Like The Anzac Book that immortalised the experiences of Diggers on the Gallipoli peninsula 100 years ago, The Changi Book is made up of essays, poems, cartoons, stories and photographs created on the spot.

It offers a remarkable insight into life in Changi and the other Japanese POW camps.

While brutality, deprivation and criminal neglect were all givens, the captives supported each other with improvised entertainments, whimsical sketches which often took the piss out of their captors and a keen desire to exercise control over their environment.

Their achievements included medical and surgical innovations in a place where the simplest medicines were worth more than their weight in gold, a university complete with lecturers and the elevation of scrounging to an art form.

Changi was a triumph of the human spirit and an object lesson in how individuals can seize small but meaningful victories from the jaws of defeat.

The book, according to the AWM, had a difficult road to publication with a spokesman saying it had been intended for production in 1945.

"But [it was] postponed by industrial action and supply shortages at the time," he said.

This may well be true but I suspect the subject matter didn't help either. The last thing the authorities wanted during the euphoria over Japan's defeat was to focus on the fate of those who had been captured.

It has only been in the last 25 years that Australia has been able to openly acknowledge the guts and valour of those who survived captivity.