Bad presentation of a good cause

Brian MacArthur’s credits as an author include three Penguin anthologies and a tribute to Princess Diana. He embarked on the emotive and complex subject of prisoners of war of the Japanese in 2002 and had completed his text with the help of three research assistants by the beginning of May 2004.

MacArthur’s aim is ‘to speak in the voices of the Fepows [sic] themselves’ and his source material includes more than 150 unpublished diaries. The quotations are linked by MacArthur’s commentaries on Changi military camp, the Thailand-Burma Railway, the ‘Hellships’, the prisoners in Japan, Haruku and Sandakan, and subjects such as food, religion, medicine, black markeeters and clandestine radios. The behaviour of the officer class in captivity is considered in detail in a chapter headed ‘Officers and Gentlemen’.

The first surprise is the subtitle of this book where MacArthur provides a date-range of 1942-45 for his subject rather than the usual (and historically correct) 1941-45. MacArthur does not explain why he mentions only in passing the first significant number of Allied servicemen (British and Canadian) to fall into Japanese hands with the surrender of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941. Perhaps the introduction provides a clue. MacArthur writes, ‘As Japan’s army conquered the Far East [sic] in 1941 and 1942, prisoners were taken in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaya…’ — the order suggesting incorrectly that Malaya and Hong Kong were conquered after the surrender of Singapore.

MacArthur’s failure to check and evaluate his sources leads him to make statements which are manifestly false. In his appraisal of the 7,000 Australian and British prisoners who comprised ‘F Force’ which left Singapore for Thailand in April 1943, he considers the question of the death rate, which was far higher among British prisoners than among Australian.