In September 1943, eight British officers were tortured by their Japanese captors at the prisoner-of-war camp in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. The camp, and a nearby bridge over the Kwai River, were later the setting for director David Lean's multi-Oscar-winning 1957 film "The Bridge on the River Kwai," about the ordeals undergone by tens of thousands of POWs forced to build the Thai-Burma Railway.
One of those officers was Lt. Eric Lomax. Then 24, he was a Signal Corps engineer from Edinburgh who had been captured when Britain's "impregnable fortress" of Singapore fell to the Japanese in February 1942. He was eventually transported to Thailand, where he ended up at the camp in Kanchanaburi.
While at the camp, Lt. Lomax conspired with fellow prisoners to hide a radio. In addition, he drew a map that, if sent to Allied troops fighting the Japanese, could have provided valuable intelligence. The existence of the radio and the map was discovered by the dreaded Kempeitai (Military Police Corps) stationed at the camp.
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