Surviving Bataan and Beyond: Col. Irvin Alexander's Odyssey as a Japanese Prisoner of War

Description

Deeply moving, intensely graphic account of WWII PoWs. Includes a gut-wrenching description of the Bataan Death March. Written by a commander who suffered alongside his men On 9 April 1942, 70,000 Filipino and US soldiers under the leadership of General Jonathan M. Wainwright on the Bataan Peninsula were forced to surrender to the Japanese general Masaharu Homma. They were to be held as prisoners of war in Camp O'Donnell, roughly 100 km north from their current position. Owing to a lack of trucks, Homma decided that the next day he would march his emaciated and battle-weary captives the distance, in what became known as the Bataan Death March. Prisoners who fell behind were executed: shot, beheaded or bayoneted. Beatings were meted out arbitrarily, and 'sun treatment' - the placing of a captive without shade or water under the baking Philippine sky - was commonplace. Those who survived these horrors faced malaria, dysentery, dehydration and starvation. And conditions at Camp O'Donnell were barely an improvement. Among the prisoners was Colonel Irvin Alexander, who suffered an unimaginably horrific journey and confinement. This is the story of his survival.

Lieutenant Colonel Dominic J. Caracillo, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, is the author of The Ready Brigade of the 82nd Airborne in Desert Storm and contributed to Faces of Victory, a two-volume World War II commemoration sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars.