Sunset in the East: A War Memoir of Burma and Java 1943-46

by John Hudson

It is generally recognized that the war in Burma against the Japanese was as fierce as any. The Battle of Kohima was the turning point of this extraordinary campaign and personal accounts of the fighting there are greatly sought after. The author was in the thick of the action and his record is indeed a graphic and moving one. Thereafter he was sent down to Malaya, but when the War ended, he found himself in Indonesia under the most bizarre circumstances. A bitter war of national independence from the Dutch colonial power was underway and it became necessary to employ the defeated Japanese troops to keep a semblance of order. This little known turn of events makes for the most fascinating reading and adds a new dimension to what would in any case be a first class memoir.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[The Solitary Wutherer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warning: contains graphic descriptions of war crimes.

Hard to rate memoirs where people recount real experiences, especially war related experiences, since the nature of the subject matter will make it extremely off putting. I will say the author should probably have gotten therapy (but probably didn’t, given the time period), because the way he described some of the horrors he witnessed in a detached, unfazed manner (even for war memoir standards) is a bit unsettling.

Everyday is a good day to be thankful for not having been around in Southeast Asia during WWII (or any other part of the world for that matter).