Reviews (1)

This Book Has Powerful Impact
If there is any doubt as to why women (or even men) should be against war, the forty personal war experiences related in this book will resolve that doubt. The book's impact is extremely powerful. Few could remain unmoved orcontinue to be indifferent to the cruelty of war after reading theseaccounts. But why should anyone, including those who are are alreadycommitted to the antiwar cause, subject themselves to such an excruciating,and at times horrifying, reading experience? For the simple reason thatopposition to war must be grounded, not in abstractions, but in life, inthe experience of the human race. For the simple reason that genuineantipathy toward war must be based on empathy, empathy with people who arenot family or neighbors, but people from a different place and time.

Thewar forming the background for the book is World War II, with somereferences to the Korean and Vietnam wars. The contributors are allJapanese women from all walks of life. Their recollections, divided intoten categories according to the nature of the experience, include accountsof women trying to make their way back to Japan amid postwar chaos inforeign lands (Manchuria, Korea, the Philippines, Sakhalin); and accountsof nurses, of teachers, of women struggling to provide for themselves andtheir families in the ruins of a defeated Japan, of victims of theHiroshima bombing, of women who prostituted themselves to Americanservicemen, of women who contracted tragic marriages and liaisons withAmerican soldiers or who were the alienated offspring of such marriages, ofwomen widowed by war, and of women who overcame seemingly insurmountablewartime obstacles to emerge triumphant. Although each woman's story isuniquely tragic, there is a common thread: each has become a woman againstwar. ... Read more

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A diary from ancient japan
Murasaki Shikibu was one of the most active and brilliant ladies at the Heian court. Her best-known work, "Genji monogatari", is a masterpiece of japanese litarature. But, apart from "The tale of Genji", she has left us her diary and poetic memoirs. In this "translation and study" (a text full of notes and commentary) professor Bowring, through shrewd remarks and penetrating analysis, shows us a world made of ceremonies, depicted screens, scented essences, poetry, love affairs, colours, silks and brocades, evoking a series of vivid and moving impressions. I like this book because it's a great mirror of a wonderful microcosm from a time now past. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Inspiring biography about an American role-model.
"Kristi Yamaguchi: Artist on Ice" by Shiobhan Donahue captivates the mind, as it depicts the wonderful career of one of figure skating's best; Kristi Yamaguchi.It is a wonderful book for high school students asit is well written and portrays Kristi "in a most illustriouslight."I personally have never read a more concise, and accurateportrayal of a sports figure, and Shiobhan does an excellent job at doingthis.

It isthe best book on her ever written!!!!
It is accurate, well researched and the black and white photos have abeautiful and artistic flair. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Life in a Japanese valley.
First off, let me say that the author gives a very honest and emotional picture of ONE Japanese valley. The fact is that Japan's ideals and norms can't be judged by the study of one village OR two villages OR three villages. Also, the characters are, in some cases, composites of more than one person, names have been changed and so on, but the events DID happen.
After saying all that I have to state that this is a great book. It is full of humor, passion, happy interaction and tragic events. And, yes, lots of drinking. Smoking too.
The book is based on three diaries that Brian Moeran kept during his four years living in Japan. The book is broken down into three parts, each made up of chapters which are either one sentence long to many pages long and this gives the story an interesting and timeless flow. In fact, the book is only 254 pages yet seems much longer.

Four years of close contact with Japanese neighbors
Brian Moeran and his family spent four years in a rural Japanese community, watching as pots are made, attending school award ceremonies, community festivals and funerals, but mostly listening (and drinking, a great deal of drinking) as their neighbors talked about their lives, their families and their communities.

Moeran is an anthropologist, and was doing his field work in a neighboring community at the time, and he brings an anthropologist's observant eye to his diary of daily life in rural Japan.

This book compares quite favorably to Alan Booth's classic _The roads to Sata_, and John Morley's _Pictures from the water trade_ in the ``a gaijin looks at Japan'' genre. If anything, it improves on those works by telling the tale of one community through sixteen seasons, and being peopled by individuals with whom the author formed lasting relationships. Further, Moeran's Japanese wife provides us with an occasional peek into the Japanese woman's world that is missing from most other books of this type.

