The Sumatra Railroad
The Sumatra Railroad

Author: H. Hovinga

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 9004253718

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This is the gripping historical tragedy of the 220 km railroad that bored its way through the hot, humid Sumatran jungle during World War II. The railway was commissioned by Japan and built with the blood and tears of Allied prisoners of war and press-ganged Javanese romushas. Henk Hovinga interviewed nearly one hundred former railroad workers and did painstaking archival research. The result is a moving book, richly illustrated with numerous authentic drawings of life in the internment camps, charts and photographs. The original Dutch version of The Sumatra Railroad has become the standard work on the crime of the Japanese railroad construction in Indonesia. Unfortunately this indescribable human catastrophe has always been overshadowed by the drama of the notorious Birma Railroad. This work is first and foremost a posthumous tribute to the thousands of slave workers who lost their lives for the Pakan Baroe Railroad. At the same time, it is a homage to the survivors, for whom the war traumas would never end.

Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway
Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway

Author: Lizzie Oliver

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-12-14

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1350024147

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Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway is the first book to detail the experiences of British former prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced to construct a railway across Sumatra during the Japanese occupation. It is also the first study to be undertaken of the life-writing of POWs held captive by the Japanese during the Second World War, and the transgenerational responses in Britain to this period of captivity. This book brings to light previously unpublished materials, including: · Exceptionally rare and detailed diaries, notebooks and letters from the railway · Memoirs from Sumatra, including detailed recollections and post-war statements written by key personnel on the railway, such as Medical Officers and interpreters · Remarkable original artwork created by POWs on Sumatra · Contemporaneous photographs taken inside the camps Employing theories of life-writing, memory and war representation, including transgenerational transmission, Lizzie Oliver focuses particularly on what these documents can tell us about how former POWs tried to share, preserve and make sense of their experiences. It is a wholly original study that is of great value to Second World War scholars and anyone interested in 20th-century Southeast Asian history or war and memory.

POW on the Sumatra Railway
POW on the Sumatra Railway

Author: Christine Bridges

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2022-08-11

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1399015281

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John Geoffrey Lee (always known as Geoff) joined the RAF on his 20th birthday in June 1941. He left Liverpool on a troop ship in December 1941, with no idea where he was going. He eventually arrived in Java, where he was captured by the Japanese, along with many others. During his time in captivity, he survived several camps in Java, Ambon and Singapore and three hell ship journeys. After being washed ashore in Sumatra, (as a ferry he was being transported on blew up), he was then recaptured and suffered sheer hell as a slave on the Sumatra Railway. Enduring bouts of malaria, beri beri, tropical ulcers and a starvation diet was bad enough, but this was exacerbated by the searing heat and extreme cruelty meted out to the prisoners by the Japanese and Korean guards. Geoff miraculously survived, weighing just 6 stone when he arrived back in Liverpool in December 1945. After his release he found he had difficulty in convincing people where he had been as no one had heard of the “Sumatra Railway”, only the other one, thousands of miles away in Burma. Letters to newspapers were returned as ‘Just another Burma Railway story’. The Ministry of Defence, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and The Imperial War Museum had no records of POW’s building a railway in Sumatra. So began Geoff’s journey, his aim... to prove to the establishment what he already knew to be true. This is Geoff's story of his captivity, release, and subsequent efforts in achieving his aim.

Traces of War
Traces of War

Author: Jan Banning

Publisher: Trolley Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781904563464

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Dutch photographer Jan Banning has interviewed and photographed 24 of the survivors of the Burma and Sumatra railways. The haunting images in this book show them as they worked, naked from the waist up. The words elicit, with a matter-of-fact disinterest, the misery of their constant understanding of death.

Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway
Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway

Author: Lizzie Oliver

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-12-14

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1350024139

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Prisoners of the Sumatra Railway is the first book to detail the experiences of British former prisoners of war (POWs) who were forced to construct a railway across Sumatra during the Japanese occupation. It is also the first study to be undertaken of the life-writing of POWs held captive by the Japanese during the Second World War, and the transgenerational responses in Britain to this period of captivity. This book brings to light previously unpublished materials, including: · Exceptionally rare and detailed diaries, notebooks and letters from the railway · Memoirs from Sumatra, including detailed recollections and post-war statements written by key personnel on the railway, such as Medical Officers and interpreters · Remarkable original artwork created by POWs on Sumatra · Contemporaneous photographs taken inside the camps Employing theories of life-writing, memory and war representation, including transgenerational transmission, Lizzie Oliver focuses particularly on what these documents can tell us about how former POWs tried to share, preserve and make sense of their experiences. It is a wholly original study that is of great value to Second World War scholars and anyone interested in 20th-century Southeast Asian history or war and memory.

Narrow Gauge in the Tropics
Narrow Gauge in the Tropics

Author: Augustus J. Veenendaal, Jr.

Publisher: Railroads Past and Present

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780253060297

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Narrow Gauge in the Tropics is the first comprehensive history of railways and tramways in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) from breaking ground in 1864 to the invasion of the Japanese during World War II. During the mid-19th century under colonial rule, the Dutch East Indies experienced enormous increases in production of sugar, coffee, and other commodities, resulting in a great dilemma: How were these goods to be moved to port when wagons hauled by animals was the only available form of transportation? The solution was to build a railway network through some of the most challenging terrain on the planet. Lavishly illustrated, Narrow Gauge in the Tropics explores technical aspects of the construction of the railways over difficult terrain, the origin of the technicians who made the seemingly impossible happen, and the social impact of the railways on the indigenous population.

Fantastic Trains
Fantastic Trains

Author: Neil Enock

Publisher: EDGE-Lite

Published: 2019-08-05

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1770532005

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Book your ticket now for a trip to the future, the past, and the timeslips in between. Through the eloquent prose and imaginings of eighteen tellers of tales, we are pleased to present to you a collection of stories-on-a-train that will transport you to tantalizing worlds that you simply cannot imagine. Perhaps no other anthology in-living-memory encapsulates such wholehearted, ill fated, poignant, and even hallucinogenic stories with such grace and balance as those contained in this volume. These stories span the genres of literary fiction, steampunk, space opera, futurism, tragedy, magical realism, slipstream, horror, comedy, urban fantasy and more. In all, a sizzling collection, curated by Neil Enock (who is a train aficionado, podcaster, screenwriter and filmmaker), presenting high-voltage, off-the-rail entertainments that are feature rich with characters who are: schemers, dreamers, adventurers, lovers, detectives, rogues, and more; and whose human weaknesses always seem to get the better of them. Showcased in this single collection are eighteen trail blazers tasked to escort you on your inimitable journey: Jason Lane, David Worsick, Liam Hogan, Christine Hanolsy, Gavin Bradley, Michael Johnstone, Dwain Campbell, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Peter Hargraves, Melodie Leclerc, Rachel Leidenfrost , Nick Svolos, Maurice Forrester, Kendall Eifler, Samuel Marzioli, Neil Enock, Laurie Stewart, Kim Solem. The stories offered will delight you with such surprising humor and stinging tragedy, you will be compelled to read them all in one sitting. DO NOT DELAY. DO NOT BE LEFT BEHIND. THIS TRAIN LEAVES PROMPTLY ON TIME. *Note: These stories are also suitable to read while waiting for a train.