At the River Kwai, a Long-Delayed Apology

On the banks of the River Kwai, below the famous bridge built by slaves and POWs, a former Japanese army interpreter apologized Friday to the former British prisoner he helped interrogate during torture 50 years ago.

Takashi Nagase and Eric Lomax, two graying 75-year-olds, shook hands and wept in the courtyard of a museum dedicated to the “Death Railway,” whose construction cost the lives of thousands of Asian and Allied prisoners.

The slight Japanese veteran bowed his head as he spoke softly to Lomax of Berwick-Upon-Tweed, England. The two then sat together on a bench.

Nagase occasionally wiped his eyes with a handkerchief and tightly held the British veteran’s hands as they talked.

Nagase, a longtime activist for reconciliation among Pacific war veterans, said the 30-minute meeting freed him of 50 years of guilt and shame.

“These are the happiest moments of my life,” he said tearfully.

“I apologized to him for what we did during the war,” said Nagase, of Kurashiki, Japan. “For me it is a very great sin and a crime against humanity.”

The former British signals officer accepted the apology and was warmly sympathetic, Nagase said. Lomax declined to be interviewed.

Japan began building the 258-mile railway from Nong Pladuk, Thailand, to Thanbyuazyat, Burma, in June, 1942. The railroad was intended to supply Japanese troops in Burma.

Conditions in the railway prison camps were dramatized in the 1957 film, “Bridge on the River Kwai.” The bridge was destroyed by Allied bombers but rebuilt after the war as a memorial.

Nagase, who now has an English-language school, was a 25-year-old soldier in 1943 when he acted as interpreter for Lomax’s torturers.

Lomax, a retired university lecturer, was captured in the 1941 fall of Singapore and sent to the Burmese border jungle prison.

Japanese military police severely beat and tortured him and other officers suspected of drawing railway maps and keeping clandestine radios.

He was released at the end of the war.

In 1991, Lomax recognized Nagase’s photograph in a Japanese newspaper. The two exchanged letters and agreed to meet at the River Kwai.