Media: BOOK - paperback, 160 pages
Author: W. Bee
Year: 1998
ISBN: 0859052540
Other: b&w photos, appendix, bibliog, fold-out map
Publisher: Hesperian Press

An amazing story told by Bill Bee who was a signalman on the flag deck of HMAS Perth. He gives an eyewitness account of events leading up to the Java Sea Battle on 27th February 1942 and after their annihilation on 1st March 1942 in Sunda Straits. Then as a POW for 3 years, he takes the reader on a journey in which he vividly describes the anxieties and perils he and his mates experienced while travelling over vast distances of land and sea to satisfy their captors' forced labour requirements. This includes building the Burma-Thai Railway to coal mining in Japan. The appendix lists HMAS Perth's compliment and their fates. Includes a fold-out reference map of Prisoner of War and Internee Camps in the Middle East.