Buy new:

$26.30

List Price: $30.00

Save: $3.70 (12%)

& FREE Returns

FREE delivery Saturday, April 23

Or fastest delivery Friday, April 22. Order within 22 hrs 50 mins

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

[{"displayPrice":"$26.30","priceAmount":26.30,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"26","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"30","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"u6nnXlnpIMoDlXq3PXL04U3eQWMEkBsxlxthlU3kxUSn1mtRt5uVdDD9J%2FMUicLmN1FUDou5ddNFOK9PQDIth6%2B8rCeHSq0vwFZk6Bq%2BZtFjMtnN3I%2FlCcztBJ637qWdEpmLzvA7eRQhq%2BBwLu7VUTEANYPFbBTK517295utB5qomi8MpxgOavhztsXHTgGk","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"}]

$$26.30 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

Odd Bookworm

Details

Ships from

Amazon

Sold by

Odd Bookworm

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Share

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$30.00
& FREE Shipping. Details

Sold by: Amazon.com

Added

Not added

$34.42
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: TheWorldShopUSA

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Ulrich Straus

The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II Paperback – March 1, 2005

by Ulrich A. Straus (Author)

13 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$95.00

$85.00

$113.76

Paperback

"Please retry"

$26.30

$21.00

Enhance your purchase

On December 6, 1941, Ensign Kazuo Sakamaki was one of a handful of men selected to skipper midget subs on a suicide mission to breach Pearl Harbor’s defenses. When his equipment malfunctioned, he couldn’t find the entrance to the harbor. He hit several reefs, eventually splitting the sub, and swam to shore some miles from Pearl Harbor. In the early dawn of December 8, he was picked up on the beach by two Japanese American MPs on patrol. Sakamaki became Prisoner No. 1 of the Pacific War.

Japan’s no-surrender policy did not permit becoming a POW. Sakamaki and his fellow soldiers and sailors had been indoctrinated to choose between victory and a heroic death. While his comrades had perished, he had survived. By becoming a prisoner of war, Sakamaki believed he had brought shame and dishonor on himself, his family, his community, and his nation, in effect relinquishing his citizenship. Sakamaki fell into despair and, like so many Japanese POWs, begged his captors to kill him.

Based on the author’s interviews with dozens of former Japanese POWs along with memoirs only recently coming to light, The Anguish of Surrender tells one of the great unknown stories of World War II. Beginning with an examination of Japan’s prewar ultranationalist climate and the harsh code that precluded the possibility of capture, the author investigates the circumstances of surrender and capture of men like Sakamaki and their experiences in POW camps.

Many POWs, ill and starving after days wandering in the jungles or hiding out in caves, were astonished at the superior quality of food and medical treatment they received. Contrary to expectations, most Japanese POWs, psychologically unprepared to deal with interrogations, provided information to their captors. Trained Allied linguists, especially Japanese Americans, learned how to extract intelligence by treating the POWs humanely. Allied intelligence personnel took advantage of lax Japanese security precautions to gain extensive information from captured documents. A few POWs, recognizing Japan’s certain defeat, even assisted the Allied war effort to shorten the war. Far larger numbers staged uprisings in an effort to commit suicide. Most sought to survive, suffered mental anguish, and feared what awaited them in their homeland.

These deeply human stories follow Japanese prisoners through their camp experiences to their return to their welcoming families and reintegration into postwar society. These stories are told here for the first time in English.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Washington Press
Publication date

March 1, 2005
Dimensions

6.8 x 0.8 x 9.06 inches
ISBN-10

0295985089
ISBN-13

978-0295985084
See all details

Frequently bought together

Ooka Shohei
10
Hardcover
30 offers from $4.85
Haruko Taya Cook
148
Paperback
76 offers from $1.82
Kazuo Tamayama
101
Paperback
35 offers from $1.95

