Customer Reviews

The Great Raid

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

A powerful moving book detailing the experience of Filipino and American soldiers' struggle to free POWs in Cabanatuan, Philippines. As a Filipino-American, whose ancestor were directly affected by WWII, I found the book to be inspirational seeing both my beloved homelands unite to fight for the greater good.

The book gives life to a time in history of great importance, that Americans lack awareness-in and in dept to pay tribute to both Filipinos and Americans who fought for their country.

After reading the book, one is left with sheer amazement, pride, appreciation, and yet saddened by the lack of tribute lacking for these veterans, and The Great Insult America has bestowed upon Filipinos who fought and died for America and America's soldiers.

In July 14, 1941, when the Philippines was still a colony of the U.S., 140,000 Filipino soldiers was call to active service by then President Franklin Roosevelt to fight in WWII along side the Americans under the U.S. flag

Their brave service under the U.S. flag was snubbed when in 1946 Congress sign into law the Rescission Act of 1946, which affectively denied them their right to receive the same right given to other WWII U.S veterans.

Today there are only 12,000 surviving Filipino American veterans in the U.S and 35,000 Filipino veterans in the Philippines.

The book exemplifies the bravery these men did for the country and the injustice they are enduring today.

Marimax is currently filming a movie based on this book.

This is a slight work by a military ... writer who quite obviously rushed this book into paperback reissue to capitalize on the extraordinary success and critical acclaim of the bestselling masterpiece, GHOST SOLDIERS. Mr. Breuer has written 30-some odd military books and is clearly the kind of writer who believes in quantity over quality, and it shows in this sloppy work. Mr. Breuer retells dozens of stories that were orginally reported in the book, HOUR OF REDEMPTION, by military historian Forrest Johnson, but Mr. Breuer neglects to cite or even acknowledge the existence of Mr. Johnsons's book, the first work ever written on Cabanatuan camp, published back in the 1970s. Johnson's book is infinitely better researched and has the integrity of someone who invested heart and soul into his subject. And the extraordinary GHOST SOLDIERS speaks for itself. Altogether, Breuer's thin research, treacly prose, and obvious haste make this book a disappointing read.

Like many people, I read and generally enjoyed the 2001 bestseller Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission. What I didn't realize when I picked up this earlier book, was that it covers almost the exact same material, but in a much less engaging way. (It should be noted that both books owe a huge debt to Forrest Johnson's 1978 book Hour of Redemption: The Heroic WW II Saga of America's Most Daring POW Rescue, a debt acknowledged in Ghost Soldiers but not by this book.) Here, Breuer provides a workmanlike account of the post-Pearl Harbor political and military context that led to the U.S. "abandonment" of the Philippines, its subsequent fall to Japan, and the horrific fate of the US and Filipino soldiers taken prisoner. He similarly sketches out the spy network that operated under Japanese occupation, the regrouping of U.S. forces as the war in Europe wound down, and the planning and execution of the titular raid to free 511 POWs.

This material all more or less overlaps with Ghost Soldiers but isn't nearly as well written. Breuer has a penchant for trite melodramatic phrasing, and tends to repeat information over and over and over as if his reader has no memory. It also doesn't help that instead of simply writing "three Rangers did X", he writes, "John Q. Doe of Springfield, IL, James R. Doe of Anywhere, WY, and Jesse T. Doe of Plainview, MI did X." I certainly understand his desire to honor every solider he can by naming them, but it makes for very awkward reading. Another small tick that bothered me was that if any soldier had played college football, that merited mention -- but only football, no other sport. Why? Finally, his interviews with veteran POWs and Rangers seemed to yield little more than the most banal of anecdotes and recollections and their inclusion, again, while honoring them, really doesn't help the book's readability.

Unfortunately, behind the weak writing lurk bigger flaws. Foremost of these is a total lack of explanation as why it was deemed so crucial to mount a dangerous, complex, behind-enemy-lines mission to rescue the POWs. Breuer repeats a number of times that it was feared that the Japanese would massacre the POWs, but never tells what foundation that fear rested on. The reader is left to conclude that it was all basically hearsay based on the notion that the Japanese might do it for reasons of revenge as they retreat. This contrasts poorly with Ghost Soldiers, which explains that the U.S. Army's knew of one such massacre (the Palawan Massacre, in which American POWs were burned alive by retreating Japanese), and thus there was a very real fear guiding the raid at the climax of the book. The book also suffers somewhat from Breuer's agenda to lionize Douglas MacArthur and vilify Roosevelt and the "faceless Washington bureaucrats" (can someone please retire this trite phrase?). This is somewhat redeemed by his drawing attention to the massively heroic efforts of Filipino soldiers at the side of the Americans, and their subsequent total betrayal when it came to due honors and compensation from the U.S. government.

However, in the end, there's no reason to read this version of history when Ghost Soldiers is available -- unless you're really really interested in the Pacific Campaign. There's so much overlap between the two that all you'd be getting is different emphases. Related books that might be worth checking out are Silent Warriors of World War II: The Alamo Scouts Behind the Japanese Lines and Manila Espionage, Claire Phillips account of her life as the ringleader of an Allied spy ring in the Philippines (later made into the forgettable film I Was An American Spy).

