'Moving ... important ... an account of an upheaval that profoundly affected the lives of many people' Sunday Times

'Casts new and important light on a shadowy aspect of the Second World War, which deserves to be better understood' Sunday Telegtraph

'Extraordinary ... invaluable ... gives the viewpoints of the |apanese, Malays, Chinese, Burmans, Indians, Thais, as well as the British' Literary Review

The war that tore Asia apart between 1941 and 1945, as Japan invadec Singapore and swept through British-ruled territories to India, is one of the most tragic and overlooked conflicts of the twentieth century. This gripping account brings to life the stories of the 'forgotten armies' of these terrible times: not just soldiers fighting on jungle battlefields, but armies of prisoners and slave labourers, nurses and doctors, 'coolies' and 'comfort women', all battling to stay alive. Vividly capturing events from the Bengal famine to the building of the Thailand Burma Death Railway, it tells the story of the birth of modern Southeast Asia as the old hierarchies of colonialism collapsed amid invasion, flight, famine and revolution.

List of Illustrations

Maps

Some Key Characters

Preface: The Many "Forgotten Armies"

Prologue, Part I: Escaping Colonialism

  Japan's Asian vision and the coming of war

  Aung San's Far Eastern odyssey

  'Signor Mazzotta' flees to Berlin

  Mr Tan Kah Kee visits Mao

Prologue, Part II: Journeys through Empire

  The great crescent

  A Malayan pastorale

  The 'new world' of Singapore

  Malaise

1. 1941: Last of the Indian and Burmese Days

  India on the brink

  Indian politics as usual?

  Burma unready

  The world of the hills and the 'tribes'

  Dorman-Smith reaches his 'backwater'

  Burmese and others

  Endgame: the governor and the politicians

2. 194z: A Very British Disaster

  The fortress that never was

  The arrow leaves the bow

  The battle of Malaya

  'The modern Pompeiians'

  Flotsam and jetsam

3. 1942: Debacle in Burma

  The road to Rangoon

  From scorched earth to green hell

  Burma's false dawn

  Death of the innocents

  Would India hold?

  Total defence in the hills: the Lushai levies

  The Nagas, the Kachins and the anthropologists

  The monsoon of 1942: an unnoticed turning point

4. 1942: The Abyss and the Way Back

  The rape of Malaya

  The 'New Malai'

  Desperate journeys: Burma in late 1942

  India ablaze

  The forgotten armies mobilize

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