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Allied victory in the Pacific celebrates its sixtieth anniversary
in August. Among the celebrants will be a small, largely forgotten
group reliving nightmares of captivity. Dutch, English, Australian
and American prisoners of war worked among more than a quarter of a
million Asians--so called romushas--forced by the Japanese to build
railways in Burma and Sumatra. Conditions were desperate: between
50 and 80 per cent of the romushas did not survive, not least
because many were torpedoed in transit. The sinking of just the
Junyo Maru resulted in the deaths of 4000 Asian workers and 1500
POWs. In Traces of War Jan Banning has interviewed and photographed
24 Dutch and Indonesian survivors. His haunting images show them as
they worked, naked from the waist up. Their words elicit, with a
matter-of-fact disinterest, the misery of their constant
understanding of death. Unsurprisingly, they have hitherto been
loath to discuss their ordeals.
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