailand Railway. They played soccer, cricket, baseball or basketball, and sometimes their prison guards even joined in for a game. There were many elite sportsmen in these ranks intent on reviving their sporting careers after returning home at war's end, and many of them succeeded. The Sportsmen of Changi tells the story everyone forgot - of how sport became a lifeline for POWs after the fall of Singapore, when 50 000 Australian and British soldiers became prisoners of the Japanese. Inspiring and absorbing, it shows that in unimaginable conditions people will do all they can to hold onto what makes them human.
Soon after the close of military operations in the American Civil
War, another war began over how it would be remembered by future
generations. The prisoner-of-war issue has figured prominently in
Northern and Southern writing about the conflict. Northerners used
tales of Andersonville to demonize the Confederacy, while
Southerners vilified Northern prison policies to show the depths to
which Yankees had sunk to attain victory.
A small island in Halifax's beautiful Northwest Arm was the site for a British military prison from 1794 to 1816. More than 10,000 French, Spanish and American seamen, privateers and soldiers passed through the prison during its 22-year existence. Of these, 270 died on Melville Island from 1803 to 1815 and were buried in unmarked graves on the adjoining Deadman's Island, now designated a national historic site. This book tells this little known story for the first time. Author Brian Cuthbertson focuses on the experiences of the American prisoners. Their treatment will be of particular interest to readers familiar with the recent experiences of prisoners in US military prisons. About the Author Brian Cuthbertson is a leading historian of Nova Scotia. He has worked as an archivist for the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, is the former publisher and editor of the Nova Scotia Historical Review and is the former Head of Heritage for Nova Scotia.
Prisoners of war have featured in virtually every conflict that the US has engaged in since its revolutionary beginnings. Today visitors to Washington will frequently see a black POW flag flying high on government buildings or war memorials in silent memory. This act of fealty towards prisoners reflects a history where they have frequently been a rallying point, source of outrage and problem for both military and political leaders. This is as true for the 2003 Iraq War as it was the American Revolution. Yet, the story of prisoners in American wars (both enemies taken and soldiers captured) reveals much about the nation itself; how it fights conflicts and its attitudes towards laws of war. A nation born out of an exceptional ideology, the United States has frequently found itself faced with the contradictory imperatives to be both exemplary and secure: while American diplomats might be negotiating a treaty at The Hague, American soldiers could be fighting a bloody insurrection where it seemed that few if any rules applied. By taking a historical approach, this book demonstrates that the challenges America faced regarding international law and the war on terror were not entirely unique or unprecedented. Rather, to be properly understood, such dilemmas must be contextualized within the long history of those prisoners captured in American wars.
Today USS Pampanito is a tourist destination. During WWII the submarine earned six battle stars, sank six Japanese ships, damaged four others, and rescued seventy-three British and Australian POWs from the South China Sea. Astonishingly, this rescue happened three days after she sank one of the transport ships on which the Allied prisoners were being ferried to Japan. The chain of events that led to this rescue is truly remarkable. Captured in 1942, forced to spend fifteen months constructing the Burma-Thai Railroad, and then loaded onto floating concentration camps - hellships, as they were called - the prisoners were in the wrong place at the wrong time when Pampanito and her wolf pack attacked a Japanese convoy. Returning to the coordinates a few days later, the crew was astonished to discover survivors in the water from among the more than 2,200 prisoners who had been aboard the Japanese ships. Even more remarkable is that the officers and crew of Pampanito, after picking up these men (the Lucky 73), thought to have them record their thoughts and experiences while the events were still fresh in their minds, before returning to port. While working as curator for Pampanito, Aldona Sendzikas discovered these documents and began an odyssey of tracking down one of the most incredible rescue stories of the Pacific War.
Notwithstanding the long shadows cast by Abu Ghraib and Guantnamo, the United States has been generally humane in the treatment of prisoners of war, reflecting a desire to both respect international law and provide the kind of treatment we would want for our own troops if captured. In this first comprehensive study of the subject in more than half a century, Paul Springer presents an in-depth look at American POW policy and practice from the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Springer contends that our nation's creation and application of POW policy has been repeatedly improvised and haphazard, due in part to our military's understandable focus on defeating its enemies on the field of battle, rather than on making arrangements for their detention. That focus, however, has set the conditions for the military's chronic failure to record and learn from both successful and unsuccessful POW practices in previous wars. He also observes that American POW policy since World War II has largely sought to outsource POW operations to allied forces in order to retain American personnel for frontline service-outsourcing that has led to recent scandals. Focusing on each major war in turn, Springer examines the lessons learned and forgotten by American military and political leaders regarding our nation's experience in dealing with foreign POWs. He highlights the indignities of the Civil War, the efforts of the United States and its World War I allies to devise an effective POW policy, the unequal treatment of Japanese prisoners compared with that of German and Italian prisoners during World War II, and the impact of the Geneva Convention on the handling of Korean and Vietnamese captives. In bringing his coverage up to the so-called War on Terror, he also marks the nation's clear departure from previous practice-American treatment of POWs, once deemed exemplary by the Red Cross after Operation Desert Storm, has become controversial throughout the world. "America's Captives" provides a long-needed overarching framework for this important subject and makes a strong case that we should stop ignoring the lessons of the past and make the disposition of prisoners one of the standard components of our military education and training.
