Shame And The Captives by Tom Keneally
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Maud Fitch
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Shame And The Captives by Tom Keneally
Prodigious novelist Tom Keneally is like an express train with a new timetable, he picks up unknown passengers and takes off down previously untravelled tracks, stopping here and there to unload goods or pick up baggage. The knowledge behind whatever literary route he takes is weighty, the history reflective and his assembled cast of unique identities live, love and hurt but above all, they think. They are realistic and absorbing people with minds of their own and confronting behaviours to match. The reader knows Keneally characters well by the end of the journey.
This story is based on a factual event. It opens in Spring 1943 near a prisoner-of-war camp at Gawell, New South Wales, Australia. The encampment houses European, Korean and Japanese captives. It is the Japanese who cause puzzlement among the townspeople. These soldiers are already classed as dead in their own homeland. For the reader it’s a fascinating look inside another culture with its honour and principles which ultimately result in much bloodshed to avoid family shame.
The main characters are Aoki, a Japanese veteran with many years of service, and Australian 23 year old Alice Herman whose husband Neville has been taken prisoner on the other side of the world. Hence her fascination with a Japanese roadwork group and handsome Italian labourer Giancarlo who is indentured to work on the farm she shares with her father-in-law Duncan. She believes that if she treats these detainees with kindness (initially lemonade and cake) this will reflect benevolence onto the European military imprisoning her husband. This ‘do unto others’ belief is shared but, of course, it is also a veiled introduction to future events.
The tale is told in their present time with illuminating back stories and flashes of WWII fighting elsewhere. It is easy to follow considering there were reportedly one thousand men held prisoner at Gawell (aka Cowra). Despite the best efforts of officers trying to observe the Geneva Convention, there’s a POW riot, staged by men in Compound C wishing to die, which leads to the actual breakout and massacre and gruesome bloodletting in ways too numerous to mention here. Amid the carnage, there are pleasant chapters representing fictitious normality.
Not many women stand out in my mind apart from Emily and not-so-innocent Alice. There’s Major Suttor with his script-writing hobby and bitter awareness that captors are prisoners too, and my favourite Colonel Ewan Abercare with his simmering yet ill-fated love life. Both men are probably quite typical of army gents of the day. I had a grudging respect for steely natured Tengan, the fallen Japanese naval aviator. There’s a father-son bonding scene by locals Beefy and Martin Cullen on a rifle shoot which I chose to read as satire to maintain a small shred of sanity.
A short narrative at the end entitled The Fallout nicely rounds off this book allowing the reader a small tingle of pleasure to see who survived. The book cover appears plain but does convey the essence of the storyline. Keneally touches on religions, cultural differences and an extinct marsupial tiger. He gives restrained landscape descriptions just enough melancholy, he defines illicit relationships with jousting and riposte and inserts quick splashes of Australian outback humour. Also there’s enough deaths to satisfy the gloomiest of readers. However, sadness is not an emotion I’d attached to this story, shock perhaps. And this may be part of the author’s intention, a case of hoping we’ll come to grips with our own infamous history and never repeat it.
Quite an insight for Australian readers but possibly an eye-opening revelation to overseas readers.
This story is based on a factual event. It opens in Spring 1943 near a prisoner-of-war camp at Gawell, New South Wales, Australia. The encampment houses European, Korean and Japanese captives. It is the Japanese who cause puzzlement among the townspeople. These soldiers are already classed as dead in their own homeland. For the reader it’s a fascinating look inside another culture with its honour and principles which ultimately result in much bloodshed to avoid family shame.
The main characters are Aoki, a Japanese veteran with many years of service, and Australian 23 year old Alice Herman whose husband Neville has been taken prisoner on the other side of the world. Hence her fascination with a Japanese roadwork group and handsome Italian labourer Giancarlo who is indentured to work on the farm she shares with her father-in-law Duncan. She believes that if she treats these detainees with kindness (initially lemonade and cake) this will reflect benevolence onto the European military imprisoning her husband. This ‘do unto others’ belief is shared but, of course, it is also a veiled introduction to future events.
The tale is told in their present time with illuminating back stories and flashes of WWII fighting elsewhere. It is easy to follow considering there were reportedly one thousand men held prisoner at Gawell (aka Cowra). Despite the best efforts of officers trying to observe the Geneva Convention, there’s a POW riot, staged by men in Compound C wishing to die, which leads to the actual breakout and massacre and gruesome bloodletting in ways too numerous to mention here. Amid the carnage, there are pleasant chapters representing fictitious normality.
Not many women stand out in my mind apart from Emily and not-so-innocent Alice. There’s Major Suttor with his script-writing hobby and bitter awareness that captors are prisoners too, and my favourite Colonel Ewan Abercare with his simmering yet ill-fated love life. Both men are probably quite typical of army gents of the day. I had a grudging respect for steely natured Tengan, the fallen Japanese naval aviator. There’s a father-son bonding scene by locals Beefy and Martin Cullen on a rifle shoot which I chose to read as satire to maintain a small shred of sanity.
A short narrative at the end entitled The Fallout nicely rounds off this book allowing the reader a small tingle of pleasure to see who survived. The book cover appears plain but does convey the essence of the storyline. Keneally touches on religions, cultural differences and an extinct marsupial tiger. He gives restrained landscape descriptions just enough melancholy, he defines illicit relationships with jousting and riposte and inserts quick splashes of Australian outback humour. Also there’s enough deaths to satisfy the gloomiest of readers. However, sadness is not an emotion I’d attached to this story, shock perhaps. And this may be part of the author’s intention, a case of hoping we’ll come to grips with our own infamous history and never repeat it.
Quite an insight for Australian readers but possibly an eye-opening revelation to overseas readers.
"Every story has three sides to it - yours, mine and the facts" Foster Meharny Russell
