AustLit

'This landmark and compelling book follows the stories of 15,000 Australian prisoners of war from the moment they were released by the Japanese at the end of World War II. Their struggle to rehabilitate themselves and to win compensation and acknowledgement from their own country was just beginning. This moving book shows that the battle within was both a personal and a national one.

'Prize-winning historian Christina Twomey finds that official policies and attitudes towards these men were equivocal and arbitrary for almost forty years. The image of a defeated and emaciated soldier held prisoner by people of a different race did not sit well with the mythology of Anzac. Drawing on the records of the Prisoner of War Trust Fund for the first time, this book presents the struggles of returned prisoners in their own words. It also shows that memories of captivity forged new connections with people of the Asia-Pacific region, as former POWs sought to reconcile with their captors and honour those who had helped them. A grateful nation ultimately lauded and commemorated POWs as worthy veterans from the 1980s, but the real story of the fight to get there has not been told until now.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This article analyses the controversy that greeted the release of Paradise Road, Bruce Beresford's 1997 film about civilian women interned by the Japanese in World War Two. It centres on three issues that dominated critical reception of the film: its handling of the issues of sexual threat and physical violence to woman in captivity: the representation of Japanese camp guards; and debate about the film's claims to accuracy. These issues are intrinsically linked to broader understandings about gender, race and historical truth.

The article examines how race overtook gender in political debate as the fulcrum of the film's cultural comment on war. It suggests that this trend was particularly acute in Australia, where a discussion of race ultimately elided the film's gendered aspects and merged into a consideration of the film's historical truthfulness. This process reveals the strength of perceptions among movie-goers and many reviewers that cinematic history can reveal the truth about the past, and the need for historians to engage more fully in public debate about film and history.' (Christina Twomey).