Shame and the Captives

Only one way out

Shame and the Captives: A Novel by Thomas Keneally (AtriaBooks, $26).

The newest novel from Schindler’s List author Thomas Keneally is also set during WWII and based on a true event, but there the similarity ends. Shame and the Captives is a fictionalized version of the the breakout from a prisoner-of-war camp in New South Wales by a group of Japanese prisoners of war.

Keneally sets the story in a the fictional village of Gawell, where the breakout is misread by the local populace—already terrorized by the proximity of the advancing Japanese Army—as an act of war. He draws a clear picture of just exactly how threatened Australia and New Zealand were, and what that meant psychologically for the population. Meanwhile, show more in a tragic case of cultural mis-communication, the Japanese POWS interpret their humane treatment by their Australian captors as proof positive of the captors’ inferiority, making their captivity unbearable.

The ensuing conflict–on occasion misunderstanding, but also warfare–provides insights from both sides of the barbed wire in fully-realized characters as Keneally leads readers to understand the true motivations for the escape. In his 30th novel, Keneally turns once again to the disaster of WWII, and the result is fascinating.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

As you would expect from Tom Keneally some parts of this novel are hard to take. I needed to take a few breaks to regain my composure. The characters are frustratingly human refusing to fit the hero, villain moulds and the action is graphic and suspenseful, leaving the reader with much to contemplate not the least being your own fears and prejudices’. Definitely worth a read!

This is a fictional story set around a true event. A prison break in NSW, Australia in 1944 where as the blurb puts it: "more than one thousand Japanese prisoners of war staged the largest and most violent prison escape of World War II." The author was 9 years old at the time and states it was terrifying. So we know at the outset how this is going to end up.

There is a very long buildup to the prison break. The opening chapter set in Japan in 1946 intrigues the reader with a brief story of Aoki returning home, but then we go to Australia in 1943-1944 to learn some history. This historical drama has some odd romance in it but the story takes a while to build. I found it a rather tedious portrayal of a handful of Australians and Brits as show more well as a few of the prisoners and prison guards (the prisoners were more interesting, little that we got about them). I never felt like I would stop reading this, but I was underwhelmed and can't find a reason to praise it. Keneally seems to enjoy painting women as man hungry.

Some readers find a real insight into understanding Japanese soldiers' martial and moral code in World War II, something that I for one have always had a hard time understanding - banzai death charges, never surrender, disembowel yourself, kamikazes. This does give a person some insight in how it might be inside the soldiers' heads. The captured soldiers live in shame for not having died in battle. They want an honorable death. show less

This book is a fictionalised and relocated account of the Cowra Breakout of 1944 where Japanese prisoners of war staged an escape from their internment camp (In rural Australia) and many lives were lost. An interesting story but a bit meandering with some pointless side stories. Not one of Keneally's best.

On August 5, 1944 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war attempted to escape from a prison camp in New South Wales, Australia. This is a fictional story based on this event.

[a:Tom Keneally|7026009|Tom Keneally|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1540345609p2/7026009.jpg] sets the scene outside the prison: the surrounding farms and their occupants. Among those on the farms is a young woman, Alice, living with her father-in-law. Barely married, her husband was sent off to war and is now himself a prisoner in a German Camp. An Italian prisoner is sent to the farm as a laborer and the relationship that develops between Giancarlo, Alice and her father-in-law Duncan is a quiet study in what war can do to those left at home. I will readily admit, I show more was quite bored with their story in the beginning. Silently cursing that I had picked another DNF. However, his writing is so engrossing,( I can't say beautiful-this is not a beautiful story)-he slowly pulled me in and totally won me over.

The prison, the camp the soldiers and guards, all come into play slowly and methodically. The men left to facilitate at these training camps and prisons were, of course, the men who could not fight due to age or illness or injury. They have no clear understanding of who they hold and why they all want to die. The Japanese solider was taught to be captured is to be shamed. They believed that their burial rites, already carried out by their families, were not reversible. Dying was not just an option, it was their duty.

