A Japanese mortar bomb landing in my platoon truck in Singapore helped determine the whole course of my life. Some weeks after we had been rounded up at Changi, we were allowed back to the battlefield to bury our dead. It was during this macabre visit [that] I found my gutted platoon truck and learned that my last pair of glasses had been burnt. I found one blackened lens, but even if I’d managed to clean it there was no way of keeping it in my eye. I lacked the necessary beetle brow. So I had to resign myself to remaining a short-sighted prisoner – a dangerous condition – for we had to salute every Japanese we saw, and if we failed to recognise them we were beaten up as a matter of course . . . [After the railway had been completed] . . . the Japanese relaxed a little . . . we were allowed to build a camp theatre . . . [which] I suppose, was my first remote step towards the discovery of Pavarotti (Coast, 1988: Crazy Ideas. Unpublished memoirs).

Writing Railroad of Death

Following his capture during the fall of Singapore in February 1942, Lieutenant John Alan Coast (30 October 1916 – 23 July 1989) survived three and a half years in Japanese prisoner of war camps along the route of the notorious Thai-Burma Railway. He was incarcerated variously at the camps of Changi, Chungkai, Wun Lue, Tamarkan, and Kanchanaburi. John’s story reflects the bravery, tenacity and loyalty of many FEPOWs [Far East Prisoners of War], but it is exceptional for its eloquence and prompt publication. Not only did he tolerate the impairment of his eyesight and many unpleasant and painful tropical diseases, but he also managed to keep a secret diary – strictly prohibited by the Japanese – throughout his internment. From this diary John produced the manuscript of Railroad of Death, which was published by Hyperion Press in July 1946, less than a year after his return to Britain. It was also translated into Thai in 1947.