The Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Richard Flanagan

He had been beaten all the time in the Japanese Army, and it had been his duty to beat other soldiers. Why, when he was training he had been knocked out twice, and once suffered a ruptured eardrum. He had been beaten with a baseball bat on his buttocks for showing ‘insufficient enthusiasm’ when washing his superior’s underwear. He had been beaten senseless by three officers when, as a recruit, he had misheard an order. He had been made to stand-to all day on the parade ground, and when he had collapsed they had fallen on him for disobeying the order and beaten him unconscious. So how did one beating make one a war criminal? And what was a prisoner of war? Did not the Field Service Code specifically state that a captured officer was to kill himself? What was a prisoner of war? Nothing, that’s what. A man without shame, a man with no honour. A no man.