Ebooks and Print on Demand

Clarke, Hugh V.: The Tub: A story of Australian POWS on the Burma Thailand Railway and at Nagasaki. The Tub follows the story of four Australian soldiers who fought in Malaya with the 8th Division AIF and were taken prisoner at the fall of Singapore. Written as a novel, it is based on the true story of Hugh Clarke and his gunner mates in the Queensland-based 2/10th Field Regiment. Sent by the Japanese to work on the Burma Thailand Railway, they were in the first group to start digging the infamous cutting at Hellfire Pass on Anzac Day 1943. The following year they were sent to Japan narrowly escaping being torpedoed during the six-month voyage. In Japan they worked in the shipyards at Nagasaki and a coal mine at Nakama. The book is dedicated to missing gunners of the 2/10th Field Regiment. The Tub was first published in 1963 by Jacaranda Press Brisbane and later in many editions by Corgi. It is now available from Amazon as an ebook ($4.99) and in print ($11.99).  

The Broke and the Broken
"Life in the Great Depression".

This book recreates a period in our history between two catastrophic wars as it follows the struggles of one family to emerge from the almost universal poverty which blanketed Australia during the dark days of the Depression. The story moves through Mulgowie, Gatton, Haden to Toowoomba before reaching Brisbane in the Depths of the economic crisis of 1930.

No other Australian city suffered as much from the impact of World War II as did Brisbane. By the time the war ended the distinctive way of life, portrayed in this book, was gone forever leaving only memories of the Depression days and nostalgia for the many blessings enjoyed by the people of the north.

The Tub
A Story of Australian POWs on the Burma-Thailand Railway.

REVIEWS:
'It is a POW story that deserves to go around the world. It is so distinctively Australian and generally free of hate. The whole concept and significance of the tub is astonishingly original and enlivening.'
David Rowbotham, Brisbane Curier Mail

'Though the agony on the Burma railway the galvanised tub seemed the only permanent idestructible thing'
Pat Burgess, Sudney Sun

'The tub is a symbol of the prisoners' endurance and ingenuity.'
Gavid Long, Canberra Times

'A well written and entertaining story'
Peter Blake, Bulletin

'A uncommon symbol of faith and survival' through and 'ordeal which one in three POWs did not survive.'
L Peet, West Australian

Last Stop Nagasaki

This is the remarkable story of Australian prisoners of war who survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. There were 24 Australian POWs in a camp less than 2 kilometres from the epicentre of the blast, and 2 other Australians were imprisoned in a camp 8 kilometres away. How they came to be there, endured their imprisonment, and survived a nuclear attack, is the inspiring story told in this book.

When the Balloon Went Up: Short Stories from a War [Kindle Edition]

This collection of linked short stories movingly recounts the experiences of young Australian soldiers in action against the Japanese in Malaya and as prisoners of war in Changi, on the Burma-Thailand death railway and at Nagasaki.

Written by Hugh V. Clarke, renowned author of the experiences of POWs, the stories begin ‘when the balloon went up’, the wartime expression for when action started.
In Malaya it began with the sinking of the pride of the British Far Eastern fleet, the battleships Prince of Wales and the Repulse.

Hugh Clarke vividly presents a series of incidents which illuminate the Australian character and behaviour in adversity.’ Lex McAulay

Break-Out! - The Japanese POW Break-Out at Cowra, 1944 [Kindle Edition]

In the early hours of the moonlit morning of 5 August 1944, the greatest mass escape of prisoners of war in British military history took place in the small Australian country town of Cowra in New South Wales.

The attempt was hopeless from the beginning and ended with 231 prisoners dead in the morning sunlight and the remainder soon rounded up from the open rolling farmlands surrounding Cowra. For security reasons little was revealed of this unique and tragic episode until the first publication of this book in 1965.

Hugh V. Clarke, a prisoner of war himself to the Japanese in Burma, Malay and Japan, managed to forge a relationship with a Japanese prisoner of war to the Australians in the Celebes. That relationship enabled the telling of this story from both the Australian and Japanese perspectives.

To Sydney by Stealth - Midget Subs Attack Sydney, 1942 [Kindle Edition]

The Japanese midget submarine raid on Sydney Harbour on the night of 31 May 1942 provoked real fear of enemy invasion of Australia — particularly following the bombing of Darwin a few months earlier. These were the headlines:

"May 31, 1942, Operation Midget Commenced"
"Kuttabul Sunk in Sydney Harbour — 19 killed"
"Harbour in Uproar of Depth Charges"
"Sydney under Shell-fire"
"Local Ship Torpedoed Off Coast"

This book presents the graphic story behind the submarine attack on Sydney from both Australian and Japanese viewpoints. Twenty years after the end of World War II, I returned to Japan and met Takeo Yamashita at an official Australian reception in Osaka. I was a former prisoner of war of the Japanese in Singapore, Thailand and Japan and Takeo Yamashita was a former prisoner of war of the Australians in the Celebes. We talked and found we had a mutual agreement on the stupidity of war and a common desire for future friendship between Australia and Japan. Out of that discussion the idea of this book was born.

Hugh V. Clark is the esteemed author of The Tub: An story of Australian POWs on the Burma-Thailand Railway; The Broke and the Broken - Life in the Great Depression and Break-Out! Japanese POW breakout at Cowra in 1944.