To the River Kwai: Two Journeys, 1943, 1979 - Hardcover

In this memoir, John Stewart explores the truth and myth of "The Bridge on the River Kwai". Taken prisoner in Singapore in 1942, John Stewart learned Japanese and became an interpreter. He was one of the few survivors (just over one in ten) of the Sonkurai camp on the Burma-Siam railway. While a Japanese prisoner he kept a diary. His notes serve as a background to this account and as a source of meditation on his Japanese captors. What to think of a Japanese Colonel who cried when a British officer accused him of bad faith? Or a Camp Commandant who, on the point of beheading a couple of prisoners (the author being one of them), changed his mind and invited them to share his sake? Over 40 years later, the author returned to the Kwai, going beyond Sonkurai and into Burma with the guerrillas, ostensibly to see if the report of a steel bridge still standing in the jungle was true but also to reflect on his past experiences.