Long Night's Journey into Day: Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941-1945 (review)

Charles G. Roland. Long Night’s Journey into Day: Prisoners of War in Hong Kong and Japan, 1941–1945. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001. xxviii, 421 pp., illus. $28.95 (paper).

Long Night’s Journey into Day presents a picture window into the treatment of Western prisoners of war (POWs) by the Imperial Japanese Army. In particular, it focuses on the fate of the Canadians who had participated in the ill-fated defense of Hong Kong. Based on extensive archival research as well as interviews with Canadian veterans, Roland’s book is a well-written investigation into the prison camp fates of British Commonwealth troops and members of the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force who survived defeat only to face three and a half years as prisoners of war. Almost inevitably, they became defenseless patient-prisoners at the mercy of their captors’ whims, tempers, and negligent policies and practices.

Undisturbed by judgmental temptations, Roland delineates with care the history behind the debacle, the almost insurmountable obstacles faced by POW physicians, surgeons, nurses, and orderlies, the twin scourges of starvation and disease, and eventually the virtual enslavement of both able-bodied as well as sick and weakened men as conscripted workers forced to toil under the worst conditions imaginable. Steering as objective a course as possible, the author presents the history behind such policies, ranging from Japan’s refusal to ratify the Geneva Convention of 1929 dealing with the treatment of prisoners of war to the prevalence of harsh military cultural traditions. Most notable among those were the tenets of Bushido, which made the act of surrender an unimaginable act of cowardice, and an insult to one’s family, emperor, and fatherland. In consequence, Japanese conscripts were themselves indoctrinated harshly, and the brutal treatment of enemy civilians and POWs was justified as simply a regrettable part of war, an unfortunate consequence especially if occurring in the heat of battle.

Gazing out on both sides of the prison camp fence, Roland introduces the culprits and villains as well as the heroes and heroines from the hated Dr. Saito, commandant of camps in Hong Kong, to the traitorous interpreter Kanao Inouye, to the controversial, enigmatic Major Cecil Boon, to the beloved entertainer Sonny Gomes and the heroic Dr. Bowie and Helen Ho. In addition, the author projects the courage of the POW/patient and the stamina and dedication of the medical and nursing providers, volunteers trained or untrained. One comes to marvel that human beings could ever benefit from the meager medical defenses mounted against everything from diphtheria and malaria to beriberi and pellagra to simple starvation and major physical trauma. Unfortunately, statistics tell the final story: in the West, roughly nine out of ten Allied POWs survived; in the East, only three out of four POWs lived to return home. Of these, many remained patients for the remainder of their lives.

Theoretically, one might wish that Roland had given greater attention to two rather basic questions. First, did the traditional style of British military discipline as contrasted with the more casual American style produce better morale, greater survival, and decreased morbidity; and second, how did the cultural rationalizations play out in the later trials of accused Japanese war criminals, in the sentences they received, and in the manner in which the sentences were administered over time? In fairness to the author, these issues appear beyond the scope of his basic mission to detail the treatment of the captured.

What Roland has accomplished in Long Night’s Journey into Day is a thoroughly researched and eminently readable account of a most dismal chapter in military and medical history. His book is an excellent model of historical research and is based on prodigious research. His sources included more than 300 archives, 70...