P.O.W

In 1942 about 22,000 Australians – an entire army division – were captured by the Japanese, mostly in Singapore. When the survivors returned from the Burma-Thailand railway and camps across south-east Asia and Japan, a third of them were dead. This ordeal, so much at variance with Australia’s tradition of victory in war, remained largely neglected. In the early 1980s academic historian Hank Nelson teamed up with Tim Bowden, a radio presenter, to interview hundreds of former PoWs of the Japanese, many speaking for the first time, and together they produced a powerful Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary series which told… show more.