tortured war hero and his Japanese tormentor and the redeeming power of forgiveness

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Beaten to a pile of broken bones, caged, starved and tortured, Eric Lomax was convinced he would never see Britain ever again.
He had already experienced the lottery of death among the chain gangs on the Burma-Siam Railway. Now things were much  worse. Accused of being a spy, he had been left to the mercies of the Japanese army’s secret police.
Among their specialities was what is known today as ‘waterboarding’, when a prisoner suffers near-drowning conditions. It was surely only a matter of time before he would be put out of his misery.

 Ordeal: Eric Lomax was put to work building a railway by his Japanese captors during the Second World War, before he was accused of being a spy and interrogated by Nagase Takashi

As his interrogator had explained to him on arrival at the prison camp in 1943: ‘Lomax, you will be killed shortly whatever happens. But it will be to your advantage in the time remaining to tell the whole truth. You know now how we can deal with people when we wish to be unpleasant.’
Eric Lomax survived an unspeakable ordeal and when he was later transferred to Singapore’s notorious Changi prison, he described it as ‘heaven’.

After the war, like so many who had survived the atrocities of Japanese captivity, he could hardly discuss his experiences with anyone. He bottled it all up, although he found that tiny things –particularly inaccurate bills or bureaucratic requests for personal information – could almost paralyse him with fury.

Through it all, he retained a loathing for the Japanese, particularly the infernal and haunting words of his interrogator with the words: ‘Lomax, you will tell us . . .’

Yet nearly 50 years on, Eric Lomax did something extraordinary. He not only tracked down the man – he met him, befriended him and forgave him. And in 1995, published a powerful account of his experiences.

Reconciliation: In 2007, Eric Lomax also met Osamu Komai, the son of Captain Mitsuo Komai, who was put to death for his part in the torture of British soldiers

After unimaginable torture and the threat of execution, Lomax described Singapore's Changi jail as 'heavenly'. Pictured are allied prisoners celebrating their liberation from Changi in 1945

Called The Railway Man, it became a fast bestseller and won a cluster of literary awards. So remarkable is the memoir it will come to the big screen – with Mr Lomax played by Oscar winner Colin Firth, with Nicole Kidman as his wife.
Sadly, Mr Lomax will not see the film. In the early hours of Monday morning, he died at his home in Berwick-on-Tweed at the age of 93. He leaves a widow and daughter.
He leaves an enduring story of the healing power of forgiveness that will be retold long after we are all gone.
Born in 1919, Eric Lomax was the bright, only child of a Scottish Post Office manager and sent to the Royal High School, Edinburgh.
In 1941, he was posted to Malaya as a young Royal Signals officer. Within weeks, his unit was in headlong retreat to Singapore, where he was taken prisoner in February 1942. He was transported 1,200 miles to start work on the notorious 300-mile ‘death railway’ that the Japanese were constructing in modern-day Thailand and up through the almost impenetrable Burmese jungle towards their cherished military target of India.

For the young Lomax, it was a bitter irony. As a boy, he had been infatuated with railways and engines. As he recalled later: ‘I could not believe I had become a prisoner only to be sent to work on a road for the machines that had given me such pleasure when I was free.’

 Powerful: In his book 'The Railway Man' Lomax recorded his experiences working on the Burma railway, similar to those portrayed by Alec Guiness (right) in the film Bridge on the River Kwai

With several brother officers, he worked with a team of Japanese railway fitters in Kanchanaburi. It was, he reflected, a relatively civilised berth compared to what others were enduring elsewhere. ‘We were surviving, but that was not enough,’ he wrote. ‘We were rebellious and eager to know what was happening in the war.’ They started taking risks.
Lomax was part of a small group of prisoners who built a radio, bartering stolen tools for parts with local traders. They would tune in to Allied news bulletins from India, and spread word of Allied progress.
At the same time, Lomax was creating a map in the naive hope it might one day be part of an escape plan.
One day in August 1943, disaster struck. The Japanese discovered the radio and Lomax and four others were subjected to such sustained pulverising with pick-axe handles that two of them died.