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Anguish of Surrender. . . is a valuable corrective to what we thought we knew about Japanese POWs, written by a man who lived for twenty-one years in Japan, both before and during the war, and who is better able than most historians to understand the mentality of the Japanese POW."―Canadian Military History

"Straus's seminal contribution comprehensively explores the Japanese POW experiences and fills a substantial gap in POW historiography."―H-Net

"This cogent and well-written study offers a thorough exploration of the many dilemmas facing Japanese POWs."―Choice

"Straus's book is terrific―-eminently readable and full of cultural insights and empathy. This careful blend of essential scholarship and gripping storytelling gives us an entirely different idea of what was going on during the tragedy that was World War II."―Walter F. Mondale, former Vice President of the United States and Ambassador to Japan

"This is a marvelous book, describing in great and often moving detail the experiences of Japanese prisoners of war in allied (mostly U.S.) hands. Such a perspective adds significantly to our understanding of the rather remarkable history of U.S.―Japanese reconciliation after a bitter war."―Akira Iriye, Harvard University

"This is a fascinating topic, arising as it does from the contradiction between the fanaticisms alleged to have been endemic to Japanese military personnel combined with the realities of their generally quiescent behavior in POW camps."―T. J. Pempel, University of California, Berkeley

"An intriguing study not only of the prisoners themselves―-the war they fought and the circumstances of their capture, but of the whole spectrum of Japanese society, as this people emerged from wartime militarism to set the stage for their present democracy."―Frank Gibney, Pomona College

"This is an engrossing story told with sensitivity by one who has deep experience in Japan, and who writes with clarity and empathy."―Ambassador Michael Armacost

Book Description

Interviews with former Japanese POWs trace their experiences of surrender, life in the camps, and return to postwar Japan.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Washington Press; Illustrated edition (March 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0295985089
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0295985084
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.8 x 0.8 x 9.06 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,192,251 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,241 in Asian American Studies (Books)
- #3,590 in Japanese History (Books)
- #21,757 in World War II History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
13 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		55%
4 star		21%
3 star		24%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

R. Slater

A fascinating, well-written book on a little-known subject

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2017

Verified Purchase

There are bales of book on American and British experiences as POWs of the Japanese. The number of books on Japanese captured by the Allies is very small. This book corrects that. The author spent many years in Japan and served both in the military and a civilian during the occupation of Japan by the U.S. as well as much further experience.

He tracked down a number of former Japanese POWs and also provided much background on why so few Japanese surrendered and why those who did did so. He gives a number of individual stories.

My interest is mainly in Allied POWs and Straus gave a lot of background as to why the Japanese may have treated their POWs so horribly.

A fascinating, well-written book! The book is a little dry in places, but I considered that he DID used to work for the State Department!! LOL!

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

DTS@BigIslandRanch

Well-Written and Thoroughly Researched

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

Straus has written a book about an important subject that has rarely been discussed--the Japanese military's policy of win-or-die during WWII. His title--The Anguish of Surrender--explains why Japanese POWs were caught in the hell of believing they had to commit suicide as part of their patriotic duty but wanting to live based on their human instinct to survive.

Straus was fluent in Japanese, so his thorough research included government and unofficial documents and memoirs in both English and Japanese.

For those whose interest includes the Pacific War, I highly recommend this book. It is well written and compelling to read.

Douglas Shinsato, Co-translator of For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida, Commander of the Attack on Pearl Harbor

Helpful

Gentle

Surviving World War II as Japanese POW's of the Allies.

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2013

Verified Purchase

This was a very interesting book that was well researched and on a topic that should be of great interest to those who study the Pacific conflict of World War II. The author interviewed surviving Japanese POW's in the 1990's and was thus able to gain their perspective after decades of living in post-World War II Japan. This is important as so many of the POW's felt that they could not return to Japan because their captivity had so disgraced them as they did not die in battle, as they had been so indoctrinated under militaristic rule since the 1930's.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

M. Powell

Seller was great, book arrived very

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2015

Verified Purchase

Reading it now, very enjoyable. Seller was great, book arrived very early

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2014

Verified Purchase

A subject not often written about.

