We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About Prisoners Of The Japanese: POWs Of World War II In
Product Description Excellent Book Review "Daws has done for the POW saga what "Schindler's List" and "The Diary of Anne Frank "did for the Holocaust."-- "The Asian Wall Street Journal""A rigorously authentical masterwork...Daws gives his chronicle a thoughtfully considered historical and psychological context . . . The ultimate effect is strangely, unexpectedly uplifting."-- Cleveland "Plain Dealer""Vividly brings to light the random killing of prisoners during the infamous Bataan Death March and the use of POW slave labor in the construction of the Burma-Siam railroad."-- "The New York Times Book Review""It is a disgrace, really, that because of political priorities this story has never been systematically recorded or documented, and hence has never been fully told to the public."-- "The Wall Street Journal""Superb. A work of consummate historical scholarship. Devastating, heartbreaking."-- "BBC Radio World Service""A powerful, disturbing, and necessary book."-- "Parameters, "U.S. Army War College quarterly"My story is told in this book. Every word is true."-- Houston Tom Wright, POW"All of us recognize how well you have captured the truth. Thanks for telling the world."-- Guy Kelnhofer, POW About the Author For fifteen years, Daws headed historical research on the Pacific region at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Australian National University. He also served as Pacific member to the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind. The author of eight previous books, including the best-selling Shoal of Time, Daws has also won international awards for documentary films. He lives with his wife in Honolulu. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One Sitting Ducks Harry Jeffries was cruising, counting the days till his divorce papers came through and he could make his getaway from San Fancisco. He was an ironworker, his trade was bucking hot rivets, and his place of employment was the Golden Gate Bridge, the south tower, hundreds of feet above the waters of the bay. In his last week on the job--his last days as a married man--the world below appeared to him like a map laid out to show his life and times, past and future. Turn one way and there was the city, the cold-water hotel where he had been living out of a suitcase, separated from his wife and little daughter, the bars where he drank when he was not working, the blind alleys in the Tenderloin where he gambled when he was not drinking. Turn the other way and there was the blue Pacific, stretching off to the west--and the instant he was single again, that was where he was headed, over the horizon and out. On the stroke of noon, August 21, 1941, his big moment came up, and all the married men who worked on his level of the tower cheered and beat on the steel girders with their sledges and wrenches, wedding bells in reverse, as he climbed down off the bridge, free at last. He and his friend Oklahoma Atkinson had their ship's passage booked for that same afternoon, and before the day shift on the tower downed tools they were sailing in style out through the Golden Gate. They were going to be gone for nine months--which would make it June of 1942 when they came cruising back, flush with money, set for life. They had it all worked out. They had met at the building trades labor temple. Harry was hanging around waiting for a poker game to materialize when Oklahoma came walking in with his little tin suitcase, looking all wide-eyed and countrified. They got to talking, and they clicked right off. They were a pair, a couple of healthy young physical specimens, the same age, twenty-six, the same height and weight, six feet one, one hundred ninety-five pounds, full of beans, purpose-built for bridge building. They organized things so that they could work the same shift in the same gang. And they started running around together after hours, nightclubbing along North Beach, picking up women. Harry was the date make
