Charles Happell
Autor/a de The Bone Man of Kokoda - The Extraordinary Story of Kokichi Nishmura and the Kokoda Track
Obres de Charles Happell
The Bone Man of Kokoda - The Extraordinary Story of Kokichi Nishmura and the Kokoda Track (2008) 34 exemplars
ココダの約束 1 exemplars
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Nom normalitzat
- Happell, Charles
- Data de naixement
- 1962
- Gènere
- male
- Nacionalitat
- Australia
- Lloc de naixement
- Geelong, Victoria, Australia
- Llocs de residència
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Professions
- journalist
editor
publisher
biographer - Relacions
- Happell, Paula (wife)
Happell, Thomas (son)
Happell, Gretel (daughter) - Biografia breu
- Charles Happell was born in Geelong in 1962 and has been a journalist for 23 years.
After covering federal politics in the 1980s, he turned to sports writing and moved overseas, working in London and then for Reuters news agency in Milan. He joined The Age newspaper in 1993, and became the Sports Editor in 2002.
He lives in Melbourne with his wife Paula, and their children, Thomas and Gretel.
Membres
Ressenyes
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 2
- Membres
- 35
- Popularitat
- #405,584
- Valoració
- 3.6
- Ressenyes
- 2
- ISBN
- 6
This is a fabulous book. Its hero swam against the main current of history by living with extraordinary loyalty to his comrades in a lost cause. Having made a solemn promise in his early 20s, he dropped everything in his 60th year, not to go into comfortable retirement but to devote the next 26 years to keeping his promise. When his wife and sons objected, he gave them everything – the house, his thriving business, even his antique samurai sword – and set out on his mission, never to speak to them again. His daughter, who understood something of what drove him, remained in touch and now looks after him in his old age.
What drove Kokichi Nishimura was the horrendous experience of being part of the Japanese invasion of New Guinea, seeing all his comrades killed in the jungle, mainly on the Kokoda Trail, and returning as part of a defeated force, despised in some quarters for not having suicided according to the code of bushido, and suspect in others because of the well-publicised atrocities committed by the Japanese forces. What do you do with the rest of your life after that? How do you live when you have fought in the battle of Brigade Hill at the age of 22, in kill-or-be-killed hand-to-hand combat?
Some survivors committed ritual suicide. Many, possibly the mainstream, embraced the new pacifist Japan and tried to forget the war. Some foment rightwing nationalist politics. Nishimura's path is strikingly individual. He promised his dead companions that he would return to honour their remains, and since 1966 his life has revolved around an uncompromising quest to keep his word, to restore to the families of the slain, if not the remains of their bodies for burial, then emotionally significant mementos – a lunchbox, a flag, in one case a rusty pump. As a corollary, he invested his time and resources into projects to help the locals in the places where he conducted his search – building a school, bulldozing roads, helping people get training and set up enterprises.
He's a fascinating man, a lesson in integrity. And the book is all the more fascinating because written by an Australian. Maybe the ghosts of the Pacific War are on the way to being laid to rest.… (més)