Interesting read.
Most of these ended up in Burma and were used as slave labour on the Burma Railway project
Many POWs were also on the Thailand side of this railway project. My mother was born in 1939 in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, She lived (and still lives) not far from the bridge over the river Kwai. While the book, the movie, and in fact the bridge are all fictional, the plight of those POWs was not. I can't even begin to imagine what it would've been like to live during those times.
Yes, that's true. Australia and Britain lost many men on the Burma Railway along with other allied POW's. Such a brutal time in the history of the world...As usual. I just wrote a piece on my father's memories of living as a boy during the Japanese Occupation and am going to share some more as time rolls out.