Barbed Wire Diplomacy examines how the United Kingdom government
went about protecting the interests, lives and well-being of its
prisoners of war (POWs) in Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. The
comparatively good treatment of British prisoners in Germany has
largely been explained by historians in terms of rational
self-interest, reciprocity, and influence of Nazi racism, which
accorded Anglo-Saxon servicemen a higher status than other
categories of POWs. By contrast, Neville Wylie offers a more
nuanced picture of Anglo-German relations and the politics of
prisoners of war. Drawing on British, German, United States and
Swiss sources, he argues that German benevolence towards British
POWs stemmed from London's success in working through neutral
intermediaries, notably its protecting power (the United States and
Switzerland) and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to
promote German compliance with the 1929 Geneva convention, and
building and sustaining a relationship with the German government
that was capable of withstanding the corrosive effects of five
years of warfare.
Ever since its foundation in 2002, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility has become the symbol for many people around the world of all that is wrong with the 'war on terror'. Secretive, inhumane, and illegal by most international standards, it has been seen by many as a testament to American hubris in the post-9/11 era. Yet until now no one has written about the most revealing part of the story - the prison's first 100 days. It was during this time that a group of career military men and women tried to uphold the traditional military codes of honour and justice that informed their training in the face of a far more ruthless, less rule-bound, civilian leadership in the Pentagon. They were defeated. This book tells their story for the first time. It is a tale of how individual officers on the ground at Guantanamo, along with their direct superiors, struggled with their assignment from Washington, only to be unwittingly co-opted into the Pentagon's plan to turn the prison into an interrogation facility operating at the margins of the law and beyond.
"This is the story of Abu Ghraib that you haven't heard, told by
the soldier sent by the Army to restore order and ensure that the
abuses that took place there never happen again." In April 2004,
the world was shocked by the brutal pictures of beatings, dog
attacks, sex acts, and the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib
in Iraq. As the story broke, and the world began to learn about the
extent of the horrors that occurred there, the U.S. Army dispatched
Colonel Larry James to Abu Ghraib with an overwhelming assignment:
to dissect this catastrophe, fix it, and prevent it from being
repeated.
This book discusses about inside the infamous Stalag 17. On a cold December day in 1943, Claudio 'Steve' Carano's B-17 bomber was shot down over the Dutch coast on the return flight to England. Thus marked the beginning of his eighteen-month incarceration in Stalag 17 b, the camp made famous in the Billy Wilder film and in the televison show Hogan's Heroes. During his confinement, Carano secretly kept a journal in his Red Cross blank book, filling it with meticulously penned entries and illustrations. It takes the reader deep behind the notorious wire fence surrounding the prison and into the world where men clung to their humanity through humor, faith, camaraderie, daily rituals, and even art. Not Without Honor threads together the stories of three American POWs - Carano; his buddy Bill Blackmon, who was also at Stalag 17 b; and John C. Bitzer, who survived the brutal 'Death March' from northern Germany to liberation in April 1945. At times, the journal reads like a thriller as he records air battles and escape attempts. Yet in their most gripping accounts, these POWs ruminate on psychological survival. The sense of community they formed was instrumental to their endurance. This compelling book allows the reader to journey with these young men as they bore firsthand witness to the best and worst of human nature.
Sean Londgen has conducted numerous interviews and reveals a new perspective on life under the Nazis that has long been forgotten and replaced by the myth of Colditz and The Great Escape. Between 1939 and 1945 almost 200,000 British and Commonwealth Servicemen were held as Prisoners of War in Germany. Every Allied soldier under the rank of Sergeant was forced to work 12 hour shifts, six days a week, cutting timber, quarrying stone, carving ice from frozen rivers and clearing bombsites. It drove the soldiers to the brink, in which survival was a daily trial. Many starved to death or died from disease, others were killed in accidents or at the hands of their guards.
Little is known of the internment of German prisoners of war, civilians and merchant seamen on Canadian soil during the Second World War. In the midst of the most destructive conflict in human history, almost 40,000 Germans were detained in twenty-five permanent internment camps and dozens of smaller work camps located across Canada. Five of these permanent camps were located on the southern shores of the St. Lawrence River at Farnham, Grande Ligne, Ile-aux-Noix, Sherbrooke, and Sorel in the province of Quebec. Martin Auger's book provides a fascinating insight into the internment operation in southern Quebec. The study examines the organization and day-to-day affairs of internment camps, and offers an in-depth analysis of the experience of the German prisoners who inhabited these camps. The author shows how the pressures of internment, such as restricted mobility, sexual deprivation, social alienation, and the lack of material comfort created important psychological and physical strains on inmates. In response, Canadian authorities introduced labour projects and educational programs to uphold morale, to thwart internal turmoil, and to prevent escapes. democratic society and prepare their postwar reintegration. The author concludes that Canada abided with the provisions of the Geneva Convention, and that its treatment of German prisoners was humane. Prisoners of the Home Front sheds light on life behind Canadian barbed wire. The study fills an important void in our knowledge of the Canadian home front during the Second World War and furthers our understanding of the human experience in times of war.
