Oh you're a far better person, and writer, than I am. I just rant.

Side note, one of Australia's biggest stories of it's nation making is the POW camps on the Burma railway in 1943. Then there is stories of the Japanese in Malaya at that time with A Town Like Alice (Nevil Shute) and more recently, Richard Flanagan's Narrow Road about a man haunted by memories of his love affair with his uncles wife and his expereinces on the railway as a prisoner. Both great books if you fancy.