‘I went down with a blow that shook every bone and which released a sensation of scorching liquid pain that seared through my entire body,’ he wrote.

Big screen: Eric and Patti Lomax will be played by Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman in a film adaptation of The Railway Man

 

A prison doctor examined his body later and found not a single patch of white skin on his body between his shoulders to  knees. He was inflamed and bruised. Worse was to follow days later when he was handed over to the local Kempeitai, or military police. There, he was locked in a 5ft cage that soon became full of red ants, mosquitoes and his own filth.

Periodically, he would be hauled out to face a double act — a shaven-headed NCO, ‘his face full of violence’,and a smaller, ‘almost delicate’ man who spoke English.
The former would do the torturing while the latter did the talking. ‘I hated the interpreter more than the NCO because it was his voice that gave me no rest.’
At the outset, he accused Lomax of ‘anti-Japanese activities’ and issued the news that he would be ‘killed shortly’.

Lomax recalled it as ‘a flat neutral piece of information … I had just been sentenced to death by a man my own age who seemed completely indifferent to my fate. I had no reason to doubt him.’
By now, the Japanese had found Lomax’s secret map and were determined to know why he had it. ‘Lomax’, the little man said again and again, ‘you will tell us.’
Unsurprisingly, his explanation that he had been a train buff and was simply mapping the railway for pleasure failed to convince them.

'Some time the hating has to stop': Eric Lomax met and forgave his torturer

Instead, they tried to force him to confess to espionage with a series of beatings and half-drownings that went on without end it seemed. At times, Lomax ended up crying out for his mother, unaware that she had died soon after his capture (friends put her death down to a broken heart).
‘No one was ever able to tell me how long all this lasted,’ wrote Lomax. He finally came round in his cage. Soon afterwards, he was sent to Bangkok for a Japanese court martial.
To his amazement, he was not executed, but sentenced to five years of close confinement. His response, he says, was one of ‘joy’. The rest of the war would still be spent in brutal conditions, but he would survive it.

'I had proved for myself that remembering is not enough if it simply hardens hate'

And for several decades, he would get on with life, working in personnel and academia as a lecturer.
He went through the pain of losing a baby son, and a grown daughter to a brain illness.
His first marriage broke down and, in 1983, he married Patti, 17 years his junior, whom he met on a train to Scotland.
Mr Lomax had never had time for do-gooders preaching the merits of forgiveness but, with Patti’s encouragement, he finally sought help from a foundation for torture victims and began to address his past.
An old comrade sent a cutting from an English language paper in Japan. It was about a repentant Japanese soldier who was suffering painful flashbacks and ‘making up’ for his country’s treatment of prisoners of war.
Mr Lomax recognised with astonishment that this was his former interrogator.
For years, he kept tabs on his tormentor –one Nagase Takashi – and  read his memoirs but it was Patti who finally wrote to Takashi suggesting a meeting.

A long way from home: Actor Jeremy Irvine plays Eric Lomaz in the wartime scenes

Tribute: Colin Firth filming a wedding scene in the adaptation of Eric Lomax's life story

And so in 1993, both men were finally reunited on that fabled bridge across the river Kwai. Takashi bowed and, nervously, began a lengthy apology. 'I am very, very sorry,' he told Mr Lomax. 'I never forgot you. We treated your countrymen very, very badly.'
'We both survived,' Mr Lomax replied. And then the two men talked long and hard over the events of 1943.
It was a therapeutic process for both. Later on, Mr Lomax accepted an invitation to visit Takashi in Japan, where he finally, formally forgave him –reading out a letter saying as much. ‘I had proved for myself that remembering is not enough if it simply hardens hate,’ wrote the proud Scot.
And Takashi’s own verdict? 'I think I can die safely now.'
After all he went through in life, perhaps there could be no better epitaph for Mr Lomax than the last line he wrote in his book: 'Some time the hating has to stop.'

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