Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath

Michael Norman

Language: English

Pages: 463

ISBN: 0312429703

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


For the first four months of 1942, American, Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought America's first major land battle of World War II: the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the single largest defeat in American military history. This was only the beginning. Until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered forty-one months of unparalleled cruelty and savagery. Michael and Elizabeth Norman bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a young cowboy and aspiring sketch artist from Montana who joins the army to see the world and ends up on a death march. Juxtaposed against Steele's story are the heretofore untold accounts of Japanese soldiers who struggled to maintain their humanity while carrying out their superiors' inhuman commands.

Tears in the Darkness is an altogether new look at World War II that exposes the myths of war and shows the extent of suffering and loss on both sides.

Staghound Armored Car 1942-62 (New Vanguard, Volume 159)

The Bloody Forest: Battle for the Hurtgen: September 1944-January 1945

The Eastern Front, 1941-45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pelz said, “but I never practiced.” There was a pause, as if the man was scribbling something. “I’ve got your name down,” he said. “I’m not fooling around with this order. This came from Big Shot himself.” [Pelz, Journal, December 4, 1945] Major English and I have moved heaven and earth to get the [new] orders [to report to the judge advocate general’s office] revoked . . . This setup [here in Lingayen] is too magnificent to leave . . . Manila doesn’t sound attractive, and I’m too close to.

Gentlemen of the commission, cannot be denied. They cannot be overlooked. Someone had to be responsible. That someone is this accused . . . He is not the fine humanitarian soul [the defense] would have you believe . . . General Homma, as he has said, is morally responsible. I submit he is responsible in every sense of the word . . . Hard as it is for anyone to pass judgment on his fellow man, there is but one plain, clear duty for the members of this commission, and that is to find this accused.

Unconquered Enemy: Japan’s Doctrine of Racial Superiority and World Conquest. New York: Viking, 1945. Bank, Bert. Back from the Living Dead: The Infamous Death March and 33 Months in a Japanese Prison. Tuscaloosa, AL: Major Bert Bank, 1945. Bartsch, William. “Was MacArthur Ill-Served by His Air Force Commanders in the Philippines?” Air Power History 44, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 44–63. Batemen, J. C. Interview with Major Achille Carlisle Tisdelle, January 22, 1946. USMHI, Morton Collection, box 5.

Willstater, Garth Wilson, Fred Wolf, Laurel Wycoff. We also thank Ken Heller, who served with the occupation forces in Japan in 1945. We appreciate the support of our colleagues at New York University. NYU has been good to our family. The university generously supported our research and provided an education for our two sons. It has been both our sponsor and our sanctuary. We offer special thanks to our students. We hope they see their lessons in these pages. Our agent, Esther Newberg, has.

Mountain, while death is lighter than a feather”), die with the hohei on Quinauan Point, but he had failed, and that failure turned his survival into an act of treachery. Horyo! Prisoner of war. His mother, father, brothers, friends, neighbors—all Ayabe would know, or so he imagined. His shame would become his family’s scandal. (“There goes the mother of Kiyoshi, the horyo!”) The family would have to disown him. In a society where everyone was somehow connected, he would suddenly be estranged.

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