New Books

Book Revue

Emperors Irish Slaves The Emperor’s Irish Slaves

Prisoners of the Japanese in the Second World War

ROBERT WIDDERS

The first book to explore the fate of the 650 Irish men and women, serving with the British armed forces, who became prisoners in the Japanese POW camps.

Sister Mary Cooper died in a Japanese prison camp on 26 June 1943, from the combined effects of starvation, brutality, and tropical diseases. Timothy Kenneally and Patrick Fitzgerald tried to escape from a slave labour camp on the Burma Railway: They were caught, tortured – probably crucified – and then executed on 27 March 1943. And Patrick Carberry spent the summer of 1943 cremating the emaciated corpses of his comrades, who had died from cholera.

These people had two things in common: they were Irish citizens serving in the British armed forces; and they were amongst more than 650 Irish men and women who became prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942. Nearly a quarter of them died whilst in Japanese captivity – this is their story.

Combining historical narrative with first-hand accounts of the conditions in Japanese POW camps, Robert Widders brings to light their suffering and the strength that brought them home again.

THE AUTHOR

ROBERT WIDDERS is an author and ex-serviceman, being the last man alive to have served in all three branches of HM Forces. He has a degree in history and has previously published books on the fate of Irishmen serving in the British Army. His book, Spitting On A Soldier’s Grave, revealed the story of the 5,000 men who deserted the Irish Army during the Second World War to fight fascism. He lives in Bristol. www.robertwidders.co.uk

The History Press

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

February 2012

€14.99/£12.99

WORLD RIGHTS

978-0-7524-727-8

198 x 124.5mm

Paperback

192+8m

16 b&w illustrations

Book Revue

6th Heavy Anti Aircraft Regiment

Royal Artillery

Patrick Walker

Dunkirk, The Blitz, Singapore, Java, the Burma Railway and the Japanese ‘hell ships’ are names associated with some of the worst British experiences of the second World War. To have been engaged in one of these terrifying events would have been unlucky, but the 6th Heavy Anti Aircraft Regiment endured them all. This is their extraordinary story.

6th HAA Regiment rapidly mobilised in 1939 to join the BEF in France.
6th HAA Regiment are among the lucky ones to get away from Dunkirk in June 1940 but have to destroy their own transport, equipment and guns.
After re-equipping and helping to defend the ports of Southampton, Bristol and Falmouth, they are moved to London during the Blitz.
Posted to Iraq in October 1941 but the Regiment is diverted en-route to Singapore. Arriving in Jan 1942, 3 Battery is detached to help defend the island while 12 and 15 Batteries go to Sumatra for airfield and oil terminal defence.
They are engaged in fighting against Japanese paratroop landings followed by an ignominious withdrawal to Java after destroying their guns.
Within 5 weeks the whole Regiment is captured and 3 Battery is lost when Singapore capitulates.
Used as slave labour by the Japanese for the Burma and Sumatra railways. Some are used on airfield construction on remote islands. They endure three and a half years of starvation, beatings, murder and abuse. Many succumb to disease.
Survivors are transported to Japan on the ‘hell ships’ where many die when these ships are torpedoed in error by US submarines. 6th HAA were finally rescued from this nightmare by the dropping of the Atom bombs.

ISBN 978-0-9562190-4-6

Published by Choir Press

www.thechoirpress.co.uk

Distrubuted through GP Walker

Can be contacted on Tel:- 01902-343458

or email:- Patwalker37srpen@aol.com

Price £14.00

Book Revue

The Conjuror on the Kwai Captivity, Slavery and Survival as a Far East POW

The Conjuror on the Kwai

Peter Fyans

Subtitled 'The Conjurer on the Kwai' this is the incredibly moving story of Gus Anckorn, a British soldier who was captured by the Japanese and held for over three and a half years. Before the war, Gus was a magician and throughout the war, he entertained both fellow soldiers and Japanese guards with his tricks. Gus experienced terrible ordeals that no one should have to face. He should have been killed on four or five occasions, but remarkably survived due to quick thinking and good luck. He also reveals the heartache of leaving his fiancee behind and not knowing if he would ever see her again.

ISBN: 9781848846227

Published: 14 November 2011

By Pen and Sword Books

Book Revue

Forgotten Highlander NF 9-tn The Forgotten Highlander

Alistair Urquhart

Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. He not only survived working on the notorious Bridge on the River Kwai , but he was subsequently taken on one of the Japanese ˜hellships which was torpedoed. Nearly everyone else on board died and Urquhart spent 5 days alone on a raft in the South China Sea before being rescued by a whaling ship. He was taken to Japan and then forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months later a nuclear bomb dropped just ten miles away .

This is the extraordinary story of a young man, conscripted at nineteen and whose father was a Somme Veteran, who survived not just one, but three very close separate encounters with death - encounters which killed nearly all his comrades.

Revues:

Yorkshire Evening Post

Daily Record

Publisher:- Little Brown Book Group (UNITED KINGDOM)

Published:- 04/03/2010

ISBN:- 9781408702116

HARDBACK - 320 Pages