"The Japanese Military Code was explicit: 'Japanese forces do not surrender to the eneny under any circumstances.' How then woyuld the eight hundred or so prisoners who found themselves in the first Japanese prisoner0-of-war camop anywhere in the world behave? They had been brought from the Solomon Islands to Featherston in 1942. Six months later an incident occurred in which forty-nine prisoners and one New Zealand guard were killed. Vincent O'Sullivan explores the implications aof this event in a play which immediately rises above mere documentation to consider what happens when people in two cultures are brought togetrher in such extreme circumstances, and when even the best intentions of those who try to offer sympathy and understanding fail in the face of ignorance and prejudice."--Back cover.