I read The Great Raid and found it very moving. It's hard to imagine the atrocities that occurred during that time period. I just recently saw the movie The Great Raid and it made everything come alive. Seeing how the prisoners of war were treated horrified me. It's amazing what the human body can endure and still survive.

I read the book because I had enjoyed the movie based on it. As much as I enjoyed the movie, I enjoyed the book even more. It is a good, quick read and tells the story clearly. There is also much background material as well as a section in the back of the book that tells what happened to the major characters. I recommend it highly.

This is the sort of exciting, astonishing history that must make novelists despair: How can fiction compete with reality? If a fiction writer dared to put into a novel the heroics, impossible feats and strange coincidences that are recounted here it would be condemned as far-fetched. But these events -- the Bataan Death March and the US Army Ranger raid on the Japanese POW camp near Cabanatuan on Luzon near the end of WWII -- really happened!
A stirring history; a thrilling read.
(Much, much better than Side's "Ghost Soldiers" with its lame justifications of the Japanese army's atrocities.)

I wanted to read this to learn more about the War in the Pacific. I found some good information regarding the Philippines, but it was hard to read and it did not lay the ground work for the big picture. I liked reading Bataan Diary by Chris Schaefer for a more well documented line of the War in the Philippines and I enjoyed Ghost Soldiers better for easier, exciting reading on the raid of Cabanatuan.

I was disappointed in this book for 2 main reasons.
I had read Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by
Hampton Sides and had assumed this would be another book about the raid. So I was very disappointed to find three quarters of the book covered the war in the Philippines prior to the raid. I understand that this information was important to give the groundwork and reason for the raid but three quarters of the book??
Mr. Breuer seemed to be determined to lionize Douglas MacArthur and blame Roosevelt and Washington for not reinforcing him when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. I don't claim to be an expert but I remember that the US military ran war games in the early 1920s and determined that they could not defend and reinforce the Philippines if the Japanese invaded. Considering he was the army chief of staff during the Hoover administration, I find it a bit of a stretch that he was not aware of this war planning. Second he seemed to amazed how ill-prepared the Filipino army was - wasn't a special military to the Filipino president?
Mr Breuer rightly gave credit to General MacArthur for his hitting the Japanese where they weren't; a strategy which saved many American lives. But to make a disparaging comparison about Eisenhower and the D Day invasion on Normandy was inappropriate. The reason that MacArthur's strategy worked so well, was that he controlled the air and seas preventing the Japanese from responding. Hitler was very able to shift his troops in Europe to counter any allied invasion.
I read the book because I wanted to know more about the raid, but would not recommend it.
Marty Ford

This is a fast-reading look at the January 1945 raid that freed over 500 remaining survivors of Bataan and Corregidor from imprisonment and likely execution at the hands of the Japanese. Author William Breuer describes more than just this remarkable raid on the Cabanatuan POW camp. He also gives a solid background, which included the surprise Japanese attack on the Philippines in December, 1941, the defense of Bataan and Corregidor, the death march, imprisonment, the activities of Filipino Guerillas, and the pacific war in general. Then he moves on to describe training for this mission, and the daring mission itself by the Alamo Scouts, Filipino's, and Army rangers, which exceeded beyond expectations (but not without tragic loss). The book is based largely on interviews with survivors, although I did occasionally wonder if the author had all his facts straight. Still, this is a gripping read.

As an American missionary working in the Philippines, this bit of history was very interesting for me. The history is truly amazing- the brutality of the Japanese, the response of the American government, the personality and strategy of General Douglas MacArthur, and the reaction of the Filipinos themselves were all fascinating. The author based his book on many interviews he did with survivors, and this made the recollection of history much more interesting and also much more personal. The story is told through the lives of actual individuals and their memories- this enhances the story. The author has a political point to make in his book, and it is a political point that I happen to believe has truth to it. I will quote him from page 232, "Who was to blame for America's monumental debacle in the Philippines and at Pearl Harbor?....the culprits were the people of the United States and shortsighted politicians in Washington who held fast to the belief that the way to keep America out of war was to remain militarily weak..."

I enjoyed the book, but I believe it was written poorly. There was an obvious bias against the Japanese. No doubt the Japanese committed numerous atrocities, but everything in the book was shaded with an honest dislike for their race. I found this frustrating. Though Filipinos were often exalted in the book, the author writes in a way that shows his favoritism (maybe racist favoritism) for Americans. The Filipinos are portrayed as the cute `little brown brothers', which actually are the words of a former US President. In the book, vulgarity, machismo, and plain stupidity of American soldiers is exaggerated and exalted. The retelling of this history reminded me of how a war veteran might recount the events- with favoritism, a little added heroics, and genuine hate for the enemy. Are these things bad for a veteran to do and or believe? I don't believe so, but a non-fiction history account should retell history in a clear, non-biased way. Would I want my great-uncle Frank to tell me about his experience in WW2? Of course- I would covet first hand information. But would I want to base my understanding of the entire war on much more than Uncle Frank's observation? No. This book felt like great-uncle Frank. I look forward to reading Ghost Soldiers, to get a different style and outlook regarding the Philippines during WW2.