Edward 'Weary' Dunlop

I couldn’t have hated anything, obviously, more than I did the Japanese, that really, you know, despite the fact that I’d even had my life saved on one or two occasions by I ntervention of Japanese, you know, the total hate was there. It was a curtain of hate that – you see so many people die in such misery … the hate is intensive. But towards the end of the war, I began to see something of their point of view and, you know, seeing the wretched, miserable remnant of the Japanese army coming out of Burma, across this railway line and rough tracks, they were in terrible condition. Looked very much like our own fellows, you see. And there came the occasion in which I was confronted with a Japanese who’d hopped God knows how many hundreds of dreadful miles with one leg chopped off through the middle of the thigh, the bone was sticking out and sort of stinking gangrenous flesh. And still sort of hopping with these ghastly, shrunken sort of eyes and in terrible shape. And when the train started, he tried to get up and people walked on him and, you know, there were bombs falling in this area. And I tried to help him. Found myself with a dead man and, the hate drained out and I – I enjoy going to Japan these days and I admire many things in Japan.