The community Moeran describes is small and isolated. It is not representative of Japan as a whole (Moeran, in his introduction, tells how urban Japanese friends found his tales of rural Japan almost as exotic as a westerner does). Some may consider this to be a drawback, but I did not. The book still introduces us to some of the aspects of ``Japanese-ness''. ... Read more

Book Description

A fascianting account of the life and methods of Ino (1745 - 1818), pioneer surveyor of Japan. A successful brewer, he learned his art after age fifty. The accuracy of his maps of the Japanese coasts astonished Europeans and rendered detailed mapping by the British Navy unnecessary. Ito is a much prized cult figure of Japanese engineers even in these days. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Great eyewitness account
Having recently learned that my uncle was a member of the 1st Cavalry, 5th Regiment and part of the "Flying Column" which liberated Santo Tomas in Feb 45, I was fascinated by Mrs. Van Sickle's eyewitness account of her time in the camp, and of her retelling of the evening of liberation. Her storytelling STYLE isn't particular gripping, but her STORY itself IS gripping and she tells it with an honest, informative approach.

A Wonderful Memoir of Struggle
Emily Van Sickle has written a wonderful memoir of her struggle during World War II to survive internment by the Japanese in the Philippines. Interned in Santo Tomas University with her husband, Emily chronicles the daily boredom, increasing starvation, and then the unbridled excitement of liberation by U.S. troops.

Anyone interested in first-person wartime stories should read this book. It adds a new dimension to World War II stories of internment--this is unlike the experiences of European Jews and of Japanese-Americans, but still gives the reader pause to wonder at the atrocities of war. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Special Book
This is a book that will move you. Eric Lomax is a man of depth, intelligence and keen perception. His writing is vivid, his story one that you can't put down. I strongly urge anyone interested in what the POW experience is like, and anyone interested in a powerful story, to buy and read this book.

The human side of war
In this work of Eric Lomax, one finds direct contrasts between brutality and meekness, revenge and forgiveness. The author was a signals officer in the Pacific Theater of the war and was captured after the fall of Singapore. He was then sent to the POW camps involved in the construction of the then Siam- Burma railway (Remember the "Bridge Over the River Kwai"?). There he had first-hand experience of the Japanese's brutal treatment of POWs, himself included. He never forgot the face of the Japanese interpreter accompanying the soldier who beat him to a pulp. He narrates how he had to cope psychologically with normal life after the war, how his wartime experiences kept on haunting him. Coincidentally, he chances upon some information regarding a Japanese trying to make reparations for his wartime brutalities, and indeed confirms that this was his former tormentor. After a lot of soul-searching, he finally meets the Japanese in a war memorial beside the Kwai River bridge, and the process of reconciliation and healing begins. A very touching story of man's capacity to perhaps not to forget, but yes, to forgive. ... Read more

Book Description

The time is 1945, not long after Jack Elkins has returned from a prison camp in Japan to his hometown of Oakesdale, Washington. An autumn evening finds him before a gathering of townspeople clamoring to hear about his experiences.Jack is in turmoil. What they really want, he senses, is nice, neat stories of heroes who beat the odds. They want "blood without spatters" and death with dignity.What can he tell them? Burned forever in his mind are images of Japanese blood staining blue Manila Bay; of maggots assaulting the corpse of a buddy; of prisoner after prisoner relegated to small wooden boxes holding their cremated remains. Jack is unable to talk about what happened during his three years in Japanese prison camps. "There is no middle ground," in his estimation. "You either tell them all or tell them nothing." Standing up to the microphone, he whispers barely ten words to the audience, then sits down--and tries for the next half-century to forget.

Author Bob Wodnik has masterfully compiled the stories of several World War II prisoners-of-war into a non-fiction historical work with the feel of a novel. Readers glimpse the unrelenting physical agony and mental anguish of these young heroes as they struggle for survival, and then, following years of captivity, make the difficult and awkward return to civilization.

Intertwined throughout these gripping descriptions are letters hoarded by a quiet night clerk at the seedy Strand Hotel in Everett, Washington, that supply a counterpoint of hometown life back in the states. The patriotism, the rationing, the blackouts, and the missing loved ones all indelibly altered those left stateside, and provide insight into a generation of Americans. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Must Read!!
For anyone who is interested in the accounts of these brave men, this author has the ability to translate their memories into a fasinating and heartfelt read.

He put's you as much as is possible "at Corregidor, Bataan, and the infamous Zero Ward at Cabanatuan with Henry Chamberlain. Jack, Galen, Hanson, Johannsen,,, hero's all. It is to men like these we truly owe our right to walk in Freedom.

The book also gives you an account of what is happening at home which is an important part of the telling of the whole story. The auhor's command of the descriptive phrase makes people like Gracie, and Ed come alive. "the window in the room must have looked out onto a sky hanging so low in winter it seemed to scrape bricks from the faces of Seattle's tallest buildings".

Captured Honor .. thank you for capturing the memories for us before they were lost and faded...

