Early Life and World War II
Born in Australia, Clavell was the son of Commander Richard Clavell, a British Royal Navy officer who was stationed in Australia on secondment from the Royal Navy to the Royal Australian Navy. In 1940, when Clavell finished his secondary schooling at Portsmouth Grammar School, he joined the Royal Artillery to follow his family tradition.
Following the outbreak of World War II, at the age of 16 (or 19) he joined the Royal Artillery in 1940, and was sent to Malaya to fight the Japanese. Wounded by machine-gun fire, he was eventually captured and sent to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on Java. Later he was transferred to Changi Prison in Singapore.
Clavell suffered greatly at the hands of his Japanese captors. According to the introduction to King Rat, written by Clavell, over 90% of the prisoners who entered Changi never walked out. Clavell was reportedly saved, along with an entire battalion, by an American prisoner of war who later became the model for "The King" in Clavell's King Rat.
By 1946, Clavell had risen to the rank of Captain, but a motorcycle accident ended his military career. He enrolled at the University of Birmingham, where he met April Stride, an actress, whom he married in 1949.
Read more about this topic: James Clavell
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, world and/or war:
“Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Newspaperman: That was a magnificent work. There were these mass columns of Apaches in their war paint and feather bonnets. And here was Thursday leading his men in that heroic charge.
Capt. York: Correct in every detail.
Newspaperman: He’s become almost a legend already. He’s the hero of every schoolboy in America.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)