Nagase, who had long been filled with remorse about his role in the Japanese treatment of POWs, and militarism more generally, had been visiting the cemeteries at Kanchanaburi since 1963, when the Japanese government lifted the restrictions on foreign travel. Although he featured in John’s documentary 26 years earlier, Nagase is better known for his subsequent meeting of reconciliation with Eric Lomax in 1993. Lomax, whose autobiography has recently been brought to cinema screens in a major feature film The Railway Man (2013), was one of the brave men who were tortured and severely punished for building and operating the radios that brought prisoners news of the outside world, in Lomax’s case compounded by his possession of a map he had made of the railway.4 Lomax is not mentioned by name in Railroad, though his torture and imprisonment is noted. John does, however, dedicate his book in part to the bravery of the Webber, brothers, who also kept alive a radio ‘canary’ at great personal risk; details are included in Appendices 5, 6 & 7. Despite the extreme hardship and horror recounted in Railroad, John had not been a direct victim of torture and appeared not to have the lasting physical and psychic damage suffered by many camp survivors. His motivation in One Pair of Eyes seems to be the separation of fact from fiction, in the spirit of fair resolution and mutual understanding, rather than a personal need to exorcise demons.

It is also for John a matter of justice, not vengeance, that the former Japanese soldiers should confront the crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army. For example, he shows them a famous picture by Ronald Searle depicting the torture by a Japanese soldier of a POW working on the railway. John calmly waits, after an initial denial, for Nagase to bravely agree that the Japanese Army had indeed acted in this way. This was a courageous admission on their part, considering both Nagase and Inoh’s fears about the reaction in Japan to their appearance in John’s film. In 1969, in front of an audience of nearly a million viewers—in a three channel Britain—this was a truly groundbreaking film. Though, until now, it has been largely forgotten.

John’s even-handed way of dealing with the Japanese also landed him the one bad review that research has brought to light. Among all the documentary’s numerous accolades, Martin Jackson in the Daily Express called the programme a ‘Whitewash’ that ‘would cause protest calls to the BBC, (Martin Jackson, ‘Back to the Kwai with a Whitewash’, Daily Express, 15 March 1969). There were no such protests; the documentary achieved outstanding viewing figures and emphatically positive reviews.

After the making of the documentary Coast also writes at greater length in the article written for Argosy magazine his and the Japanese participants feelings that justice had not been done (Coast, 1969).