An Important History Of The War in The Pacific
In Soldier's Home, Hemingway's fictional account of a soldier returning from the Great War, the protagonist struggles to communicate his experience to the residents of his small town:

"At first Krebs, who had been at Belleau Wood, Soissons, the Champagne, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne did not want to talk about the war at all. Later he felt the need to talk but no one wanted to hear about it. His town had heard too many atrocity stories to be thrilled by actualities."

Captured Honor, a work of non-fiction, begins in similarly painful territory, with a moving description of Jack Elkins' homecoming after service in the War in the Pacific. Elkins had an extremely bad war as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines and Japan, the details of which are frankly told in author Wodnik's compelling account. At war's end, Elkins finds himself pushed to the microphone on the stage of his small town church before an audience that includes his grammar school principal, old girlfriends, the hardware store clerk and his parents, among others. Their eyes search him for clues as to whether he remains the high school quarterback they remember, or has instead been transformed into "some sanitarium freak returned home to mom and dad."

Like Krebs, Elkins finds words inadequate to describe the enormity of his wartime experience. "You either tell all, or tell nothing" he thinks, and elects to keep the awful details to himself for more than 50 years.

Fortunately for us author Wodnik, a good listener and a fine writer, is able to engage Elkins and others who suffered as prisoners of the Japanese in their painful memories. Elkins, who fought bravely at Corregidor, survived the brutal Cabanatuan POW camp, and ended the war as a slave laborer working in the Mitsubishi shipyard in Yokohama, is a compelling subject, an ordinary man enduring extraordinary brutality in wartime. The book includes stirring memories of others including Fran Agnes, an apple picker turned Army aircraft mechanic who witnessed the Japanese destruction of Clark Field and survived the Bataan Death March and Henry Chamberlin, a medic, who is dispatched by his captors to Japan on a Hellship in conditions of unspeakable squalor.

Wodnik's important history is interspersed with scenes from the home front in Everett Washington, such as Veronica Lake flying in to sell war bonds to the star-struck citizenry. The correspondence of Ed Fox, an Everett hotel clerk and book fiend whose deepest influence seems to have been Dashiell Hammett, shows us the underside of a town emerging from the Depression, and fully engaged in wartime production of Boeing aircraft.

Splendid reporting, 60 years after
Captured Honor is a beautifully written book that presents with unsentimental empathy the stories of nine Americans who fought on Bataan and Corregidor. It juxtaposes these stories with an account of what was happening on the home scene -- specifically, in Everett, Washington, a town busy with war work -- as recorded in the diaries of a bookish hotel clerk. The juxtaposition works; it offers relief, and with these stories, I needed it.

Recently I learned much about the POW experience on the Bataan death march, on the "hell ships" and in the camps in the Philippines and Japan when I found a privately published 1959 novel written by a survivor. To me the other book was fantastical, so hard to believe that I started reading other veterans' narratives in an effort to make sense of it. Now Wodnik's nonfiction account has confirmed just about everything in it.

I think Captured Honor is an essential contribution to the history of the Pacific war -- and that Wodnik must be a gifted interviewer; these are often horrific, unglamorous memories that might have remained unrecorded. Time is running out for gathering these kinds of oral histories. But as hard as it is to read them, I am grateful for this book. ... Read more

Book Description

An account of the extraordinary strength and courage exhibited by americans under the extreme and seemingly unending stress of three and a half years of captivity under the Japanese on Bataan. Photographs and maps. ... Read more

Reviews (10)

The American Holocaust of World War II
Donald Knox wrote an excellent oral history of the experiences of the survivors of the surrender of Bataan and Corregidor. He did this while many of these men (now in the 70s and 80s) were still able to remember vividly their experiences. They detail in their own moving words the starvation, ill-treatment, executions and torture suffered in 3-1/2 years of imprisonment (Indeed, the famous beach scene from "Saving Private Ryan" could have been replicated on the Bataan Death March, only it was Japanese soldiers doing the dirty work to helpless prisoners). One statistic is telling: less than 2% of Americans captured by the Germans perished in captivity. Over HALF of Americans captured by the Japanese failed to return. Knox details how normal American soldiers sometime descended into almost-animal behavior in order to survive. It has been my great privilege to meet and write with many of these quiet, grandfatherly heroes. Their only wish is to have their sacrifices remembered. Knox did an outstanding job of accomplishing this. How about a "younger" version for students? This is history that needs to be remembered, just like Hiroshima.

A Definite Must Read
I wanted to learn more about the Death March and I found this book among my husbands books. I started reading and I couldn't put it down. From the very start of the events on the Bataan Peninsula to the liberation of the POW's...everything is described in this book.... how the POW's were treated, everything they had to endure. These first hand accounts from those who were there tell the real story of the Death March. It's a definite must read for anyone..and a necessary addition to your library.

