(EDITORIAL) Harrowing stories are occasionally given out by Sir James Grigg about the treatment of prisoners in Japanese hands. Not less than 60,000 “White prisoners” are being employed on the railway and road system of Japan’s newly acquired Empire. …It is fashionable to describe the Japanese as barbarians but when we think of our own people in the grip of the Japanese anything that lends consolation is welcome as a contrast to the allegations of savage conduct. We quote the following passage from Sir James Grigg’s speech in the House of Commons:

“Many conditions which caused such heavy sick and death-rates in the jungle camps did not obtain in the rear camps to which the men were withdrawn. As a consequence, there was apparently a very marked fall in the death-rate….In the the rear camps around Banpong, their huts were weather-proof, cooking and sanitary arrangements were hygienic and there was some space and opportunity for exercise.”

This description is not on a par with atrocity propaganda, but all the same it carries a gleam of relief to the thousands of Indians for whom the loss of Burma and the neighbouring States has come as something of a personal bereavement. (Dawn, Delhi)

Published in Dawn, December 22th, 2014