The forgotten Women of the War in the East

The forgotten women of the war in the East;
Starved,worked ,beaten,
The Narrow Road to the deep North is a
 magnificent novel and a worthy winner
of the man Booker Prize,
Its story of Tasmanian army surgeon Dorrigo
Evans and his fight to save the men under his'
command from starvation ,disease and the relentless
brutality of their Japanese captors ,will stay with me
for the rest of my life.

The book is a powerful addition to the canon of
films and literature that  dramatise the horrors of life
as a  POW in the Pacific war Brige On the River Kwai
Merry Christmas Lawrence ,The Railway Man
and the soon to be -released Unbroken about the
Olympic runner and the Japanese camp survivor,
 Louis Zamperini,all focus on the suffering of
Allied soldiers in the Far East.

Indeed, when we reflect on that part of the World War
Two ,we think ,automatically of these brave military
men,of whom there were 132, 000.Yet there were
130,000   allied  civilian in the region-predominantly,
women and  children who also endured appalling
privation and cruelty,but whose story is barely known.

Once Japan had conquered South East Asia the
Europeans,Americans and Australians who had been
living there as planters teachers missionaries and
civil servants were rounded up and trucked away
to the 300 "civilian assembly areas"in really concentration
camps that the Japanese had created,ten thousand British
were interned in China.

But where the Thai -Bruma Railway continues to fascinates
writers and historian with two Hollywood films and
a major novel this year alone,there's little  awareness
of what the civilian endured.