Publisher's Synopsis
This is the memoir of Corporal 'Blanco' White, a soldier who served with the Middlesex Regiment during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong in 1941, and so fought as an infantryman during seventeen days of often intense combat in the face of overwhelming odds. Yet, despite the enemy's massive air and naval superiority, the Hong Kong garrison battled on until ordered to surrender on 25 December 1941. And White, along with his surviving comrades, marched into a captivity marked by a (soon to be) infamous triad of starvation, brutality, and slave-labour.
White was one of the 1,816 British prisoners of war embarked upon the Japanese transport ship, Lisbon Maru, on the 27th of September 1942, to sail from Hong Kong to Japan to be used as slave labour in Japanese industry. A week later, over half of them were dead, killed by their Japanese military captors. And over the next two-and-a-half years, many more died as a result of torture, brutality, starvation, overwork, and the withholding of medical treatment. It is also an account of the old-fashioned decency, a sense of fair-play, and even forgiveness, that White encapsulated. Despite having being brutally tortured himself during his captivity, White answered an appeal from the wife of one of his former [Japanese Army] camp guards, and asked the court to show clemency at the guard's War Crimes trial. This is 'Blanco' White's story - told in his own straightforward words - told as a tribute to the hundreds of his comrades who died during the sinking of the Lisbon Maru or whilst held captive in Japanese PoW camps.
