Horrors on the Burma 'Death Railway'

Dalya Alberge

London Daily Telegraph

As a British prisoner of war, Eric Lomax endured unspeakable torture and terror at the hands of his Japanese captors.

Forced to stand for hours in the burning sun, he was half-drowned by a water-hose placed in his nose and mouth, his arms were broken and his ribs cracked in savage beatings, and he was made to sleep in a cage covered in excrement. That was his punishment for being caught with a radio that he helped to build.

Two fellow prisoners similarly accused did not survive the beatings.

Almost a year after his death, aged 93, the harrowing but inspirational story of atrocities that he and thousands of Allied servicemen suffered in captivity and on the notorious Thai/Burma “Death Railway� is now told in a major British film.

The Railway Man receives its world premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, attended by his widow, Patti, and its Oscar-winning stars, Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

But its producer and co-writer, Andy Paterson, doubts that Lomax would have joined them had he been alive. He believes that, after a lifetime of nightmares and flashbacks, Lomax would have found the film’s portrayal too realistic. The horrors remained raw â€" even after facing his demons, both psychological and real, in confronting, then forgiving Takashi Nagase, the interpreter who presided over his torture.

Paterson got to know Lomax over several years in preparing the film. Lomax wanted it made, advising on its script and visiting the set when they filmed near his home in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Yet Paterson recalls: “He really wanted to hear all about it, but not to see the images, because he said they ‘might bring the nightmares back’. Most of all, he wanted to know if I was satisfied with the result.�

Edinburgh-born Lomax was a 21-year-old Signals officer when captured in Singapore in 1942. He became one of thousands used as slave labour to build the railway across hundreds of miles to support the Japanese forces in the Burma campaign. Its construction claimed the lives of around 16,000 Allied prisoners and 90,000 Asian civilians.

Paterson notes the irony: “As a boy, Eric had been enthralled by the great steam trains that plied in and out of Edinburgh’s Waverley Station. As a soldier, he saw his comrades worked to death on the Death Railway.�

After the war, Lomax returned to Scotland, lecturing at Strathclyde University, but the mental scars took their toll on his first marriage. He later married a Canadian girl, Patti Wallace â€" whom, ironically, he met on a train. Although his memories strained their relationship, she was important in helping him to come to terms with them.

Patti, portrayed on-screen by Kidman, encouraged him to seek help from a foundation for torture victims, and initiated his meeting with Nagase 50 years after the war. Lomax offered his forgiveness, even friendship.

After the war, like many POWs, he was unable to talk about his experiences. But he realized that future generations needed to be told and, in 1995, he published his powerful memoir â€" The Railway Man â€" a bestseller that reminded the world of the sacrifices of the “forgotten army.â€�

http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/horrors-on-the-burma-death-railway/