The Railway Man

A naive young man, a railway enthusiast and radio buff, was caught up in the fall of the British Empire at Singapore in 1942. He was put to work on the 'Railway of Death' -- the Japanese line from Thailand to Burma. Exhaustively and brutally tortured by the Japanese for making a crude radio, Lomax was emotionally ruined by his experiences. Almost 50 years after the war, however, his life was changed by the discovery that his interrogator, the Japanese interpreter, was still alive -- their reconciliation is the culmination of this extraordinary story.

Biographies & Memoirs

Lomax, Eric

Leaders & Notable People

Vintage Books

History

Military

RANDOM HOUSE UK

"A TIMELY BOOK THAT TOUCHES UPON GREAT ISSUES. . . . He contributes monumentally to our understanding of war and remembrance." --The Boston Globe Throughout his childhood Eric Lomax possessed a passion for trains. In an ironic twist of fate, he was captured by the Japanese during World War II and sent to Thailand to work on the infamous Burma-Siam railroad, the barbaric project that claimed the lives of 250,000 men. There he constructed a radio to bring news of the war and secretly drew a map of the railroad. For this, Lomax suffered brutal and incessant torture and interrogation. Standing by through it all was Nagase Takashi, a young Japanese soldier who translated the captor's questions and Lomax's replies. Fifty years later, Lomax sought out this Japanese tormentor, meeting him on a hillside overlooking the River Kwai Bridge. But Lomax's object in meeting Takashi again was not revenge. It was reconciliation. Here is a remarkable true story of forgiveness--a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. A classic war autobiography, The Railway Man is a powerful tale of survival and of the human capacity to understand even those who have done us unthinkable harm. "[Lomax] has a straightforward story and he tells it quietly and with dignity. But at the end one feels the old dramatic shock: an amazed, even fearful suspicion that the curtain on eternity was pulled back slightly, for a moment." --The New York Times Book Review "An extraordinary book." --People

The Railway Man: A True Story of War, Remembrance, and Forgiveness

Americas

Ballantine Books

Soon to be the basis of a major film for BBC-TV, the autobiography of a World War II British prisoner of war tells of his captivity and torture by Japanese soldiers, one of whom he meets fifty years later.

The Railway Man: A Pow's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Here is a remarkable true story of forgiveness--a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past. A classic war autobiography, The Railway Man is a powerful tale of survival and of the human capacity to understand even those who have done us unthinkable harm. From The Railway Man: The passion for trains and railroads is, I have been told, incurable. I have also learned that there is no cure for torture. These two afflictions have been intimately linked in the course of my life, and yet through some chance combination of luck and grace I have survived them both. I was born in Edinburgh, in the lowlands of Scotland, in 1919. My father was an official in the General Post Office there, a career which he had started as a boy of 16 and which he intended me to imitate to the letter. He was fascinated by telephony and telegraphy, and I grew up in a world in which tinkering and inventing and making were honoured past-times. I vividly remember the first time that my father placed a giant set of headphones around my ears and I heard, through the hiss and buzz of far-off-energies, a disembodied human voice. In the worst times, much later, when I thought I was about to die in pain and shock at the hands of men who could not imagine anything of my life, who had no respect for who I was or my history, I might have wished that my father had had a different passion. But in the 1920s, technology was still powerful and beautiful without being menacing. Who would have thought that a radio, for example, could cause terrible harm? It seemed to be a wonderful instrument by which people could speak to each other; and yet I heard Hitler ranting over airwaves, and saw two men beaten to death for their part in making such an instrument, and suffered for my own part in it for a half a century.

Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness

W.W.Norton&Company

Winner of the PEN/Ackerley Prize The Railway Man is a remarkable memoir of forgiveness―a tremendous testament to the courage that propels one toward remembrance, and finally, peace with the past.
Eric Lomax, sent to Malaya in World War II, was taken prisoner by the Japanese and put to punishing work on the notorious Burma-Siam railway. After the radio he illicitly helped to build in order to follow war news was discovered, he was subjected to two years of starvation and torture. He would never forget the interpreter at these brutal sessions. Fifty years after returning home from the war, marrying, and gaining the strength from his wife Patti to fight his demons, he learned the interpreter was alive. Through letters and meeting with his former torturer, Lomax bravely moved beyond bitterness drawing on an extraordinary will to extend forgiveness.
Now a major motion picture starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman.

The Railway Man: A POW's Searing Account of War, Brutality and Forgiveness (Movie Tie-in Editions)

Community & Culture

Charnwood

Le due vie del destino. The railway man

Vallardi A.

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