Bartlett

1985 · rif. 16104 — New York: William Morrow and Company 1985. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. 356 pages. Illustrations. Maps. Chronology. Notes. Sources. Appendices. Index. DJ is in a plastic sleeve with slight wear and soiling. The author was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. The author also has an M.B.A. from Syracuse University. He served as an infantry company commander during the Korean War were he was seriously wounded and was awarded the Silver Star. He was then assigned as military assistant to the Army's chief historian and worked with a team of professional historians on the writing and production of the U.S. Army's multi-volume series on World War II. The author's father died while a prisoner of the Japanese. In 1977 he visited the sites of several of the larger POW camps in the Philippines and research the voyage of the unmarked Japanese ship Oryoku Maru taking back to Japan the last of the POWs most of whom were officers. The author's father was on that ship. Since Japanese tradition taught that surrender was the ultimate loss of face and that the shame of being taken prisoner far outweighed the pain of death Japan developed no system to care for the Americans taken prisoner between 1941 and 1945. This review copy contains a copy of the press release issued by the publisher as well as a review slip. In "Surrender & Survival" author E. Bartlett Kerr does an exceptional job of detailing the American and allied experience in prisoner of war captivity by the Japanese. Kerr's book traces the chronology of the Pacific Campaign through the fall of unprepared allied forces caught beneath the wave of early Japanese successes. From Wake Island Bataan and Corregidor to the Japanese home islands Kerr documents both the heroism and atrocities that faced tens of thousands of these American British Dutch Filipinos and other POWs of the allied nations. Each chapter is broken down into sub-chapters which makes the book easy to set down and come back too. The writing and research are near perfect without bogging down the stories in trivial anecdotes or biased commentary. The book succeeds in fairly depicting the good and bad qualities of the Japanese warders as well as those of the captives. Serious crimes by either are not dismissed while less than honorable behaviors are weighed against particular extreme circumstances. Failures by relief efforts and by U.S. military actions that resulted in POW casualties are evaluated candidly citing negligence deliberate acts cultural differences lack of resources or the overall fog of war. With this book Kerr achieves an unbiased academic chronicle of the experience of WWII POWs held by the Japanese. William Morrow and Company hardcover