The railway man

This autobiography is so compelling, it's a wonder the author was anything but a novelist. The story is tragic and beautiful and so full of information.

I recommend the audiobook because the Scottish brogue of the narrator really brings the main character to life.

A great add to any collection regarding WW2, India, the British Empire, Japan, or Autobiographies. Not appropriate for very young children. Teens could read it.

“My mother stood there in the crowd, and I supposed she waved. She looked distraught. I never saw her again.”

Thus, Eric Lomax went to war as a signalman, was eventually taken prisoner, tortured at the hands of his Japanese captors and came home to marry as he was told to get on with his life. He went on to have a fine career including postings to Ghana with the civil service and had children to his wife. But....all was not well.

In this very well written autobiography Eric told of many things such as his early life, his relationship with his parents, his army life and even went into some detail as to his brutal torture. Along with other POW officers a radio was found in their hut and with that began his appalling ordeal. Vast amounts of his suffering he recalled in great detail. It leads to an understandable hatred of the Japanese with specific reference to one individual, Nagase, the interpreter during his interrogation and torture. He eventually met Nagase and there was redemption for both men. It is a well told story and well worth the time to read. There was even a documentary of the meeting made and a film of Eric's life.

But on finishing this book I was struck by how little Eric discussed his first family, his wife and 3 children, they seemed to be little to no part of the story. Eric bottled up his horrendous experiences from his first wife to the point I suspect it was a difficult life for her. I did some research and found this item.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/28/railway-mans-forgotten-family

“My dad's feelings were locked inside himself. He was there physically, but emotionally he was 100% absent,” his daughter Charmaine is quoted as saying in that item.

During this read, for what Eric opened up on, and that was plenty; I always felt that it took a lot of courage for him to be involved in this book and the events that happened in it later. Sadly, his first family suffered as well.

Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in the subject of POW and the victims of torture.

I wanted to read this book after watching the movie of the same name, starring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgard. Unfortunately, the movie's just OK (the trailer, OTOH, is great) - and you finish it feeling like you've just watched a mediocre telling of an incredible story.

The story is incredible indeed: Eric Lomax was a young Scotsman in his early 20s when he went to Singapore with the British Army during WW2. Singapore eventually fell to Japan, and Lomax spent over three years as a prisoner of war in the infamous “River Kwai” labor camps. While there, he and a few other officers cobbled together a radio - they were caught, and severely tortured (including waterboarding). After the war, Lomax tried - but mostly struggled - to resume a post-war life. Obviously traumatized, and seething with hatred for the Japanese (especially the meek interpreter who was present for the worst of the interrogations), he eventually discovered - in the 1980s - that that very interpreter was called Takashi Nagase and had spent his entire post-war life seeking to atone for what had happened. Lomax and Nagase made contact in the late 80s/early 90s and planned to meet, a vengeful Lomax initially plotting to make Nagase suffer - perhaps even to kill him - but things took an amazing turn when the real connection was made. Lomax's ultimate forgiveness of Nagase - and his amazement that they should find themselves, in their 70s, laughing and crying together as “blood brothers”, visiting memorial sites in Japan and Cambodia together - is moving, even spiritual.

I was startled by how good the writing was, given this was a personal memoir by a non-writer. But Lomax's writing is clear and powerful. Beyond the core story, there's the general theme of industrialization as a source of both the greatest 20th century excitement (Lomax was a huuuuge trains nerd) and the greatest suffering (the Burma railway line was a death trap, and Lomax notes that laying railway lines were always death traps; he also notes how trains were a crucial part of the infrastructure of genocide and war during WW2). Lomax is explicit about this deep ambiguity; about how naive he was, pre-war, in worshipping at the altar of industrial efficiency and machine progress. There's also much painful insight about how private, even willfully hidden, the trauma of veterans can be; even though we all worship the “greatest generation” now, Lomax describes how POWs were seen as “layabouts” who had sat out the war by ignorant, hypocritical folks back home. You sense his real fear that the suffering that the POWs went through would be minimized, trivialized (or glorified/romanticized, as in Bridge on the River Kwai), or entirely forgotten.

Anyway, really good. Recommended.