Book Review - Between Victor and Vanquished – ATIS Interrogators in the Pacific War
Between Victor and Vanquished – ATIS Interrogators in the Pacific War
Written by: Arthur Page,
Australian Military History Publications, Loftus, 2008,
ISBN: 9780980475319, 525 pp.
Reviewed by: Colonel Terry McCullagh
Between Victor and Vanquished is Arthur Page’s own story of his remarkable wartime career. Arthur arrived in Australia at the age of 19, a refugee from a Japan gone mad with nationalistic fervour and rabid militarism. Arthur’s parents had escaped to Japan in 1920 from Russia, so this was the second country they had seen dissolve into chaos. On being accepted by Australia as a refugee, Arthur and his father tried to join the AIF but were refused because they were not British subjects. Following Pearl Harbor, they found themselves conscripted into the AMF and eventually someone discovered that they both spoke Japanese fluently and could play a useful part in Australia’s furious battle with the Japanese. Both Arthur and his father joined the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, GHQ, SWPA, based at that time in Indooroopilly, Brisbane. Arthur was attached to US I Corps for the final campaigns in north-west New Guinea—Hollandia, Aitape, Biak and Morotai, among others.
From New Guinea, US I Corps joined the assault on the Philippines, and Arthur took part in the amphibious landings at Lingayen Gulf and the tortuous push against the Japanese forces on Luzon Island. He was summarily withdrawn with the parting of the ways as US forces continued the push towards Manila and on to the Japanese homeland, while the Australians headed towards the Japanese strongholds in the former Dutch East Indies, including Borneo. Arthur was attached to Advanced Land Headquarters on Morotai Island in the last few months of the war and played a pivotal part in the surrender of Japanese forces in southern Borneo. He played a crucial (and largely unsung) role in the surrender ceremony at the city of Bandjermasin (southern Borneo) where a stalemate between an Australian commander and a Japanese general threatened to turn to bloodshed. Arthur’s final days in the AMF were spent in the traumatic ordeal of investigating war crimes committed by the Japanese. This was a particularly distressing time as Arthur had grown up among the Japanese and knew and loved Japan, her culture and people.
The book is also the tale of the development of the combat linguist who became the eyes and ears of the front-line commander in his bid to win the intelligence war. Arthur describes the characteristics of the Japanese soldier and why he became such a fearsome foe. He details the methods of collecting enemy documents, cleaning them, restoring them and then carefully translating them, often in the mud and mire of combat conditions. He describes the art of interrogating different Japanese prisoners of war and unravels the mysteries often associated with the Japanese concepts of the kamikaze, ritual suicide and the banzai charge. This is a book that explains a great deal about the Second World War Japanese adversary in clear, layman’s terms.
This book makes a significant contribution to the history of Australian combat linguists, is superbly readable, and comes thoroughly recommended.
