Tears in the Darkness: the Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath - gebunden oder broschiert

A MAJOR NEW BOOK ABOUT WORLD WAR I I, IN THE TRADITION OF "ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT "AND "HIROSHIMA" For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese <p>soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle <p>of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of <p>Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and <p>Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. <p>The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and <p>Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original <p>book. From then until the Japanese surrendered in August <p>1945, the prisoners of war suffered an ordeal of unparalleled <p>cruelty and savagery: forty-one months of captivity, starvation <p>rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture--far <p>from the machinations of General Douglas MacArthur. <p>The Normans bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage <p>and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a figure out <p>of Hemingway: a young cowboy turned sketch artist from Montana <p>who joined the army to see the world. Juxtaposed against <p>Steele's story and the sobering tale of the Death March and its <p>aftermath is the story of a number of Japanese soldiers. <p>The result is an altogether new and original World War II book: <p>it exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate; <p>it makes clear, with great literary and human power, that <p>war causes suffering for people on all sides <p>