Miyakatsu Koike

Four Years in a Red Coat Miyakatsu Koike

Before the Japanese Imperial Navy Air Service staged its surprise strike on Pearl Harbor, Miyakatsu Koike lived the privileged life of a Japanese expatriate in the Dutch East Indies. Through the working week he was a conscientious employee of the Yokohama Specie Bank in Surabaya. The rest of his time he could devote to playing golf and tennis, to indulging his hobby photography, and to exploring Java with his wife Fumiko. When his countrymen committed themselves to the 'Greater East Asia War', however, that world came to an abrupt and painful end.

Four Years in a Red Coat presents for the first time in English translation Miyakatsu Koike's wartime diary. It is a keenly observed record of his arrest, his hellish voyage to distant South Australia, his endurance of years in the Loveday Internment Camp, and his return ultimately to a war-ravaged homeland. More than that, it is a testament to one man's calmly stoic triumph over sustained adversity. The scars of his war are indelible, yet Koike emerges from it with his humanity not just intact but enhanced.

Miyakatsu Koike worked in 1941 for a Japanese bank in Indonesia (at the time known as the Dutch East Indies). When Japan entered World War II, he was arrested by Dutch authorities and, eventually, transferred to Australia's Loveday - the largest World War II internment camp in the country. Koike remained in Loveday until February 1946, and wrote a diary of his experiences during the war.