railroad to Burma

by James Boyle

A 25 year old Australian, James Boyle, was one of thousands of prisoners of war who worked in inhuman conditions to build the Thailand/Burma railway. He was determined to record his experiences, and those of his mates, at the limits of human endurance. Boyle sacrificed precious scraps of food for a tiny notebook. In it, in great secrecy, he described in shorthand fragments of life on the railroad. When the remnants of his group were withdrawn to Singapore, he buried his notebook for safekeeping. Then, after the liberation in August 1945, he retrieved his firsthand account. Over four decades later, that small book of spidery pencil-markings forms the core of Boyle's story.

Paperback

Published January 1, 1990

About the author

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and the former Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons. His books include The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind; Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society; Cultural Environmentalism (with Lawrence Lessig); and Bound By Law: Tales from the Public Domain and Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society - Cases & Materials: An Open Casebook (with Jennifer Jenkins).

Reviews

[Karol chokar123 · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading, I was working in the dark, hellish place where there was no God and no moral principles.
In my free time I was not drinking with the fellow waiters, but I was improving my English, which allowed me three years later to join the university with English at level C1.
I was treated as a home student, so the fees were not very high.
The hotel was a horrific dungeon on the earth, so I can compare myself to Dr. Livingstone, who also learned Greek and Latin in devilish and banditous Scottish mills.
The book is not literature, but it is very detailed, and it is the recollection of some Aussie who has seen the deaths of his fellow mates just because of only a small cut on the skin.
The infamous Empire of the Sun.
What Dr. Mengele performed was simply nothing in comparison to Japanese experiments...
It's hard for me to write in English. For the last seven years I was writing the diary in German...
The book is essential for those who want to see the ordinary lives of English-speaking soldiers who were only rubbish in the eyes of new aggressors.
The American was quite tall, so for the Japanese or, much worse, Korean "soldier" to be able to beat them in the face, the box or the chair was needed. That made the nation of dwarfs higher...
I read it more than fifteen years ago, but the compassion, empathy, and regret are in me still.
I can recommend it for everyone, and reading for native speakers may go smoothly, but I advise reading slowly and to contemplate - with the pain - the fates of chaps, pals, fellows, and mates...

[Luca Frame · Rating 3 out of 5]

Super informative but lacking a story telling feel to it but expected as it’s really just his diary rewritten