THE SECRET CAMERA

A Marine's Story: Four years as a WW11 POW

Terence S. Kirk.

On the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, the 203 Marines stationed in North China were in the peak of physical condition. They were young, brave men who were willing to die to defend their country. But on that day, they were forced to surrender to the Japanese and spent the rest of the war - all 1,355 days - as POW's. A Marine was 17.5 more times likely to die a Japanese prison camp than in battle.

THE SECRET CAMERA is the true story of how one North China Marine struggled for survival. From his capture on Pearl Harbour Day through the bombing of Nagasaki, Corporal Terence S. Kirk spent years as slave labour for the Japanese war machine. Watching himself and his fellow Marines wither from strapping young men to mere skeletons, ravaged by starvation, abuse, and disease, he decided to make a difference: to record the the atrocities they all endured. With the help of a Japanese interpreter and several other brave Marines, Kirk managed to build a pinhole camera from scraps of cardboard, take a handful of photos, and then hide them away until the end of the war. These rare images are among the few photos ever taken inside a Japanese POW camp. A record of courage, faith and ingenuity, his is a story of heroism, unimaginable adversity, and the will to survive.

His photos sat unpublished for nearly four decades, ignored by a US government that seemed indifferent to the atrocities the images documented. But Kirk would not let them languish, and this book is his legacy.

Book is in great condition, as new!

 

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