Reviewed in the United States on February 5, 2016

Verified Purchase

goes into great detail on Japanese attitute

Helpful

Darth Maciek

Lots of information but ultimately an only partly satisfying book

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2013

Totalitarian regimes tend to discourage very strongly their soldiers from surrendering, even when the situation is hopeless and they already did their best. Staline treated Soviet POWs as traitors, Mao did the same thing with Chinese POWs after Korea War and even if from 1939 to 1943 Hitler didn't always ask his soldiers to fight to death, it changed very radically in 1944 and 1945 - in those years some Wehrmacht soldiers were shot for nothing more than simply discussing the idea of surrendering...

However, with the possible exception of North Korea, no other country in modern history did a greater effort to indoctrinate its soldiers in a real cult of fight ot death and absolute refusal to surrender, than Japan in the years between 1931 and 1945. In earlier Japanese wars against China (1894-95), against Russia (1904-05), against Germany in WWI (1914) or during the intervention in Russia (1918-1922) imperial soldiers were of course disocuraged from surrendering, as it was considered cowardly and dishonorable, but it was nevertheless tolerated in extreme circumstances, after all ways of fighting were exhausted. However with the advent of militaristic regime soon after the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, things changed. Since then the whole nation was intensely indoctrinated and instructed that surrendering in ANY situation was more than a dishonor, but a crime against the Emperor, the country and ones family - and therefore if fighting was no more possible, soldiers and even civilians were supposed to suicide rather than let themselves be captured. And during the great wars waged by Japan between 1937 and 1945 a large majority of soldiers and quite a lot of civilians (in places like Saipan and Okinawa) obeyed this rule.

And yet, some Japanese soldiers WERE taken alive and kept prisoners in those years. In fact, even during the first day of Pacific War, on 7 December 1941, a young ensign from Japanese Imperial Navy, Kazuo Sakamaki, was taken prisoner near Pearl Harbor after having been forced to beach his midget submarine. More prisoners from imperial forces were taken on regular basis and if some of them were Formosans and Koreans impressed forcibly into service, many were actual Japanese. The capture was for them an experience uniquely traumatising, because even if allies usually treated the well (unlike the hellish abuse of Soviet POWs by the Nazis, the sad fate of many Germans captured by Soviets and the horrors inflicted by the Japanese to allied prisoners) the shock of being captured when one was supposed to be dead was difficult to endure.

Now in this book author tried to write about this whole Japanese POWs experience as lived by them, their captors but also by their families once they returned. It was an ambitious project and the topic is certainly fascinating. And from this book we can learn quite a lot, like about the numbers of Japanese POWs, the names of all allied camps in which they were detained in USA, Australia and British India, the work of allied translators and intelligence officers who worked with them to obtain intelligence from the POWs, the prisoner rebellions and other forms of resistance, etc.

But the point which disappointed me personally was that there is only a limited space given to the description of personal experiences of Japanese POWs during their captivity: how did they perceive Americans, Australians and British initially and how their views changed during their captivity? How did they compare what they were taught about their foes with what they learned in camps? What was the greatest cultural shock for them? What was the greatest cultural shock for their captors? What was the reaction of their families and friends when they came back home after 1945? What questions were asked to them then? What people couldn't believe about their experiences? Etc, etc.

Well, there are some limited attempts to give answers to those questions in this book - but only a handful and they are very, very superficial, which is a pity. And this is why I can not rate this book more than three stars, because even if I learned some things from it, ultimately it offered very, very little about the topic contained in the title - the anguish of surrender and how did those heavily, terribly indoctrinated, conditioned, even brain-washed people coped with it...

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

R.L.D.

