A Town like Alice

Weren't you moved when the Japanese invaded Malaya and took the women? Most of whom died under brutal conditions?

Talullah

Weren't you moved when the Japanese invaded Malaya and took the women? Most of whom died under brutal conditions?

Hear, hear!

Yes of course- all I am saying is that 60 years later, I saw other things in the film and was also moved by other things- unlike the first time.

The film does not follow all the novel, the Australian was captured , and tortured for help and acts of kindness towards the women prisoners. Forced to work on the notorious Burmese railway. The man Eric Lomax apparently met and, very graciously, forgave his torturer in 1995.

Talullah

Weren't you moved when the Japanese invaded Malaya and took the women? Most of whom died under brutal conditions?

And young children.

Someone who lived near me when I was a child was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Apparently he survived by eating banana skins. Thousands did not.

Much more aware of the arrogance and superior attitudes of the colonialist 'invaders

Just to give a sense of perspective:
The Japanese were invaders and occupiers. They invaded Manchuria, China, Indo-China, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, New Guinea, Papua and would have invaded Australia but were stopped by the Americans.

Does anyone remember the television series with Bryan Brown? It covered the whole of the book with their life in Australia building a town like Alice.

Oh yes, I remember it now.
Worth repeating, I think!

I don't think I'm going to get there now, it was on the bucket list so watching that would be second best.

We lived in Malaya in the early 1950s, less than 10 years after the war ended. The local paper, The Straits Times serialised a graphic book that described what happened to men, women and children in the camps, but especially the men, the horrendous tortures. Vast numbers of the men died in the prison camps or working on the railway, they were starved of food and worked until they died. The nearest equivalent would be the Nazi Concentration camps. Those who survived to come home often died prematurely or suffered from mental illness.

What was being published would not have been put in a paper in the UK, too graphic, too unpleasant and then, would not have been published in a book either. I was 10 at the time and my mother tried to stop me reading about it all, but I did.

If you had read these accounts, you would have had precious little pity for any Japanese soldier.
Much more aware of the arrogance and superior attitudes of the colonialist 'invader' I think many of these comparisons are unsafe. Everywhere people spoke in a different tone, in a different way. Listen to the Queens voice when she became Queen and now.

In the late 1950s my father was seconded to the Malayan army along with many other army officers to help train them after independence. The army was multi-racial, Malaya is multiracial, Chinese, Indians as well as Malays and Brits and everyone was on an equal footing and socialised together.

Deedaa

Does anyone remember the television series with Bryan Brown? It covered the whole of the book with their life in Australia building a town like Alice.

It was very good.

Gordon Jackson played Jean’s solicitor.

Think the tv series referred to is TENKO.

I loved Tenko, i had never seen anything like it and was totally engrossed when it came on the Tv. I have copies of the whole series and have watched it a couple of times. Anyone who hasn't seen it will notice it looks very dated obviously, but the story line is brilliant.

There have been a couple of Japanese camp series on TV. There was a series about aTown Like Alice as well as Tenko.
Bryan Brown was I think also in a serialised production of The Thorn. Birds.

Franbern

Think the tv series referred to is TENKO.

No, there was a tv series before that, Franbern, starring Bryan Brown

www.imdb.com/title/tt0081949

Thank you for that perspective, M0nica.

I think many who endured and survived rarely spoke about the atrocities.

You are misreading what I am saying - just as in The Book Thief- you realise that some of the German soldiers were just forced into doing what they had to do, and suffered themselves too. Something I never really saw initially.

Thank ou Monica.

One of our neighbours here was the daughter of a Belgian diplomat serving in Singapore when it was invaded by the Japanese. She and her mother were put in a camp for the duration of the war. She rarely spoke about it.

Saw the film as a teenager and had a huge crush on Peter Finch for a bit. Seen it on TV before but I did catch a bit of it this time - just as PF's character was explaining why he called the heroine "Mrs Boong"! So non-PC on so many counts! How things change. Japanese culture was and is so different to western ideals. It's historical in theme and of the time it was made-nothing matter with that.

No television programme, least of all a drama, could ever show the horrors of the Japanese occupation, not just of Malaya and Singapore, but most of East Asia, any more than any television programme could truly show the horrors of the (Jewish and non-Jewish) concentration camps, or extermination camps.

But just as we today accept that these horrors happened in the past and do not hold the Germans and Japanese alive today responsible for past horrors.

I hope also that those condemning modern populations for dreadful things that happened in the past, will see the contradiction in there attitudes.

I fear the dont at the moment M0nica

The=they

I hope also that those condemning modern populations for dreadful things that happened in the past, will see the contradiction in there attitudes.

I hadn't seen anyone on here condemning today's populations for what their grandparents may have done in WW2.

No, I don't think anyone is misreading what you were saying

Callistemon, I was not referring to anyone on this thread, more the current fashion in blaming every one alive now from any country involved in slavery for what happened several hundred years ago. I am not talking about all the complicated issues around that subject, but silly simplistic blaming of the present for the past.

I'm with you there MOnica. I grew up in a small village, most of the houses were owned by a local landowner from a big house.
This landowner family were actually referred to as 'Gentry' and the adult men would touch their hats and the women give a strange little bob if they were spoken to.
I did find it a bit odd, even then (1940s)
Times change, I imagine no-one saw anything wrong with slavery when it happened, just as no-one thought the Vikings were violating the human rights of the British when they invaded.
Times do change.
You can't blame this generation fit the atrocities of the Victorians over slavery.

My stepfather was a P.O.W with the Japanese,captured at the fall of Singapore. He always hated the Japanese to the day he died, although he never talked about his time in Changi. We did find out after my mother died, that he had had a Chinese girl friend and they had had a baby. The Japanese murdered them both. Yes I loved A Town like Alice,both the film and the book. The Naked Island by Russell Braddon is another good,rather horrifying book, with excellent illustrations by Ronald Searle.