MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
Now, to a man who never forgot, but learned to forgive.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
BLOCK: That's Eric Lomax in a 1995 interview with WHYY's FRESH AIR. Lomax died last week at the age of 93.
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
He was a British army officer and held prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. He was one of thousands of soldiers forced to build the railway to Burma, famously portrayed in the 1957 film "The Bridge on the River Kwai." During that time, Lomax was interrogated and severely beaten.
BLOCK: The experience left him with multiple broken bones and a longing for revenge for one man in particular: Nagase Takashi, Lomax's tormentor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
BLOCK: In 1995, Lomax told The New York Times, at the end of the war, I would have been happy to murder him.
SIEGEL: But Lomax had a change of heart half a century later. After years of trying to track Nagase down, Lomax found an article about him describing his remorse over the ill treatment of a British soldier.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
SIEGEL: The two developed a correspondence and eventually met face to face in 1993 not far from the bridge on the river Kwai.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
SIEGEL: About three weeks later, Lomax wrote a letter to Nagase saying he had forgiven him.
BLOCK: In 1995, Eric Lomax published a memoir called "The Railway Man." It ends with this line: Some time the hating has to stop. Or as he told WHYY's FRESH AIR...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
BLOCK: Eric Lomax, the soldier who forgave, died last week at the age of 93. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.