The Railway Man
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By Eric Lomax
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1 review
A naive young man, a radio enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the Railway of Death – the Japanese line from Thailand and Burma. This was the most disastrous engineering project in history, which killed 250,000 Allied prisoners and Thai labourers. Lomax helped to build a radio so that he and his comrades could follow news of the war. The Japanese discovered the radio and Lomax was exhaustively and brutally tortured. One of his tormentors was a young Japanese interpreter; Lomax never forgot him. Despite an outwardly successful life, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences and could never share them with anyone. ALmost 50 years after the war, his life was changed by the discovery that his interrogator, the Japanese interpreter, was still alive. This is the story of a tragic life and a transformed old age.
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Reading a new genre - an autobiography. I’m more into fantasy books. But this book captured my attention. It’s about the author (Eric Lomax ), his fascination with railways and radio communications and his experiences as a prisoner of war during World War II. He is forced to help build the Thai–Burma Railway for the Japanese military but is also tortured as it is believed he is a spy. The autobiography details his life after the war and his struggles to come to terms with what happened. I would recommend.
