Barbed wire and bamboo: Australian POWs in Europe, North Africa, Singapore, Thailand and Japan

This book contains a collection of stories of captivity and escape from World Wars I and II, all involving Australian soldiers. The stories tell of capture, imprisonment and escape - in Europe, under German and Italian captors, and in Southeast Asia. There was quite a contrast between being a prisoner of the Europeans and a prisoner of the Japanese; Japan, unlike Germany and Italy, was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war and, of over 22,000 Australians taken prisoner by the Japanese, more than one third died in captivity. The German and Italians acknowledged that escape was a PoW's duty, while the Japanese regarded any attempt to escape as an offence punishable by execution. "Barbed Wire and Bamboo" thus presents contrasting PoW experiences - of daring escapes from Colditz Castle and endurance and slow suffering in Japanese created hell camps.