Burma Railway Artist: Artist at War in Singapore, Thailand and Burma, 1942-45

by JackChalker (Author), SirEdwardDunlop (Introduction)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $4.47

  The British artist Jack Chalker, a gunner in the Royal Artillery, was a Japanese prisoner of war for three and a half years in Singapore and in the Thai-Burma railway camps. From the beginning, he kept microscopic diary notes, sketches and paintings on scraps of paper and material, recording life and conditions in the labour camps. Discovery of such records would have meant death, and Chalker had to go to great lengths to hide his work in bamboo railings, furniture and even wooden legs. The renowned Australian surgeon, Weary Dunlop, who provides the introduction to this book, enlisted Chalker's help to record the medical cases in camp and after the surrender. This is the story and pictorial record of the people, places, landscapes and incidents which occurred while Jack Chalker was a prisoner of the Japanese. Amid the horror, misery and death, he always found beauty, and the illustrations include many drawings of local plants and flowers.