A First-Hand Account of the Atrocities of War
Author Donald Knox has taken personal narratives from over sixty survivors of the Bataan death march and combined them into this gripping story of the struggle to survive. On April 9, 1942, the penninsula of Bataan fell into Japanese hands. The surrendering Americans were then subjected to a ninety mile march without adequate food or water. Men were shot and bayonetted for sport by the Japanese. Once the Americans reached their prison camp, they were herded into a tiny area with only two water spigots. Hundreds of men died each day from dysentery, malaria, and starvation. Many healthy men were soon reduced to skeletons. Others simply refused to go on any further. Still others found that the only way they could survive was to find a friend to help them get through.

After two to three years of living in this nightmare, the American forces returned to liberate the Philippines. Fearing that the prisoners would be liberated by the returning Americans, the Japanese loaded the surviving POWs into "Hell Ships"; massively overcrowded freighters to be transferred to the Japanese home islands. Some of the men went mad, while others drowned when their ships were sunk by American submarines. Once in Japan, the men were forced to work long hours in Japanese factories and mines while still receiving little in the way of food or medical care. The conditions in the Japanese labor camps were as unimaginable as they were in the Philippines; little food and water and constant beatings by the Japanese guards.

I've read several oral history books about World War II, and this book is one of the best. Knox lets the survivors' stories create this book. I was in awe of the horrible conditions that these men were forced to survive under. It is a true testament to the human spirit that these men were able to overcome the merciless beatings and the extermely meager food and water rations they received to survive and return home. Anyone who questions why the Americans used the atomic bomb should read about the Bataan prisoners and what they were forced to endure. I highly recommend this fine piece of oral history. Read it and understand what some of the true heroes of World War II did for their country.

GRIPPING ... COULDN'T PUT THE BOOK DOWN!!!!
As a descendant of soldiers who were in the Philippine Scouts (they survived the March by escaping into the jungle), I found the first hand accounts of Americans who were there fascinating. It gave me a feeling of being there.
It's a story about survival and the indomitable spirit of man.
It's amazing what men will do to survive in stressful conditions and adversity. It separates the men from the boys, the strong from the weak.
I'm not accustomed to reading books in the first hand account style, but I found it more interesting to read the text as opposed to the typical factual style that a history book would have.
This a great read for you military history buffs out there! It's almost as good as sitting down with a vet and hearing him telling it to you.

Hoped it would be better.
Although it contained a great deal of detail I found it to be repetitive. Good read though. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (2)

Aren't titles rather hokey?
After celebrating a golden age that was hundreds of years ahead of other civilized nations, women in Japan quickly fell from the cultural vanguard they had enjoyed during the Heian and were silent throughout the succession of bakufu governments that ended with the Meiji restoration in 1868. Ichiyo is widely credited as one of the first female voices to re-emerge after this extended silence. Though her career was cut short by her early death, several of her short stories are still in wide circulation in Japan and elsewhere. The beauty of this book is that it not only includes her own writings but also a rather deftly crafted biography. It has been my experience that non-Japanophiles tend to shy away from Japanese literature for lack of understanding the culture. The inclusion of the biography in this work makes it more approachable for those wishing to delve into the world of Japanese literature without undertaking a study of Japan's history and culture.

One of the great classics of world literature
Deservedly, this 19th century's woman's writings are considered some of the greatest in the world. Robert Danly has done a wonderful job of bringing Ichiyo to us. Out of a different time and world, he has still managed to make her accessible to an English reader.

The first half of the book is devoted to biographical material about Japan's unique and memorable real-life heroine. The second half presents nine of her short stories in translation. Each story its own literary jewel.

I've read thousands of books and this is one of my most treasured. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A great book
This book is almost perfect. It is a story of Eiji Yoshikawa's life as a child and as an adult. It will rouse all readers and completely absorb them into the story, just like all other stories by Eiji Yoshikawa. ... Read more

Book Description

This groundbreaking work of oral history captures for the first time ever the remarkable story of ordinary Japanese people during World War II. In a sweeping panorama, Haruko Taya and Theodore Cook take us from the Japanese attacks on China in the 1930s to the Japanese homefront during the inhuman raids on Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, offering the first glimpses of how this century's most violent conflict affected the lives of the Japanese population. Japan At War is a monumental work of history--one to which Americans and Japanese will turn for decades to come. ... Read more

Reviews (13)

Understanding the Orient
World War Two was the most significant event of the 20th century. This book vastly increases one's understanding of that war. After reading it, you will feel as if you had sat down with dozens of Japanese war survivors, who share their memories of that conflict.

