Between Tedium and Terror: A Soldier's World War II Diary, 1943-45 [Hardcover]

Sy M. Kahn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1993

This unique record of action in the Pacific is the personal journal of a young American soldier, Sy Kahn. Written under trying conditions and contrary to military regulations, the diary provided the writer both sanity and sanctuary - a foxhole of the mind - in an often violent, irrational world. A bookish nineteen-year-old who was the youngest soldier in his company, Kahn recorded in almost daily entries both the immediacy of danger and the tedium of relentless work, heat, humidity, and routine. His wartime odyssey took him to Australia, New Guinea, other South Pacific islands, and a D-day landing on Luzon. Surviving four campaigns and over 300 air attacks, Kahn and his company finally were sent to occupy Yokohama shortly after two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kahn's diary marvelously captures the daily grind and abrupt excitements of the war, and from an unusual angle. A bespectacled, cultured young New Yorker of delicate sensibilities ("I was infinitely more comfortable with a book or violin in my hands than I was with a rifle"), he was assigned to the 244th Port Company of the Army Transportation Corps and spent much of the war engaged in the backbreaking labor of loading and unloading combat cargo ships. Far from being "in the rear with the gear," however, he was often near the cutting edge of military operations in the Pacific as the 244th delivered supplies to Marines or GIs fighting at Cape Gloucester, Holandia, Biak and the Philippines. Kahn also took part in the early months of the occupation of Japan and provides interesting observations on this transition period between war and peace. His diary is special not so much for its depiction of warfare (although there's plenty of that), but as a chronicle of a sensitive young soldier's journey toward maturity. The book continuously engages as it reveals Kahn's distinctive personality and outlook. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

This diary of a bookish New York teenager's service aboard a cargo-handling unit in the southwest Pacific is a worthwhile addition to World War II memoirs. Kahn found the major threats to his well-being to be not the Japanese but tropical diseases, overwork, the climate, and the utter absence of female companionship or any other sort of recreation. His journal provides a literate, detailed, and compelling private's-eye view of a forgotten category of soldier in an almost equally forgotten theater of the war. It may not be indispensable to WWII collections, but it will surely find a sizable audience among both veterans and students of that conflict. Roland Green

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 363 pages
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press; 1St Edition edition (August 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0252018583
• ISBN-13: 978-0252018589
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,576,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I am too a war vet. and I think is great., May 6, 1999

By 

Enrique Maldonado [e-mail] (Mexico City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Between Tedium and Terror: A Soldier's World War II Diary, 1943-45 (Hardcover)

I was also 18 years old when I was sent to the Pacific and found everything that Sy Kahn wrote. Now at 71 years old I never thougth I was to find so realistic book and brought back so painful and glorius memories. This is my first war book I read and I do not regreted. I did realy enjoy it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book, June 20, 2007

By 

John P. Rooney "John" (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Between Tedium And Terror" by Sy M. Kahn. Subtitled: "A Soldier's World War II Diary, 1943-1945". University Of Illinois Press, 1993.

The writing is excellent which is remarkable since it seems that the book is a verbatim copy of the diaries that Sy Kahn wrote, under stress, more than sixty years ago in the Pacific. The author has included some photo copies of his original, hand-written diaries, and the corresponding text appears to be an exact copy of what he had written during the war. As an engineer, I have written more than 35 technical papers for the IEEE, and I have never been able to go with the first draft. Most writers go through many drafts, and, even then, are not satisfied.

Sy Kahn barely mentions being born and raised in Manhattan (a small island in NYC), but goes directly to his subject matter, with his ship going under the Golden Gate Bridge, September 1943. The author evades a detailed description of basic training and gets directly to the heart of the matter: action in the Pacific. As he records in his introduction, writing and reading kept him sane over the next three years or so. As a result of his fidelity to his diary, we have this excellent book. He records that his outfit, the 244th Port Company, endured some three to four hundred air attacks, and being torpedoed and being shelled by shore guns. The frustration was that his outfit was not equipped to fire back and had to depend on others for their defense. "Thus we alternated between tedium and terror". (page xx).

There are quite a few introspective entries, as Mr. Kahn was a young man, growing up in a restrictive environment, which, while challenging him physically, did not challenge him mentally. He was always looking to learn, (Page 102: "I learned much from the many people I spoke with") and used reading as both a means of learning and as escape from the tedium of "hurry up and wait". Kahn laments the fact that he never knew what it was to be a civilian between the ages of 18 and 21, but, in his later years, ironically, he spends his time teaching college students in the same age bracket.

I liked this book, perhaps because I followed a path similar to Sy Kahn. Born and raised in Manhattan, a small island, I enlisted in the United States Navy after high school (in The Bronx) at the age of 17 years. I, too, could not see the big "E" on the eye chart. I spent much of my Navy time at Naval Air Station, Key West, which was hot enough to give me a nasty case of tropical boils. Unfortunately, I did not keep a diary. Sy Kahn has written a good book that fills in gaps in personal histories of individuals who fought in the Pacific in world War II.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true story of young soldiers during WW II., April 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Between Tedium and Terror: A Soldier's World War II Diary, 1943-45 (Hardcover)

I am the daughter of one of the book's character's (Rafael "Sancho" Sanchez). It was so interesting to read about not only my father's exploits, but the others in the company as well. It brought back many memories of the many stories my father use to tell me about his war experiences. It also brought a real perspective of the trials of war to someone who was born eleven years after it ended. Thank you Sy for bringing me and my family a part of my father we never would have known if you had not told your story.