Indian Army men fighting for the British against the Japanese were also patriots

Readers in India may be misled by the title of Gautam Hazarika's new book, The Forgotten Indian Prisoners of World War II: Surrender, Loyalty, Betrayal and Hell. It is not about the INA prisoners who were put on trial in the Red Fort by the British. This book is about those Indian soldiers who fought the Japanese in Singapore, Malaya and Burma alongside the British, and who had to surrender, were taken prisoner, put to torture and hard labour by the Japanese, refused to join the INA, and faced death or managed to escape. While recounting their stories, Hazarika also gives an insight into the INA movement. Edited excerpts from an interview with the author:

- R. PRASANNAN

Q/ What prompted you to look at this particular chapter of Indian history, when new narratives are coming in about the INA and its collaboration with the Japanese?

A/ This book is not about the INA, but about the 67,000 Indian troops who were defending Singapore and Malaya when the Japanese invaded. One part of the book is about what happens to them in Singapore. Another part is about what happens to them in Papua New Guinea, yet another about what happens to the INA in Burma.

Q/ Papua New Guinea?

A/ When the Japanese invaded, they captured all of Southeast Asia. They were wanting to fortify Papua New Guinea, to use it as a springboard to invade Australia. They needed labourers; they started using Allied PoWs (The Bridge on the River Kwai movie). They also took the locals. Of those 2,20,000 men and women, 1,20,000 died. They shipped about 17,000 Indian PoWs from Singapore to Papua New Guinea; 3,000 of them died on the way. Of the 14,000 survivors, most were on this small island called New Britain, north of New Guinea; 3,000 on the island of New Guinea. They were made to do hard labour, build fortifications, dig trenches, tunnels. They had very little food. They had very little medicines. They were forced to work to death by the Japanese.

Q/ How many escaped to tell the story?

A/ Of the 3,000 Indian soldiers in Papua New Guinea, 185 escaped in 1944. They reached India. Of the remaining 2,815, only one reached home. Just one. So horrific was the death toll. Half of the 11,000 soldiers died in two years. After the war, when the Australians found survivors, they saw them as almost skeletons. They told stories of how the Japanese had slapped, kicked.... The Australians held 100 war crimes trials. For this, we owe a great debt to Australia; 36 Japanese were sentenced to be hanged.