SSAA member Arthur Page’s Between Victor and Vanquished book
Between Victor and Vanquished: An Australian Interrogator in the War Against Japan
written by Arthur Page
published by Australian Army History Unit
Dr Arthur Page has been a SSAA member for some 30 years. He has been a range officer and is somewhat of a standout in the Brisbane shooting community. At 85 years of age, he is one of the oldest shooters at his shooting club, but he is still a tremendous shot and participates weekly as an A-grade Trap shooter.
In his early days, however, Japanese-born Arthur fled the nationalistic madness of pre World War Two Japan in 1941, landing on Australian shores only to be conscripted at the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. A brilliant Japanese linguist, Arthur soon joined the Allied Translator and Interpreter Section, SWPA, as an interpreter and interrogator, using his language and intimate knowledge of the Japanese military to fight the intelligence war in the Pacific.
Detached to US forces in New Guinea, Arthur and his fellow Japanese linguists, both Australian and American Nisei, shared the frontline with Australian diggers and American GIs and through their crucial intelligence work, saved many Allied lives. With the US invasion of the Philippines, Arthur and his interrogators survived kamikaze attacks and raids by Japanese suicide squads, enduring the privations of jungle and swamp and the rugged and hostile terrain of the Philippines.
As the war drew to an end, Arthur interpreted at delicate surrender negotiations blighted by bitterness and hostility before finding himself confronted with the agonising evidence of war crimes. He struggled amid the hopelessness of reconciling the Japanese people he knew and loved with the brutal atrocities of the occupation.
Arthur Page’s book Between Victor and Vanquished: An Australian Interrogator in the War Against Japan tells a different wartime story. This is the story of a man who knew his enemy, who understood the uniquely Japanese concepts of ritual suicide, the kamikaze and ‘glorious’ death in battle. Above all, this was a man who knew that the Japanese could be beaten.
Between Victor and Vanquished costs $45 (postage is free in Australia) from The War Book Shop. To obtain your copy, contact The War Book Shop at 13 Veronica Place, Loftus, New South Wales 2232, phone 02 9542 6771 or email warbookshop@bigpond.com
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