Elephant Run
Roland Smith
 Nicholas Gillis Freestone is sent to Burma after his mother's apartment is destroyed in the Battle of Britain. He meets Nang the foreman, his daughter Mya, and his son Indaw, a mahout. At the time of Nick's arrival, there is much talk about the recent Japanese bombing of Rangoon, predicting the British defenses in Burma will soon fall. The next day Nick is at the village and Hannibal, a koongyi (timber elephant) with a grudge against tigers, attacks Nick and his ribs are cracked. Out of embarrassment, Nick keeps the incident to himself until his father hears of the accident from Hilltop (Taung Baw in Burmese), a monk who was one of the two original mahouts to come with the Sergeant Major, who founded Hawk's Nest. Hilltop is Mya & Indaw's great-grandfather, who some people rumor is over 100 years old. Hilltop is said to know the secret language of the elephants. Rumor says he lives in the forest, and disappeared for sixty years before returning to the Freestone Plantation. On Christmas, Nick, his father, Nang, and his family are travelling to the nearby Freestone Island when the Japanese invade. Japanese soldiers soon overrun and capture the Freestones' camp, taking into custody all its inhabitants while Nick and the elephants go into hiding. Not long after, though, Nick is captured by an amiable soldier, Sergeant Sonji, whom Nick initially takes to be crazy. Nick is returned to the elephant village by the sergeant, at which point the brutal extent to which the Japanese are taking in their conquest becomes clear. Under the newly erected Japanese flag lie the corpses of Nang, who has been beaten to death, and Captain Josephs, a British officer who has been decapitated. His father and Indaw have been taken as POWs (prisoners of war), and Nick is taken hostage at Hawk's Nest. He remains there for ten months as a servant of sorts to Colonel Nagayoshi, the Japanese commander of Hawk's Nest. While there, Nick is routinely beaten by a crippled elderly Japanese sympathizer named Bukong, but is otherwise left unscathed by the Japanese. Later, Nick gets a letter from his father saying he was transported from a camp for British and Australian prisoners in Singapore to one in Burma. One night Hilltop shows a secret passage that was in the house to Nick and Mya. Everyone later believes that they escaped when they were actually in the tunnel. From then on Hilltop shows the passages that link to Hawk's Nest. On their escape day, Nick and Mya disguise themselves as novice monks and escape the Hawk's nest with Hilltop and Hannibal. In a nearby village, they are trapped by Captain Moto who wants to find and catch the infamous thief Kya Lei (Tiger's Breath), a Burmese Robin Hood. The next day Hilltop writes a letter saying that he was at the prison camp and would be back. Kya Lei helps Nick and Mya to get to the first camp. Each day, they progress closer to Jackson and Indaw. When Hilltop returns he tells Nick and Mya that he talked to Indaw while he was at the prison camp and planned an escape. The day of his escape was on festival day, a day where the Japanese soldiers buy goods for themselves. Because the guards were distracted by the festival, Indaw was able to escape. A couple days later, Jackson faked his death and was able to escape.