Forgotten Highlander

The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific by Alistair Urquhart , Skyhorse, 2011.

Scotland

The author begins with his innocent childhood in Scotland. He was a soldier in Singapore when the Japanese took the city.

Singapore

When the Japanese took the city in 1942, they killed 50 thousand Chinese civilians in what is called the Sook Ching massacre. 

Burma-Siam Railroad

Besides performing slave labor building the Burma-Siam Railroad, the prisoners also suffered many ailments: scabies, lice, beriberi, dysentary, malaria, blindness, kidney stones, and tropical skin ulcers. The prisoners were treated badly by the Japanese military police, called the Kempetai.

Death Ships

In the last stage of World War II, the Japanese Army was retreating from the territories it had conquered, and put their prisoners into death ships. The author’s death ship was called Kachidoki Maru.