The Forgotten Highlander: An Incredible WWII Story of Survival in the Pacific

Alistair Urquhart was a soldier in the Gordon Highlanders captured by the Japanese in Singapore. As a prisoner of war, he endured 750 days in the jungle performing manual labor on the Death Railway and building the Bridge on the River Kwai. He was later transferred to a Japanese hellship that was torpedoed, leaving him adrift on a raft in the South China Sea for five days before rescue by a Japanese whaling ship. Urquhart was then taken to Japan and forced to work in a mine near Nagasaki. Two months into his labor there, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki while he was just ten miles away. In late August 1945, he was freed by the American Navy, severely malnourished and having not washed in three and a half years. This memoir recounts Urquhart's survival of three life-threatening encounters during his captivity. Conscripted at nineteen, he remained silent about his experiences for over fifty years before sharing his account in his own words.