At the Emperors Pleasure follows the young couple Christopher and Topsy Man through the savage battle for Hong Kong and the years of enforced separation, she interned in Stanley Camp, Hong Kong, he as a prisoner of war and forced labourer in Kobe, Japan. The book is not about Christopher and Topsy Man alone but also of friends and colleagues close to them forced to endure the cruel torture and execution by the Kempeitai. Amongst those close to them some of Topsys friends and colleagues were raped and murdered, one was imprisoned within shouting distance of her husband being tortured then executed by the Kempeitai, while another died when their camp was mistakenly bombed by the Allies. Topsy was herself the reluctant witness to ritual executions. Christopher lost brother officers and many of the Cockney soldiers under his command in the battle for Hong Kong. Others drowned in the East China Sea, victims of a barbaric but littleknown mass war crime, the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Still others survived the sinking only to succumb to the harsh regime of the POW camp in Japan. Perhaps most tragic of all, four of Christophers men came through the battle, the Lisbon Maru sinking and cruel imprisonment only to die when the aircraft carrying them to freedom crashed into the sea during a typhoon. Like many of their generation who suffered at the hands of the Japanese during the second world war, Christopher and Topsy Man rarely spoke of their experience, and when they did, they...

Binding: Hardback;282 pages; Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Ltd; Classification: HBW; Weight: 648 g; Dimensions: 164 x 241 x 30

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