An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific
August 23, 2010
During WWII, Urquhart managed to survive several near-death incidents. Serving in a battalion of the Gordon Highlanders, he was captured by the Japanese in Singapore and sent to Changi prison. From there, he and other prisoners were packed into "steel ovens" (train cars) for a five-day journey north, followed by a six-day forced march through the jungle. At the destination, he survived 750 days working as a slave laborer on the infamous Burma Railway, aka the Death Railway, a project that caused thousands of POW deaths. In 1944, he joined others in the hold of the Kachidoki Maru, where an "overpowering mixture of excrement, urine, vomit, sweaty bodies, weeping ulcers and rotting flesh clogged the atmosphere." When the ship was torpedoed and sank in the South China Sea, 244 of his comrades died, but he survived, drifting alone on the ocean until he was rescued by a Japanese whaling ship and deposited on an island with other shipwrecked POW survivors. Sailing away from the "atomic wasteland" of Nagasaki at the war's end, he went through a succession of military hospitals, eventually arriving home at Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had to deal with recurring nightmares and a difficult adjustment to civilian life. Dredging up painful memories, Urquhart documents the horrors of his war experiences. 24 b&w photos, map.
August 1, 2010
Urquhart (b. 1919) spent most of World War II surviving hellish experiences that felled many of his comrades. He grew up in Scotland and was conscripted into the Gordon Highlanders regiment of the British army in 1939. Stationed in Singapore, he was taken prisoner of war by the Japanese when British forces surrendered in February 1942. For the next three and a half years, virtually every day held for him a near-death experience. He was forced into labor on the "Death Railway" between Thailand and Burma and later in a mine in Nagasaki, Japan, suffering numerous diseases, starvation, and torture along the way. Not surprisingly, he returned to Scotland afflicted with what we now identify as post-traumatic stress disorder and had difficulty readapting to civilian life. VERDICT In his memoir, Urquhart employs matter-of-fact prose that is somehow perfectly appropriate to describe the horrors he experienced. Although grateful and positive about the many benefits in his long life--he describes himself as a lucky man--he is angry at the Japanese government's lack of acknowledgment of Japan's wartime abuses, and he feels neglected by his own government. His story makes clear that he has every right to feel that way.--Megan Hahn Fraser, Univ. of California, Los Angeles, Libs.
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