Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
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- ISBN13: 9780312429706
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
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 finished 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 tale 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 tale 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.
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 suffering of unparalleled cruelty and savagery: forty-one months of captivity, starvation rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture—far from the machinations of All-purpose Douglas MacArthur.
The Normans bring to the tale 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 tale and the sobering tale of the Death March and its aftermath is the tale 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 fantastic literary and human power, that war causes suffering for people on all sides
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This book describes the Bataan Death March from a personal viewpoint using the lives and feelings of real people. It describes the stupidity that led up to the march, and puts one right into scene. My only complaint is that the book carries on a bit too far after the war is over and the survivors rescued. Man’s inhumanity to man is incredible.Tears in the Darkness: The Tale of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Sort of like the movie “Letters From Iwo Jima,” this book gave me a chance to learn about the average Japanese soldier and to start to know why Japan did what it did during the war. Nice read that will keep you turning the page.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Everyone who has read “Tears in the Darkness” by Michael Norman calls it the best of the best, and I agree. Here is what I know about the events that led to the horriffic Bataan Death March.
On Pearl Harbor day, church bells pealed from cupolas in Manila, the sounds cresting, suspended, and six-inch long monkeys went swinging from lily to lily as if the flowers were trees. In Malacanan Palace, cleaning men polished the ballroom floor by skating over it on banana leaves, chefs prepared sweets called bibingka, and florists filled vases with fragrant purple frangipani and yellow butterfly orchids. Tonight the twelve hundred men of the 27th Bombardment Group would host a glamorous party.
On what would be the last night of American Manila, a laughing crowd swayed on the dance floor, uniformed men swapped tales and downed their whiskey. Just after midnight, the band played:
Excellent morning, excellent morning, we danced the whole night through
Excellent morning, excellent morning to you
Douglas MacArthur swept out of the party, building elaborate gestures of farewell to his admirers, and returned to his penthouse apartment. At three in the morning, the telephone screamed into his sleep.
“The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor,” an aide gasped. “They devastated our Pacific Fleet.”
MacArthur jumped out of bed, looking as if he had hit an electric fence. He quickly shaved and dressed in uniform, took stock of himself in the mirror. His waist had thickened, and he slicked his hair across a balding head. He had steely eyes and large-pored skin, well tanned and glistening with lotion and a row of large square teeth huddled behind thin, dry lips. His narrow face formed a rectangle.
He called his Chief of Staff, Richard Sutherland, and a few key advisors for a meeting at headquarters. They came at a dash. Sutherland warned that the Japanese would bomb the Philippines next, and MacArthur needed to get his planes in the air and out of reach.
Though keen to gloriously defend the Philippines and win more medals, MacArthur answered there was no hasten as far as he was concerned. The Japanese would not strike before January 1, so he would disperse the aircraft later on. He lit his corncob pipe.
The flabbergasted Sutherland desperately clarified that Japan would strike immediately to avoid the usual January storms that hamper visibility. Clark Meadow’s planes should straight away head north to bomb Formosa or south out of danger. Captain Joseph McMicking agreed.
“Stand by and wait,” MacArthur answered, twirling the pearl handled pistol he permanently packed.
Sutherland averted his eyes; he had never been able to suffer MacArthur’s fixed stare for long. He looked out on Manila Bay toward the island of Corregidor and, on its right, the Bataan Peninsula. If the Japanese invaded and overran Manila, MacArthur could refuge to the peninsula and from there to the island. He urged the all-purpose to quickly stock the two areas with ammunition, medical supplies and gas, while they still could.
MacArthur raised his fist, and, in a shrill, piercing voice, proclaimed that his men would never refuge. After all, he had spent the past four years training them. He started pacing, his arms moving back and into the world, while he orated about his loyal troops, describing their impregnable defense strategies. They would thrash the enemy back into the sea in a matter of days.
Sutherland stood, stricken-looking, his mouth aslant. He knitted his brows, a habit he had developed, and no marvel. MacArthur, he bitterly reflected, listened only selectively, at best. After the war, he wrote a letter to Claire Booth Luce, adage, “When MacArthur said to stand by and wait, I was closer to crying from sheer rage than I had ever been in my life.”
Nine hours later, a long, bright flock of Japanese planes streaked across the sky and attacked Clark Meadow where our entire force of three–dozen B-17 bombers conveniently nestled wingtip to wingtip. Molten metal smoked on the airstrip as the lords of the rising sun flew back to their carriers, and terrified Filipinos ran for take in, shouting, “Los Japanese, they bomb, they bomb!”
Two days later, the Japanese bombed Manila Bay until the antennae and funnels of sunken ships bobbed above the surface of the water like crosses. Chaos rippled through the city as looters roamed the streets, hotels emptied, and the last army horse unit, the 26th Cavalry, rode out of Fort McKinley. As the horses and their riders galloped north to head off the Japanese, the Filipinos waved excellent-bye to them.
Reading about Douglas MacArthur’s conduct during World War II becomes curiouser and curiouser as you go along, at least that was my experience. Brilliant, charismatic, worshipped and despised, he could be noble or despicable. Eventually I chose the tangle of his character, though obscured by intellect and dazzle, defined the man.
Sorry to say, his aver that he did not need to stock Bataan and Corregidor turned out to be another tragic error. On December 22, Japanese troops invaded the main Philippine island of Luzon, and in no time, MacArthur’s men beat a refuge to Bataan and Corregidor. Lacking adequate provisions, they soon started dying from starvation and malaria, as well as enemy firepower.
MacArthur customary headquarters in the dimly lit Malinta Tunnel on Corregidor and holed up there, only once visiting Bataan to “hearten” his men. To the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” they sang:
Dugout Doug MacArthur lies ashaking on the rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock
Dugout Doug is eatin’ of the best food he can find
And his troops go starving on.
Ignoring them, he busied himself issuing 109 press releases describing himself as “The Lion of Luzon” and “going in everywhere.” With the tenacity of a glide arresting a window, he kept repeating his mantra. Pair an keen press with a man enamored of self–expression, and you have a fine romance.
On February 22, 1942, Roosevelt chose the all-purpose could not save the Philippines and ordered him to place for Australia to plot a counteroffensive. MacArthur keenly agreed, and off he went. Some staff members accompanied him, the Filipinos motivated by a hope of helping their country, more than worship of him personally.
He wanted his wife and son to place Corregidor in a submarine, but she said she had drunk from the same cup as her spouse and would stay by his side.
When his P-T Boat made it through the Japanese blockade to an airstrip, he regretted abandoning his men, so, once safely in Australia, he raised his fist and screamed at the waiting press, “I give the people of the Philippines my sacred pledge: I shall return!”
Water had soaked the “scrambled-egg” cap he had nicknamed with the fondness he accorded everything involving himself, so he promptly sent it to a hat stretcher.
– Ann Seymour leader of “I’ve Permanently Loved You,” a right tale of WW II in the Pacific
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The people who lived through this were amazingly strong. They needed help when they returned to society. A book that should be read to remind us of the hurt of war to the participants and to persons who deal with them after.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
This is a fantastic past book concerning the Bataan Death March and the hardships endured by US POW in the Phillipines during WWII.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5