Banzai, you Bastards! The Sad Tale of Jack Edwards

This story is a few months old, but sometimes, you run across something while idly surfing that you just have to share. I saw this book, and had to know what was going on with the title being so outrageous. Turns out Banzai, you Bastards, translated into Japanese as くたばれ、ジャップ野郎! (drop dead, Jap bastards), is the story of a POW that survived the prison mines at Kinkaseki (Chinguashi), Taiwan. I found an article detailing his experiences, and why he was justifyably rather mad. The article describes the ordeal:

He worked in the mine as part of a team, digging upwards into a copper seam in sulphur-polluted water and in constant danger of cave-in. Jack Butterworth, who had been in Edwards’s unit and was sent with him to Kinkaseki, recalled: “You had to bring out 24 bogeys of good copper ore per day for a four-man team. If you didn’t get that you were lined up and beaten . . . You’d look at the rock at the beginning of the day and decide whether to go for the 24 or not. Sometimes it was better to get the beating.”

Pretty grim stuff to say the least. Jack went on to try to get recompense and apology from the Japanese government, but it was a an uphill battle.

In 1991, after constant campaigning, Edwards won a monthly pension from the Government of HK$315 (less than £30) for Chinese veterans, and their widows, who had helped the British in the hopeless defence of Hong Kong in 1941. He also achieved for them the grant of British citizenship on the handover of sovereignty to China in 1997.

Edwards also spoke out for those in Hong Kong who had been forced to sell their property and businesses to the Japanese during the occupation in exchange for the worthless Japanese military yen. And he helped former “comfort women” in their quest to force Tokyo to admit that enforced prostitution was a policy, not a side-effect, of its war in South-East Asia.

Edwards’ controversially titled book is said by the article to have caused a stir in Japan back in 1993, but wonder how effective it was. I’ve never heard of it until now. Edwards died at the end of last year, but I hope his legacy lives on and generates debate about unhealed war wounds on both sides.