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

I read this book when it was first published about ten years ago and the moving experience has remained with me since I finished the final sentence. It is an incredibly vivid book that you will not be able to put down. What Eric Lomax went through as a POW, and his eventual reconciliation with one of his torturers 50 years later displays a depth of humanity that is deeply moving.

I first heard about Mr. Lomax in the "Guidepost" magazine, and was eleven when I read this "the Railway Man". And I must say, it's a painful read. After reading an eye-witness account of the treatment of the prisonners, "Bridge to the River Kwai" seems so...tame. This is the real stuff.It's graphic, like when he drescribes the brutal treatment at the hands of the captors, the endless interrogations, being swarmed over by red ants when they were put in cages, and about the man who tortured him all those years.Then he talks about going back to England, marrying, and then the jolt of his former torturer being alive. And that they met up again, and how he forgave. I'm surprised it's out of print, and I still think it should be more widely read. The story may be gut-wrenching (in more ways than one), but when he survived it all, one can't help but wonder how, when so many have died along the way.

We should be grateful for writers such as Lomax, and for books such as this. Remembering, with careful, understated accuracy, his experiences as a prisoner of war in Kanchanaburi during the infamous construction of the Burma Railway, also known as the "Death Railway", it is an honest and beautifully rendered document of tremendous suffering, tremendous pain and the transcending, liberating power of forgiveness.It reminds us of a time so recent, yet which seems to long ago, and which can so easily be revisited upon us. It is not a document of Japan-bashing or of bitterness or recrimination. It reminds that we are all capable of reat evil, and all capable of surviving great evil. It reminds us of the contradictory yet parallel strains of goodness and darkness that make us human. I feel like a btter person for having read this book.

This book explores the depths and the hights of human nature.In relating his incarceration and torture during WW2, Lomax shows just how bad people can be to each other.But when the book moves to the meeting and then reconciliation between torturer and prisoner, and Lomax reveals how the pent-up hatred was hurting both of them, we are taken to the other extreme of the human spirit, to a compassionate and healing place.Have a hankerchief handy for the book's climax - I promise you you'll need one.

In this work of Eric Lomax, one finds direct contrasts between brutality and meekness, revenge and forgiveness. The author was a signals officer in the Pacific Theater of the war and was captured after the fall of Singapore. He was then sent to the POW camps involved in the construction of the then Siam- Burma railway (Remember the "Bridge Over the River Kwai"?). There he had first-hand experience of the Japanese's brutal treatment of POWs, himself included. He never forgot the face of the Japanese interpreter accompanying the soldier who beat him to a pulp. He narrates how he had to cope psychologically with normal life after the war, how his wartime experiences kept on haunting him. Coincidentally, he chances upon some information regarding a Japanese trying to make reparations for his wartime brutalities, and indeed confirms that this was his former tormentor. After a lot of soul-searching, he finally meets the Japanese in a war memorial beside the Kwai River bridge, and the process of reconciliation and healing begins. A very touching story of man's capacity to perhaps not to forget, but yes, to forgive.