For the first four months of 1942, US, Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history.

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

soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle

of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of

Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and

Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history.

The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and

Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original

book. From then until the Japanese surrendered in August

1945, the prisoners of war suffered an ordeal of unparalleled

cruelty and savagery: forty-one months of captivity, starvation

rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture--far

from the machinations of General Douglas MacArthur.

The Normans bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage

and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a figure out

of Hemingway: a young cowboy turned sketch artist from Montana

who joined the army to see the world. Juxtaposed against

Steele's story and the sobering tale of the Death March and its

aftermath is the story of a number of Japanese soldiers.

The result is an altogether new and original World War II book:

it exposes the myths of military heroism as shallow and inadequate;

it makes clear, with great literary and human power, that

war causes suffering for people on all sides

Publisher:

Farrar Straus Giroux

ISBN:

9780374272609

Publication date:

June 2009

Length:

233mm

Width:

154mm

Thickness:

37mm

Weight:

744g

Pages:

463

Illustrations:

Illustrated

Illustrated:

Illustrated

Assiduous account of the Japanese conquest of the Philippines in World War II and the fate of the American garrison there.The death march after Bataan fell in April 1942 has been a byword for the worst warfare can bring to a soldier. Some 76,000 American and Filipino soldiers surrendered, and their Japanese enemies despised them for doing so. The surrender was, write the Normans (New York Univ.), the single largest defeat in American military history. The subsequent forced march of the prisoners, many of them ill and wounded and all of them malnourished, led to more than 10,000 deaths. By the authors' account, the Americans were a mixed lot, poorly equipped, trained and led - which does not square with many other accounts of the early war in the Philippines, and which will doubtless excite discussion in military-history circles. What is certain is that the Japanese soldiers were little better off, short on rations, beaten and abused by their officers and marching everywhere, since, their doctrine stated, a drop of gas is as precious as a drop of blood. The Normans take pains to present the Japanese side of the story, and some readers with direct memories of events may find their account too sympathetic, especially their portrayal of the commanding general, Homma Masaharu, who was executed for war crimes after the Allied victory. Yet their story says a great deal about the inglorious - and rightly unglorified - aspects of war, from the sense of shame that settled on the American commander at the moment of surrender to the terrible years that lay ahead. Drawing on the memories of participants on both sides, the Normans provide a careful history of a ghastly episode that still reverberates.Highly recommended for students of the Pacific War. (Kirkus Reviews)