Customer Reviews

Late Summer of 1941 and My War with Japan

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

 

 

All the more impressive because the author is not a polished writer. He merely recounts the most astounding events as if he just happened to be taking a walk.

Make no mistake, the events the author saw were truly astounding. He saw the Battle of Bataan, the Surrender of the Phillipines, the Death March - even the H-Bomb on Nagasaki, which in the midst of such momentous events gets only a couple of lines. Just click on the "Surprise Me" and you'll see what I mean. He was truly an eyewitness to history, to use a cliche.

I just now reread the part when he talks about being sacrificed to the war, to the future while they sit in the dark waiting for the Japanese fleet to attack their position, while they eat an iguana the hungry men scrounged. It sent chills up me. He talks about beatings and bombings and life in Japanese POW camps, and it sounds like you are there. Somehow all the documentaries I've seen and all the books I read never made me understand what it was REALLY like.

I highly recommend this book as a first person account for anyone who wants to know the truth about being a POW in Japan, and the Bataan Death March.

Since I first wrote this review, the author has passed, as have many of our heroes of the time. I'm so grateful he wrote the book to secure his memories for coming generations.

I started this book with the thought that it needed an editor. I ended the book with the thought that this book was one of the best books I have read in years. It is a very personal view of a young man from a small rural world dumped into big time history as it happend. He is thrilled and scared and constantly in the present of the war itself. You feel for the teen age kid as he reels through the events like a pinball in a pinball machine. He jumps in sometimes and other times just rolls with the punches. His discriptions are weak (not a writer) but real and griping.

I started this book with the thought that it needed an editor. I ended the book with the thought that this book was one of the best books I have read in years. It is a very personal view of a young man from a small rural world dumped into big time history as it happend. He is thrilled and scared and constantly in the present of the war itself. You feel for the teen age kid as he reels through the events like a pinball in a pinball machine. He jumps in sometimes and other times just rolls with the punches. His discriptions are weak (not a writer) but real and griping.