In 1942, RAF flight controller Robert Wyse turned a eastern prisoner of battle at the island of Java in Indonesia. Starved, in poor health, overwhelmed, and labored to near-death, he wasted away until eventually he weighed merely seventy kilos, his lifestyles striking in tenuous stability. there have been strict orders opposed to POWs protecting diaries, yet Wyse penned his observations at the scarce bits of paper he may possibly locate, suffering to explain the brutalities he witnessed. After cleverly hiding his notes in a section of bamboo subsequent to his mattress, in December of 1943, he rigorously concealed his notes within a bottle underneath his felony hut. After the struggle, he wrote to the Dutch gurus, asking them to dig up his diary and go back it to him. during this precise and frank portrayal of lifestyles below jap profession, Wyse finds the either the simplest and the worst of human nature. He criticized his fellow infantrymen for botching the defence of Java and Sumatra and admonished his captors for his or her brutality. but, Wyse additionally describes the selfless efforts of the Dutch civilians who helped the prisoners by means of selflessly doing no matter what they can in addition to his first-hand observations of acts of self-sacrifice one of the prisoners themselves.