A War Story (1981)

Major Ben Wheeler was a Canadian doctor assigned to Singapore when the Japanese forced an unconditional surrender of the British and took him prisoner in 1942. He was taken to the notorious Kinkaseki Japanese POW mining camp in Formosa (Taiwan) and given the task of maintaining the mental and physical health of the British POWs. Wheeler kept detailed diaries of his experiences during his three and a half years at the camp and excerpts are narrated with dramatized scenes of the traumatic experiences of daily life. The working conditions in the mines caused innumerable injuries, and disease and malnutrition were rampant, but Wheeler had to make do with very few medical supplies and equipment. Also featured is newsreel footage of related events, archival footage of the camp, interviews with fellow survivors of the camp who unanimously praised Wheeler for his good work and provide their perspectives on the events described by him, and finally snippets of Wheeler's family life back home in Canada, before and after the war.