Some of the interviews do not ring true--such as the Japanese officer who says they killed only a few hundred Chinese civilians in Nanking.

Other interviews make one understand why the Koreans hate the Japanese.

Excellent comprehensive account of the war in Japan.
I came across this book by accident in a bookshop in Tokyo. It immediately seemed a good read, and better than all other books I'd read as it took in a broad range of people, not just concentrating on military men. While there is a little too much inclusion of people who were, or later became, prominent in some way, this book is an important addition to studies of the Second World War. It deserves to be placed alongside other works based on oral history, such as Angus Calder's The People's War, and Stud Terkel's The Good War. I found this book a valuable resource for part of my MA: indeed, the introduction to each chapter, and the broad range of experiences make it an excellent college level text, as well as a good read.

We forget Japanese cruelty toward others.
I was a kid in China during World War 2. (I was born in 1935. The brutal Japanese invasion of China began in 1937.) I know it's "incorrect" of me, but I find it hard to sympathize with the Japanese or with those who sympathize with the Japanese. Yes, they suffered, as is clearly shown in this book, but what about the horrendous suffering they inflicted on others?

I still remember vividly the day in 1945 when the news came thru the radio that America had invented a bomb, only the size of a man's fist (so the story went), which was so powerful that just one of these bombs can wipe out an entire city, and America had just dropped one on a Japanese city! I still remember the wild rejoicing. We all assumed that America, the country of miracles, would make hundreds of these bombs and drop them all over Japan and wipe that country off the face of the earth.

To this day, every August 6th, I celebrate Hiroshima Day.

YOU HAVE TO GET THIS BOOK!
We read this book in a Non Fiction class that I took. I never would have known to read it otherwise, but I couldn't put it down. Every single story in there is shocking and amazing. This is the stuff they don't teach you in school. The stories are written by bomb victims from Hiroshima, villagers who were told to run at the enemy with grenades and become human bombs, doctors who preformed horrible opperations on the chinese during their occupation, wives of kamakaze pilots, and so many more. I'd recommend it to anyone, and have given it as a gift several times. If you like to know the story behind the "story" then this book is perfect.

Destined to become a classic
There is no lack of oral histories of the Second World War as seen by American, British, German, or even Russian participants. It is another matter when one comes to the Japanese. This book is the first important oral history to be presented exclusively from the Japanese side.

The Cooks present dozens of oral histories that are virtually unedited, presenting each interviewee's story just as it was told. The oral histories are grouped into chapters roughly by time period or theme, and each chapter has a succinct introduction that puts the oral histories that follow into their wider historical perspective. Each oral history is introduced with a very brief description of the interviewee, with a minimum of footnotes, often to writings previously published by the interviewee himself.

Because the histories are presented verbatim, one reads each of these stories of the war precisely as the teller of the story wants to remember it, complete with biases and fifty years of selective memory. Being already familiar with the broad historical events of the war, I found this utterly fascinating. There is the convicted war criminal who denies the Rape of Nanking took place, and adamantly refuses to admit that the white objects on the ground in his own collection of photographs are actually dead corpses. Then there is the military doctor who "remembered" performing practice surgery on unanaesthetized Chinese prisoners only after four years of Chinese Communist brainwashing. There's good reason to believe that such atrocities occurred, but did the Chinese force the doctor to recall a repressed memory of a real even, or did they just implant a false memory?

There is the Japanese prisoner of war who helped write propaganda leaflets for the Americans and who recalls his time in America as a POW as one of the happiest in his life. And then there is the Okinawan who tells of crushing his own mother's skull with a rock, because the Japanese military had convinced his family that the Americans were demons who would do unspeakable things to anyone unfortunate enough to fall into their hands alive.

One gets a sense of a people that were totally disconnected from the real war situation, and of a military that completely desensitized its members. There is a dreamlike, or perhaps I should say nightmarish, quality to almost all the interviews. The power of the book lies in the juxtaposition of so many recollections, filled with so many contradictory observations. Sometimes the contradictions are found in the same history, as is the case for the nurse who believes the Americans used poison gas in the battle for Okinawa, but who also professes astonishment at the excellent treatment she received after falling into their hands.

The accounts of the firebombing of Tokyo or the atomic attack on Hiroshima are naturally painful for an American to read. What is astonishing is how little malice the victims feel towards their attackers. There is one victim from Hiroshima who expresses horror that the United States still maintains a nuclear arsenal, but for most of the others the reaction is more like a shrug: "It was war."

This powerful book deserves to become a classic, alongside "All Quiet on the Western Front", "The Diary of a Young Girl," or "With The Old Breed." ... Read more