A perspective not usually written about

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2014

It may need a little better editing at times, but this is a very worthwhile book to see a perspective that is not often shown. The Japanese were trained no to surrender---and most did not. But those that did were a source of useful information to help end the war. Extremely complex thoughts were going through the POW minds--and a number did manage to commit suicide after capture. The author searched out a ton of archives and many of the POWs. Some riveting reading

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Darth Maciek

Lots of information but ultimately an only partly satisfying book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2013

Verified Purchase

Totalitarian regimes tend to discourage very strongly their soldiers from surrendering, even when the situation is hopeless and they already did their best. Staline treated Soviet POWs as traitors, Mao did the same thing with Chinese POWs after Korea War and even if from 1939 to 1943 Hitler didn't always ask his soldiers to fight to death, it changed very radically in 1944 and 1945 - in those years some Wehrmacht soldiers were shot for nothing more than simply discussing the idea of surrendering...

However, with the possible exception of North Korea, no other country in modern history did a greater effort to indoctrinate its soldiers in a real cult of fight to death and absolute refusal to surrender, than Japan in the years between 1931 and 1945. In earlier Japanese wars against China (1894-95), against Russia (1904-05), against Germany in WWI (1914) or during the intervention in Russia (1918-1922) imperial soldiers were of course discouraged from surrendering, as it was considered cowardly and dishonorable, but it was nevertheless tolerated in extreme circumstances, after all ways of fighting were exhausted. However with the advent of militaristic regime soon after the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, things changed. Since then the whole nation was intensely indoctrinated and instructed that surrendering in ANY situation was more than a dishonor, but a crime against the Emperor, the country and ones family - and therefore if fighting or retreating was no more possible, soldiers and even civilians were supposed to suicide rather than let themselves be captured. And during the great wars waged by Japan between 1937 and 1945 in China, South East Asia and Pacific a large majority of soldiers and quite a lot of civilians (in places like Saipan and Okinawa) obeyed this rule.

And yet, some Japanese soldiers WERE taken alive and kept prisoners in those years. In fact, even during the first day of Pacific War, on 7 December 1941, a young ensign from Japanese Imperial Navy, Kazuo Sakamaki, was taken prisoner near Pearl Harbor after having been forced to beach his midget submarine. More prisoners from imperial forces were taken on regular basis and if some of them were Formosans and Koreans impressed forcibly into service, many were actual Japanese. The capture was for them an experience uniquely traumatising, because even if allies usually treated them well (unlike the hellish abuse of Soviet POWs by the Nazis, the cruel fate of many Germans captured by Soviets and the horrors inflicted by the Japanese to allied prisoners) the shock of being captured when one was supposed to be dead was difficult to endure.

Now in this book author tried to write about this whole Japanese POWs experience as lived by them, their captors but also by their families once they returned. It was an ambitious project and the topic is certainly fascinating. And from this book we can learn quite a lot, like about the numbers of Japanese POWs, the names of all allied camps in which they were detained in USA, Australia and British India, the work of allied translators and intelligence officers who worked with them to obtain intelligence from the POWs, the prisoner rebellions and other forms of resistance, etc.

But the point which disappointed me personally was that there is only a limited space given to the description of personal experiences of Japanese POWs during their captivity: how did they perceive Americans, Australians and British initially and how their views changed during their captivity? How did they compare what they were taught about their foes with what they learned in camps? What was the greatest cultural shock for them? What was the greatest cultural shock for their captors? What was the reaction of their families and friends when they came back home after 1945? What questions were asked to them then? What people couldn't believe about their experiences? Etc, etc.

Well, there are some limited attempts to give answers to those questions in this book - but only a handful and they are very, very superficial, which is a pity. And this is why I can not rate this book more than three stars, because even if I learned some things from it, ultimately it offered very, very little about the topic contained in the title - the anguish of surrender and how did those heavily, terribly indoctrinated, conditioned, even brain-washed people coped with it...

One person found this helpful

See all reviews

Buy new:

$26.30

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II Paperback – March 1, 2005

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

Review

Book Description

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new: $26.30

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II Paperback – March 1, 2005

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Editorial Reviews

Review

Book Description

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$26.30