Tamura Yoshikazu is destined to die on the alien shores of the New Guinea warzone. Devoid of family perplexed by the unfamiliarity of his environment deprived of even meagre amenities and faced with the spectre of debilitating illness and starvation this solitary soldier commenced a diary in the early part of 1943. Employed in the hard labour of building airstrips he is ground down by tedium disheartened by the now dysfunctional military hierarchy consumed by grief at the meaningless deaths of