Billy: My Life as a Teenage POW

Billy: My Life as a Teenage POW has been compiled from a personal chronicle begun by Billy Young throughout the 1970s, supplemented by hundreds of conversations that Lynette and Billy have shared in the course of their close friendship spanning more than two decades. It is the only first-hand published account by an ordinary soldier imprisoned by the Japanese at the infamous Sandakan POW Camp, and one of only three books by a survivor at the Kempeitai’s equally notorious Outram Road Gaol.
Billy is now the only soldier left alive from Sandakan, and the only Australian prisoner still alive from Outram Road.

Billy’s close friend, historian and author Lynette Silver, provides historical details gleaned from thirty years of researching and writing about events that Billy experienced first hand. Throughout, Billy gives his unique narrative, immerse in vibrancy and life as he takes the reader on a very personal journey. Through the eyes of a tearaway teenaged soldier, Billy shares his thoughts and experiences, some of which have never before been revealed – secrets that he has kept even from his closest family.

Billy: My Life as a Teenage POW also includes short poems written by Billy, along with his drawings and paintings depicting events that occurred during his time as a POW. These are the only visual records in existence.

This book is his memorial to all those who died in Borneo and in Outram Road Gaol.