More than 40 years ago Sir Edward Dunlop, then a Lieutenant-Colonel, began these diaries at the start of his imprisonment by the Japanese in Java and on the Burma-Thailand railway. His meticulous observations of prison camp life were concealed all through the war, and by the time peace came in 1945, he carried with him a unique record of the lives of prisoners-of-war. As a commanding officer and a surgeon, "Weary" became a hero and a legend to thousands of Australian and Allied prisoners, whose lives were saved with meagre medical supplies and the instruments the medical officers carried on their backs through Java and the Thai jungles. Sir Edward describes how the camps were organized, he records deaths, cholera epidemics, operations, and torture, his own - rare - despair, the movement of prisoners up and down the line, and his constant struggle to protect the sick from being drafted into Japanese work parties.