King Rat

King Rat – by James Clavell

This is the fourth of six books “timewise” in James Clavell’s Asian Saga series, yet it was the first one that Clavell had written.  This book was written in 1962 and was based on Clavell’s personal experience as a Prisoner of War in Japan’s captivity during World War II.  If Clavell’s experience was anything like it was for his characters in this book (and I’m sure it was), it’s really no surprise that he would devote the rest of his life writing epic novels about the history and nature of his captors and their Asian neighbors.

There is a plot here, but this really isn’t a ‘plot’ book.  This is a book about atmosphere, emotions, and the frail psyche of the human being as they’re tormented by their hostile enemy during a time of war.  This is a book that made me queasy many times throughout the story. Clavell leaves nothing to the imagination, although an author in 1962 wasn’t allowed the luxury of describing certain things in meticulous, realistic detail. Had this book been written 50 years later, before censorship was as strict, I’m not sure I could survive reading about all the horrors in the detail that would have been included in a 21^st century novel.

This particular prison is located somewhere in the Japanese occupied area of Singapore during the last year of World War II. The location is remote enough to where the Japanese don’t need to worry about the thousands of allied captives escaping. There’s simply nowhere for them to run. In fact, we rarely encounter any Japanese characters at all. The allies are mostly left to themselves.  Sure, there are rules, but with these men so heavily emaciated with very little food and less medicine, why should the captors waste necessary resources and attention?  If the prisoners starve to death, so what? So the captives bond together as best they can, and like starving rabid animals, things aren’t always harmonious within the confines.  For the most part, the prisoners stick together in small groups and manage to hold each other up when the going gets especially rough.

The lead character is Corporal King. Of all the prisoners, King has the strongest survivor instincts. He’s able to wheel and deal under the radar, and actually is smart enough to rig his situation to where he lives in much more comfort than his fellow soldiers. The back cover on the copy of the book I read describes Corporal King as “hated above all men”.  I certainly didn’t come away with that sentiment.  Conniving? Sure. Unscrupulous? Definitely.  Intimidating?  Well, sure; if you’re the only one who can get your hands on a real egg or a cigarette. When thousands of people are living in a fetid squalor with no communication with the outside world, the general opinion of most in the camp seems to revere Corporal King as opposed to loathing him.

We meet a lot of prisoners, and they shuffle on and off the pages rather quickly. It can be difficult at times to remember who is who, yet the overall message is clear. This is a wretched inhumane place, and everyone must do what they can to survive.  Interestingly, author James Clavell takes a few diversions from the POW camp, and we meet a few of the prisoners’ wives back home.  Life for them is just as unbearable, only on a completely different level. We must remember that the Japanese were incredibly inhumane, and no postcards nor letters were allowed in our out. So the wives of the captors are left in a day-to-day purgatory of not knowing whether their husband is even still alive.  These diversions were welcomed by me, and I wished that Clavell would have spent more time on the loved ones back home. It really helped compound the atrocities that the allies encountered.

Well, since most know their history, I don’t think I’m giving away spoilers when I reveal that the war does eventually end.  But for the P.O.W.s, does it really?  Ask yourself this: If you were in such captivity after three years and the liberators finally showed up at the gates, would you jump for joy because you were finally being freed?  Or would your stripped, warped, psyche be so damaged that you would actually fear your rescuers and, instead, run back to your cockroach infested bed and crawl into a fetal position in terror?

As someone such as myself who reads a lot of history, I found this book to be a tremendous effort. It almost seems sacrilegious to say “I enjoyed it”. How can one really enjoy such bleakness?  Still, history is necessary, even when it’s nasty and unpleasant.  So I won’t say I enjoyed the book, but I was thoroughly educated by the story.  In fact, if I was a high-school administrator, this is the type of book that I think the youth of today should be reading.  Since the time and place of this novel isn’t too far in the past, I imagine it would be a much better education than The Iliad, The Odyssey, or anything written by William Shakespeare.  This is the type of book that makes you want to run out and hug a veteran; regardless of whether or not they were a prisoner of war or not.