The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East

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Alistair somehow managed to survive 5 days in the ocean until the Japanese relief effort finally found him. This is one subject that is worth exploring (together with the attitudes of the Taiwanese who were also conscripted and served in South-East Asia). Much of my school education about the war centred around events in Europe and didn’t cover the far east that much. Yet, six years later, he was a skeletal 82 pounds, he had been beaten repeatedly by his captors, had suffered from cholera, malaria, typhus and beriberi, and witnessed the deaths of so many of his colleagues. Unwilling to risk the massacre of civilians, British commanders flew the white flag and defeat was followed by humiliation.

Subsequently, he moved to work on a Japanese “hellship,” his ship was torpedoed, and nearly everyone on board the ship died. Was really looking forward to reading this after seeing many good reviews on it, but I was very disappointed by the book. As a result he was sent to another POW camp elsewhere in Thailand that had better facilities where he might recuperate. The Koreans today paint themselves as the victims of the Japanese imperialism and in the current K-pop wave, most Asians other than the Japanese, are eager to agree.And, honest as ever, Mr Urquhart declared that his survival owed as much to such factors as luck or providence as any special qualities he possessed. The diseases he suffered from are painful to just hear of, let alone imagine what he's been through. Their clothes deteroirated (most tragic was losing his boots) and thereafter they went naked or with loin cloths only. It pains me to think of how an entire generation of soldiers lost their youth and their dignity and their right to be treated as fellow humans through these years of hell. An early vivid example describes how Japanese soldiers would rush through a hospital bayoneting patients right on the operating table.

Urquhart floated alone on a raft for five days badly burned and near death when he was picked up by a Japanese fishing trawler and was turned over to the POW camp near the mines and only ten miles from the city of Nagasaki where the fatboy bomb was dropped just a few weeks later. It shows what a remarkable man Alistair Urquhart is to suffer to such an extent and go on to lead a full and long life accomplishing much. Having lived within himself for so long, he could not embrace the old kindly world and spent his first months of freedom endlessly pacing the city streets, alone and fearful. the motto of the ancient Urquharts was curiously unwarlike for a Highland clan and its admonition to ‘Speak well, mean well, do well’ could have been written specially for us. So too my close shave with the atomic bomb, when I was struck by the blast of the A-bomb dropped on Nagasaki.The Koreans today generally still harbour great dislike of the Japanese owing to the bad legacy Japan left as their colonial master. It was difficult to judge the full toll of casualties and many of us became self-obsessed just to get through the day. They never got more than a measure of rice and some water once a day, rice full of weevils and other stuff.

I marvelled at the strength of mind and character of Alistair to survive the horrendous conditions he was subjected to by the Japanese. I've read so many personal POW accounts that it's only when I start spotting the differences that I really get interested. I admit to some bias here but my experience of being with my Japanese wife for nearly 20 years, knowing her parents who are both still alive and who were actually in Nagasaki the day the A-bomb was dropped, and of my wife’s Japanese friends and their families, is that there is indeed an awareness of what happened and great sadness and shame associated with that. In 2010, Urquhart published The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East, an account of his experiences. More than fifty thousand Chinese were murdered with the sickening sadism that seemed endemic in the Japanese Army.In the book he expresses anger at the lack of recognition in Japan of its role in war crimes compared to the atonement in Germany. Alistair Urquhart, the Scottish version of America’s Louie Zamperini tells his story in his own hand. Personally I'd suggest reading the Railway Man first which I found somewhat better but this is powerful. This book is my answer to those who would doubt the scale and awfulness of Japan’s murderous policies during the war.

Alistair was slowly starving to death when the POWs were shipped to the mainland of Japan as their services were required during this stage of the war. But that's a minor complaint, Alistair Urquhart is an inspirational person and this is a very well told and incredible survival story. Even in this terrible condition and after all we had been through, my comrades, ravaged by exposure, naked and in slavery, were defiant, their spirits unbroken. Above all, no one ever dreamed that the Japanese would have the temerity to attack this invincible bulwark of British interests in southern Asia. They were relentless and spared no one even appearing to enjoy coming up with sadistic methods of punishment.Well paced with just enough detail to draw you in without getting bogged down in trivia but also shockingly frank. Download The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East by Alistair Urquhart in PDF EPUB format complete free. You can read this before The Forgotten Highlander: My Incredible Story of Survival During the War in the Far East PDF EPUB full Download at the bottom.