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THE AIRMEN AND THE HEADHUNTERS
By: Judith M. Heimann
A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II
Harcourt
October 2007
On Sale: October 8, 2007
304 pages
ISBN: 0151014345
EAN: 9780151014347
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
November 1944: Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleetβand were shot down. When they cut themselves loose from their parachutes, they were scattered across the islandβs mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently materialized out of the jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? Or would the Dayaks risk vicious reprisals to get the airmen safely home? The tribal leadersβ unprecedented decision led to a desperate game of hide-and-seek, and, ultimately, the return of a long-renounced ritual: head-hunting. A cinematic survival story that features a bamboo airstrip built on a rice paddy, a mad British major, and a blowpipe-wielding army that helped destroy one of the last Japanese strongholds, The Airmen and the Headhunters is a gripping, you-are-there journey into the remote world and forgotten heroism of the Dayaks.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - November 10, 2007
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