Author(s): Ryoko Adachi

History

World War 2 in the Asia-Pacific still casts many shadows. The shadows fall on the lives of Australian ex-POWs, soldiers and their families. Veterans are aged but recall horrors under Japanese Imperial Forces as fresh as yesterday. Dark, too, are the shadows cast on civilians trapped in the conflict - innocents who suffered through starvation, forced labour and prostitution. Against this is the determination by reactionary Japanese powerbrokers to obliterate this history by rewriting school textbooks, so post-war Japanese remain ignorant of their war history. This book presents the deepest and innermost thoughts drawn from some 200 interviews and responses with Australian veterans. Critically, all tell of what they think of the Japanese now. This is their record in their own words. In the 60th year after the end of World War 2, wide education makes the young acutely aware of what happened in those critical war years of 1942-45. This book will appeal to teachers hungry for original materials, and their students who want to read history in the words of those who lived it. This book will appeal to veterans, whose leaders have gone in search of reconciliation to Japan. The image of Australian youngsters trekking in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, hand in hand with their Japanese contemporaries, will appeal to all who seek to put the war behind them. Released to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the War in the Pacific, this book will be sought by many a general reader anxious to celebrate the memory of our World War 2 veterans.