A never-before-published account of the experience of an American officer at the hands of Japanese captors, Prisoner of the Rising Sun offers new evidence of the treatment accorded officers and shows how the Corregidor prisoners fared compared with the ill-fated Baraan captives. When Japanese aircraft struck airfields in the Philippines on December 8, 1941, Col. Lewis C. Beebe was Gen. Douglas MacArthur's chief supply officer. Promoted to brigadier general, he would become chief of staff for General Wainwright in 1942. Beebe kept diary records of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, their advance to Manila and capture of the Baraan Peninsula, and their assault on Corregidor. When Japanese troops took Corregidor, Beebe was among those captured. During his captivity, Beebe recorded in his diary descriptions of poor rations, inadequate medical care, and field work in camps in the Philippines, on Taiwan, and in Manchuria. He also describes the sometimes greedy behavior of his fellow captives, as well as a lighter side of camp life that included POW concerts and Red Cross visits. Annotation and an epilogue by General Beebe's son, Rev. John McRae Beebe, add details about his military career, and an introduction by historian Stanley L. Falk places the diary in the context of the broader American experience of captivity.
This volume, published in the year of the one hundredth anniversary of Bonhoeffer's birth, documents Bonhoeffer's life under the increasing restraints and fateful events of World War II Germany. In hundreds of letters, including ten never-before-published letters to his fiancee, Maria von Wedemeyer, as well as official documents, short original pieces, and a few final sermons, the volume sheds light on Bonhoeffer's active resistance to and increasing involvement in the conspiracy against the Hitler regime, his arrest, and his long imprisonment. Finally, Bonhoeffer's many exchanges with his family, fiancee, and closest friends, demonstrate the affection and solidarity that accompanied Bonhoeffer to his prison cell, concentration camp, and eventual death.
When Richard Bassett returned from Korea on convalescent leave in 1953, he set down his experiences in training, combat, and captivity. More than 20 years later, hospitalized for acute Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he once again faced his personal demons. This work expands the memoir to include his post-war struggles with the US government and his own wounded psyche. He describes the shock of capture and ensuing long march to Pyokdong, North Korea, Camp 5 on the Yellow River, where many prisoners died of untreated wounds, disease, hunger, paralyzing cold, and brutal mistreatment in the bitter winter of 1950-51. He recounts Chinese attempts to mentally break down prisoners in order to exploit them for propaganda. He then takes the reader through typical days in a prisoner's life, discussing food, clothing, shelter, and work; the struggle against unremitting boredom; religious, social, and recreational diversions; and even those moments of terror when all seemed lost. It refutes Cold War-era propaganda that often unfairly characterized POWs as brainwashed victims or even traitors who lacked the grit that Americans expected of their brave sons.
This book reopens a chapter in Canadian history. The book is a series of diary entries beginning in 1941, when author Tom Sando was imprisoned in concentration camps, first in Petawawa and then Angler, Ontario -- a young Japanese Canadian imprisoned only because he was willing to stand and fight for his rights as a Canadian. The Japanese Canadians relocated to Petawawa and Angler were imprisoned in maximum security penitentiaries: compounds encircled by three layers of barbed wire fences, and under constant surveillance by rifle-armed guards stationed in watchtowers. These people were not prisoners-of-war or even criminals, but Canadian civilians deemed dangerous by the Canadian government because of their race. This is a unique first-hand look at a part of the Japanese internment that many Canadians are still unfamiliar with. Tom Sando relates his story of loneliness, fear, and eventually friendship and hope, candidly and with careful thought.
After an unusual interrogation at the hands of the Local Defence Force in County Clare, Keefer and Calder were transferred to a makeshift prison camp in County Kildare B right next to a similar camp for German prisoners. There they found themselves subject to a surreal honour system that allowed them daily parole away from their internment camp, free to golf or cycle across the broad plains of the Curragh without any supervision. This system forbid escape attempts when they were on parole but bound them, as RAF officers, to attempt to escape upon their return to camp. A colourful and often amusing record of events, Grounded in Eire offers insight into this little-known aspect of the war and provides a testament to courage, friendship, and perseverance in the face of unusual obstacles.
During World War II, over thirty American anthropologists
participated in empirical and applied research on more than 110,000
Japanese Americans subjected to mass removal and incarceration by
the federal government. While that experience has been widely
discussed, what has received little critical attention are the
experiences of the Japanese and Japanese American field assistants
who conducted extensive research within the camps. How did these
field researchers carry out data collection in American-style
concentration camps? What kinds of constraints and pressures did
they face? How did they respond to practical, ethical, and
political challenges? |
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