TENKO. By Anthony Masters (TV Tie-In Paperback) VINTAGE 1981

 TENKO by Anthony Masters - From the TV series.

Stripped of everything save the will to survive: women's heroism and degradation in a Japanese prison camp.

It started with the fall of Singapore.....

It was 1942. The might of the british Empire was conquered by Japanese Imperial forces in the Malayamn Archipelago - the British Army crumbled within weeks.

The peaceful days of colonial rule were over. In the wake of this bitter defeat trailed a vast regiment of women, the wives and daughters of the Empire. Seperated from their men, with no hope of military rescue, they were doomed to spend three and half years in jungle prison camps run by the Japs.

TENKO is the rich and moving story of what life was like for a group of these women. Women such as Rose Millar, charismatic and spoilt - she'd never done a day's work in her life; of marion Jefferson, a colonel's wife who found the ledership thrust upon her an unwelcome burden; Blanche, the cheerfgul Cockney who wasn't above gallivanting with the guards; Dorothy, a young wife and mother whose whole nature was altered by the tragedies she suffered....

Over them all were the sadistic Lieutenant Sato and the camp Commandasnt Yamauchi whose attitude baffled them all.

TENKO: A NOVEL OF SURVIVAL AGAINST ALL ODDS.#

A VINTAGE 1981 paperback published by BBC Books