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:
“Well, it’s early yet!”
—Robert Pirosh, U.S. screenwriter, George Seaton, George Oppenheimer, and Sam Wood. Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx)
“For some men the power to destroy life becomes the equivalent to the female power to create life.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 4 (1991)
“For the world hath lost his youth, and the times begin to wax old.”
—Apocrypha. 2 Esdras, 14:10.
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)