‘Was Inferno worse?’: When Indian PoWs were sent to labour camps in the Pacific during World War II

The unfortunate men were taken to various islands, such as New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland, Bougainville, Manus, Palau, Guadalcanal, Solomon, Timor in the Pacific and Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Bali in Southeast Asia. The latter are parts of modern Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia. The Pacific islands are all clustered north of Australia and had been captured as a base for the expected Japanese invasion of that country. New Guinea, over 300,000 square miles, is the third-largest island in the world. At that time, the western half was part of the Dutch East Indies, and the eastern half was a former German colony administered by Australia after World War I, as were New Britain and New Ireland. The others were under a mix of French, Japanese and British control before World War II. Lush tropical islands, they held horrible memories for the Allied POWs and Asian civilians made to labour in harsh conditions to fortify them for the Japanese. Eventually, over 17,000 Indian POWs were sent to the SWPA, of whom only 7,000 survived.

The voyage out was described as hell, torture or an inferno by all aboard. Crammed into suffocating holds with barely any crouching space, little food, even less water...

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