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The Story Of The Bataan Death March And Its Aftermath
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
June 2009
On Sale: June 9, 2009
480 pages
ISBN: 0374272603
EAN: 9780374272609
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was Americaโs 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 tortureโfar 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 Steeleโs 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.
 Media BuzzDiane Rehm Show - NPR - June 22, 2009
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