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Back Railroad of Death
Chapters (40)
  1. FOREWORD
  2. RAILROAD OF DEATH
  3. REFERENCE LIST:
  4. Railroad of Death
  5. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION (1948)
  6. INTRODUCTION
  7. PART ONE: SINGAPORE
  8. CHAPTER 1
  9. CHAPTER 2
  10. CHAPTER 3
  11. CHAPTER 4
  12. CHAPTER 5
  13. PART TWO: RAILROAD OF DEATH
  14. CHAPTER 6
  15. CHAPTER 7
  16. CHAPTER 8
  17. CHAPTER 9
  18. CHAPTER 10
  19. CHAPTER 11
  20. CHAPTER 12
  21. CHAPTER 13
  22. PART THREE: BASE CAMPS AND LIBERATION
  23. CHAPTER 14
  24. CHAPTER 15
  25. CHAPTER 16
  26. CHAPTER 17
  27. CHAPTER 18
  28. CHAPTER 19
  29. CHAPTER 20
  30. APPENDIX ONE:
  31. APPENDIX TWO:
  32. APPENDIX THREE:
  33. APPENDIX FOUR:
  34. APPENDIX FIVE:
  35. APPENDIX SIX:
  36. APPENDIX SEVEN:
  37. APPENDIX EIGHT:
  38. APPENDIX NINE:
  39. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  40. And The Dawn Came Up Like Thunder

Jim Richardson’s unpublished and unedited diary, against which many of the events mentioned in Railroad of Death can be compared, can be found in the Imperial War Museum manuscripts collection. On page 89 of the diary Richardson makes the following comments about the burial of his and John’s diary and John’s failure to retrieve John’s own manuscript:

‘We had warning of a massive Nip search of all kit (everything) imminent. On 18th January 1945 I buried the diary in a tin can beneath a large tree in Chungkai. John buried the MS. of his book “The Railroad of Death” similarly after capitulation of the I.J.A. [Imperial Japanese Army] John Coast recovered my diary in August, 1945 and returned it to me in Rangoon. His MS. had disappeared (Why?)’ (Documents 1705, Private Papers of Lieutenant J.R. Richardson).

John later described the tree under which his and Richardson’s diaries were buried as that ‘old enemy of mine’ (1952: 4) and in an article about his 1947 return visit to Siam he writes: ‘I paid my respects to the confounded tree under which I buried my original book and whence it disappeared’ (The Singapore Free Press, 3 February 1948: 4).

Undeterred by the loss of his diary, John proceeded to rewrite the manuscript on the voyage from Rangoon to Southampton:

‘During the voyage I had but one occupation and that was to complete the manuscript of my book on our prisoner experiences, a task which I had imperfectly achieved in seventeen days, seated in the crowded Officers’ Lounge with my friends, scribbling away rapidly among the debris of beer mugs and rejected mepacrine pills [a treatment for malaria and certain other tropical infections]’ (1952: 13).

John readied Railroad for publication while recuperating at his sister Daphne’s home in London. John and his sister were immediately aware of the popular potential of what he was writing, as can also be seen from this excerpt from an article in The Straits Times in 1947: ‘My sister already had a publisher waiting for me when I reached home’ (The Straits Times, 2 April 1947: 5). According to the same source, ‘Mr Coast reached Southampton on 7 Oct. 1945. The first edition of his book had sold out by Christmas.’ Christmas is likely to mean Christmas 1946, as the first edition of the book was not published until that year.