オーストラリアを旅した時現地の友人”Mr Brian and Ms Anne Dunsford"からプレゼントでいただいた本です。映画"The Bridge on The River Kwai"で有名な第２次大戦時に日本軍に捕虜になった人の日記です。日本語タイトルは「戦場にかける橋」です。「冒頭」を紹介します。オーストラリアでは誰もが知っている英雄ですが、日本では認知されていないようです。

タイトルは"The WAR DIARIS OF WEARY DUNLOP"です。

Foreword

These diaries of Sir Edward Dunlop are of great human and historical importance. They are concerned with an aspect of the War in the East, a sort of war within the externally more dramatic and momentous War of whch the world knows far too little and of which those who were most intimately and authoritatively concerned have not yet adequatelyrendered account. American and Austrralian prisoners of war and interness of the Japanese army, had to  fight not only for physical survival but for sanity of mind and wholeness of spirit. To be compelled to surrender and be imprisoned in the best of wartime circumstances is difficult enough for the male spirit to accept. However good and compelling the reasons for donig so, there is something instinctively humiliating about giving up the battle and letting oneself be incarcerated in apparent safety while one's countrymen and alllies lay down their lives in hundreds of thousands.