 | asin: 0688043445 binding: Hardcover list price: $18.95 USD amazon price: $18.95 |
My grandfather spent the greater part of WWII in Japanese prison camps in the Phillipines and in Japan. He was there when Bataan and Corregidor fell (he escaped capture at Bataan by floating from the island on a log, only to be captured on Corregior). He was transported on the Hell Ships, and was forced to work the mines at the POW camp Sendai #3, slave labor camps run by Mitsubishi. He barely survived. When rescued he weighed around 100 lbs., and had, besides malnutrition, malaria, dysentery, beri-beri, and pellegra.
He never spoke of his experiences as a POW to his family, except to say to my mother once or twice that they would catch grasshopers to eat in the prison camps. The only reason we know anything about what he experienced is through books like these and through some letters of his we found in his file folder of his military records only last year.
This is the best account of American POWs in the Pacific that my family has found so far. It mentions one of the work details my grandfather was on in the Phillipines, an account of the Hell Ships and a battle they were caught in that matches my grandfather's account so well that my mother knew after reading this book which ship my grandfather had been on.
This book is out of print, but available at used and out of print dealers at amazon.com, powell's books online, and abc books online.
This author has also written a truly excellent book about the firebombing campaign we waged on Japan's civilian population during WWII, culminating, of course in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Bottom line, there were war crimes on both sides, few countries involved with WWII emerged from it without having resorted to some kind of war crime.
Until a few weeks ago, Americans could have said, "Yes, but we've never tortured the POW's in our custody like the Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. etc. did." We can't say that anymore.
