prisoners and prisons, japanese

Eric Lomax was in Malaya during World War II and was taken prisoner and put to work on the infamous Burma-Siam Railway After the radio he illicitly helped build was discovered, he was subjected to two years of torture. He never forgot the interpreter at these sessions. At the end of the war he returned to England. Fifty years later he learned the interpreter was still alive. Moving beyond bitterness with the help of his wife, and knowing that he had to find some peace, he found out the man was still alive and they met once again.

Olympic runner and World War II bombardier, Louis Zamperini, survived in the open ocean after his plane crashed in the Pacific.

A biography of Olympic runner and World War II bombardier, Louis Zamperini, who had been rambunctious in childhood before succeeding in track and eventually serving in the military, which led to a trial in which he was forced to find a way to survive in the open ocean after being shot down.

"In the winter of 1941, as Japanese bombs began to fall on Luzon, American Army and Navy nurses stationed in the Philippines suddenly found themselves caught in a fiery hell of war. Undaunted, they did everything in their power to aid the soldiers, setting up much needed field hospitals in the jungles of Bataan and the tunnels of Corregidor, where they tended to the most devastating injuries of war amidst the raining shells and shrapnel. But the worst was still to come: As Bataan and Corregidor fell, ninety-nine of the nurses were herded into internment camps, where they endured three years of suffering, brutality, and starvation. Here, in letters, diaries, and firsthand accounts, is the story of what really happened during those dark days, woven together into a compelling saga of women in war"--.

The author, a Dutchman who escaped the Nazis in 1940, leaving his homeland for London, then Indonesia, chronicles his three and a half years as a prisoner of war to the Japanese, forced to build a railroad through the jungle on the border of Thailand and Burma.

For the 400 American soldiers who escaped the Bataan Death March and hundreds of others who refused to surrender, escaping the Bataan Peninsula to Luzon was a life-or-death journey; among the local families who risked their lives to provide food and shelter to fleeing American soldiers were Bill and Martin Fassoth.