This is a raw, brutal story that some may find offensive. I do think that fans of Literary Fiction would gobble this one up. I found it by pure luck, just searching my library's catalog for a book based in Australia. It gave me a clear, unblemished picture of Australia during War II-something I never even thought about. So many books on WWII are based in Central Europe, and we forget it was a World War. This book brings that home in spades. show less

I was eager to read Shame and the Captives, not only because I haven't read anything by Keneally since highschool, which seemed remiss of me given his status in Australian literature, but primarly because I was particularly intrigued by the premise.

It was only a few months ago I learned (thanks to Hannah and Emil) that during World War 2 Australia interred thousands of residents of 'enemy blood' . For some reason, I didn't consider that Australia would also have hosted Prisoners of War, largely I suppose because of the relative distances between the main fighting fronts and our country, excepting the attempted Japanese incursions in the north.

The story of Shame and The Captives closely follows the events of the Cowra Breakout in 1944. show more Camp B of No. 12 Prisoner of War Compound (Cowra) was the scene of a bloody skirmish when many of the 1,104 Japanese prisoners of war tuned on their captors and attempted to escape. While Keneally clearly states in a foreword titled "Where the Tale Comes From" that the Shame and The Captives is, "a parallel account, or a tale provoked by the events that unfolded in Cowra" and further that his characters "are not designed to reflect any virtues, sins, follies, fevers and acts of courage evident in any of the real actors in the Cowra outbreak", this novel is a blend of fact and fiction.

Keneally's representation of the events and the people involved may be fictional but it seems an entirely plausible account, with the histories, personalities and motives the author ascribes to the characters seemingly authentic in light of what we know of history. Delving not only into the lives of the men in the camp, the Japanese prisoners like Tengan and Aoki, the camp commander, Colonel Abercare and his subordinate Suttor, Shame and the Captives extends beyond the camps boundaries into the community, represented primarily by Alice and her father-in-law Duncan.

Exploring the themes of shame, honour, belief, loyalty, cultural disparity, compassion and respect, Keneally provides context for the Cowra Breakout and Australian society in the period of war.

One of the interesting ideas Keneally explores is Australia's trust that if they treated their prisoners with care (according to the Geneva Convention), their soldiers in the custody of enemy nations would be treated with equal fairness. Suttor and Alice, whose respective son and husband are POW's, cling to this ideal. Unfortunately the Japanese mostly despised the Australians for their compassion, since their honour code insisted that death was preferable to imprisonment. The Breakout then, was essentially a mass suicide attempt, a means for the Japanese to die with the honour their beliefs demanded of them.

While I was utterly fascinated by the story of the Shame and The Captives, unfortunately I found the writing, with very little dialogue, often dry and dispassionate. I was in some ways reminded of a school history lesson worksheet where an attempt is made to enliven the learning of facts by couching them in a story. Had I not been so intrigued by this period of history, Keneally's prose may have resulted me in abandoning it.

Nevertheless, I consider Shame and the Captives to be a compelling and thought provoking novel, one I particularly would recommend to Australians interested in our country's history. show less

I chose this as one of my Anzac reads. The topic is one I previously knew nothing about. The title is very apt referring as it does to the prisoner-of-war camp in Cowra, Sydney, during the Second World War. Although, for the purposes of this book it is a fictional town of Gawell. In the author's introduction she makes it quite clear though that the personal lives of some of the characters is purely fictional.
In the story the camp is home to POW's from Italy, Japan, Korea and Indonesia. The Italians, in particular, are happy enough to be there and many are soon released to work and live on neighbouring farms. However, for the Japanese, it is a matter of shame, as in their culture there is more honour in being killed than being captured show more alive. The conditions in the camp are relatively comfortable and they are encouraged to partake in recreational activities. It is with reluctance that most eventually agree but some remain faithful to their stance on non-compliance. When it is decided that, the officers are to be moved to another camp, as many of them are perpetuating this belief, they decide as a group to pit themselves on mass against their captors.
The resulting carnage is part of history, but the motive for this action was for the Australians to be forced to kill the Japanese and enabling them to experience an honourable death.
I found this story a little slow to get into as it moves around several narrators, the main characters in the story. One of these is the wife of an Australian soldier in captivity in Europe who waits with her father-in-law for his return. It is to their farm that one of the Italian POW's is sent and an affair ensues.
Overall though this was an enjoyable and informative read. show less