USA Africa Dialogue Series - The forgotten war

Please take a look: http://www.aljazeera.com/photo_galleries/programmes/2011829151520656815.html.  This might  be of some interest to those who have any interest in various kinds of historical,  and African studies, or who perhaps, like myself,  had fathers,  grandfathers, uncles and great uncles who fought  in this colonial/ "anti-colonial"  imperialist and anti-facist war.  There are so many sub-stories here, along  with many  touches of pathos and irony.

A few years ago before my Pa died, I had  done some initial research for him, as he wanted to contact some of his old comrades, especially one Albert Mensah.  I had tracked down a piece by David Killingray in the Journal of African History  that I assume  became one of the chapters in his book, which I have not read; and I'd had wanted to  send him a note about my Dad, which I assumed he might want to follow up on, but alas could not because he died before any communication could take place.  I also got in touch with some guy who ran the Company's  website, who actually knew of the platoon my father was in was in.  

 I also looked at the  novel by Biyi Bandele, Burma Boy (KIng's Rifle, I think is the other title),  which I'd given to my Dad, but which he didn't appear very impressed by it.  After his death I had also initially gone though some his letters,  which were an amazing compendium of so much of his larger than, unique  life, including some from his Nigerian, and other West African comrades. Lamentably, in moving, one of the trunks with these letters was either stolen or lost.

My Dad always felt he was not given sufficient recognition for  his "war effort" from Nigeria, which of course not a state when he and others were demobbed, or from the Brits for whom wars were always  victories won by white people. As young as he was, this part of his life was so formative for so many  reasons,  and it is no wonder that he talked about it so much.  This is a remarkable story about Africans, and about some of the Burmese who harboured them;  and as sad as I am about not fulfilling a promise to him,  seeing this  has given me more impetus to do work on this myself.  

But forgive me if I tell one story my late Pa told me about his friend,  Albert Mensah,  who had been captured  along with other African and British NCOs and officers by the Japanese who were brutal with everyone. They singled out an officer,  a Brit, and  in a purposeful act of brutal and humiliating punishment, they made all  the Africans watch as they stripped the officer naked and thrashed him  over and over again within, as they say, an inch of his life. And then a Japanese Officer-interpretator,  in apparently impeccable  English, shouted out to the  captured  and frightened African soldiers:  "Look at your Imperial masters now!"  Asian fascism humiliating one  racial hierarchy and asserting another.  When Mensah and other soldiers were liberated,  they were debriefed and told to stay quiet about what they had seen, or they would be put in irons.  

Pablo