Burma Railway Medicine: Disease, Death and Survival on the Thai-Burma Railway

"I included this one because if somebody is really interested in what happened from a medical point of view, this is a very readable book. It’s an academic assessment of the problems they had and it covers a lot. They have gone through every possible source of information. I was actually given a copy because they took bits from my father’s diary. One of the interesting things that came out of the incarceration is that the medics from all the different divisions used to meet regularly for what was called the ‘Changi Medical Society.’ They would discuss how they treated different diseases and try to understand why treatments would work with some people and not with others. It was a very good network of all the medics and they learned a lot. My father said they learned about eye conditions and they certainly acquired much knowledge about vitamin deficiencies, that’s for sure. Yes, Dad was very focused on vitamin deficiency. He does mention it many times in his diary, but I didn’t want to make the book too heavily medical. It was difficult because there’s obviously a lot of medical detail in the diary. All of them, really, but particularly A and B. They got some vitamin C because they did have vegetables, though not many. The lack of vitamin A caused eye problems. Vitamin B is the one that’s in yeast and unpolished rice. The lack of it causes beriberi and there were a lot of outbreaks. Yes. Dad was disappointed because after a while he realised they were just being collected from the floor with all the dust, and there wasn’t enough vitamin B in them. They used to eat the weevils as well, because they were a small source of protein. They ate anything and everything – even a snake! I don’t think so. I do know the Japanese kept back a lot of Red Cross parcels that came with food for the prisoners of war, which were found afterwards. The prisoners were desperate for Marmite because it contains vitamin B. After Japan surrendered, they found jars and jars of Marmite stored in one of the larders of the Japanese officers. The prisoners were allowed to keep ducks and chickens, which they bought from the locals. They grew crops and did what they could to supplement the diet, with mixed results. It worked better sometimes than others. My father said he reckoned they had so many they didn’t care if half of them died. If one died, there was always another one to take his place. And in fact, of F Force—the last group to go up, who were sent to the northernmost camp—more than half of them did die on the railway. They were in camps in a hitherto unexplored jungle area, cutting through jungle that people had considered wasn’t fit for putting a railway. The Japanese wouldn’t have had many amenities, so I assume they kept the best ones for themselves. Yes, it was built, and the best thing for the prisoners of war when it was finished was that they could travel back on it. It took three days to travel back compared to the horrendous journey they’d had going up eight months previously. Dad said that, as far as he knew, they hardly used it during the war and certainly, by a few years after, it was not used at all. In the end, it was mainly used by the Japanese to transport the soldiers who were guarding the prisoners."