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Gavan Daws
Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific Paperback – Illustrated, January 16, 1996
by Gavin Daws (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 104 ratings
4.1 on Goodreads
199 ratings
BSL
LOCATION ITEMS
Barr Smith Library
Available , Main collection ; 940.547252 D272p 2008
(1 copy, 1 available, 0 requests)
Contents
1. Sitting ducks --
2. In the sack --
3. Learning on the job --
4. Working on the railroad --
5. Hard time --
6. Gyokusai and chōmansai --
7. The last stretch --
8. Over and out --
9. Ever after.
Paperback
$18.44
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Daws has done for the POW saga what "Schindler's List" and "The Diary of Anne Frank "did for the Holocaust."-- "The Asian Wall Street Journal"
"A rigorously authentical masterwork...Daws gives his chronicle a thoughtfully considered historical and psychological context . . . The ultimate effect is strangely, unexpectedly uplifting."-- Cleveland "Plain Dealer"
"Vividly brings to light the random killing of prisoners during the infamous Bataan Death March and the use of POW slave labor in the construction of the Burma-Siam railroad."-- "The New York Times Book Review"
"It is a disgrace, really, that because of political priorities this story has never been systematically recorded or documented, and hence has never been fully told to the public."-- "The Wall Street Journal"
"Superb. A work of consummate historical scholarship. Devastating, heartbreaking."-- "BBC Radio World Service"
"A powerful, disturbing, and necessary book."-- "Parameters, "U.S. Army War College quarterly
"My story is told in this book. Every word is true."-- Houston Tom Wright, POW
"All of us recognize how well you have captured the truth. Thanks for telling the world."-- Guy Kelnhofer, POW
About the Author
For fifteen years, Daws headed historical research on the Pacific region at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Australian National University. He also served as Pacific member to the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind. The author of eight previous books, including the best-selling Shoal of Time, Daws has also won international awards for documentary films. He lives with his wife in Honolulu.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Sitting Ducks
Harry Jeffries was cruising, counting the days till his divorce papers came through and he could make his getaway from San Fancisco. He was an ironworker, his trade was bucking hot rivets, and his place of employment was the Golden Gate Bridge, the south tower, hundreds of feet above the waters of the bay. In his last week on the job--his last days as a married man--the world below appeared to him like a map laid out to show his life and times, past and future. Turn one way and there was the city, the cold-water hotel where he had been living out of a suitcase, separated from his wife and little daughter, the bars where he drank when he was not working, the blind alleys in the Tenderloin where he gambled when he was not drinking. Turn the other way and there was the blue Pacific, stretching off to the west--and the instant he was single again, that was where he was headed, over the horizon and out. On the stroke of noon, August 21, 1941, his big moment came up, and all the married men who worked on his level of the tower cheered and beat on the steel girders with their sledges and wrenches, wedding bells in reverse, as he climbed down off the bridge, free at last.
He and his friend Oklahoma Atkinson had their ship's passage booked for that same afternoon, and before the day shift on the tower downed tools they were sailing in style out through the Golden Gate.
They were going to be gone for nine months--which would make it June of 1942 when they came cruising back, flush with money, set for life. They had it all worked out.
They had met at the building trades labor temple. Harry was hanging around waiting for a poker game to materialize when Oklahoma came walking in with his little tin suitcase, looking all wide-eyed and countrified. They got to talking, and they clicked right off. They were a pair, a couple of healthy young physical specimens, the same age, twenty-six, the same height and weight, six feet one, one hundred ninety-five pounds, full of beans, purpose-built for bridge building. They organized things so that they could work the same shift in the same gang.
And they started running around together after hours, nightclubbing along North Beach, picking up women. Harry was the date maker. On the bridge he was known as Hollywood--a snappy dresser with slick hair and a movie-star moustache--and in the clubs no one was speedier with a silver Ronson when some goodlooking blonde sitting at the bar crossed her legs and tapped her cigarette. Oklahoma with his average man's Zippo was forever a step behind, meaning he was the one who always drew the goodlooking girl's less good-looking friend.
Not that he was complaining. Before San Francisco he had not seen a great deal of the world, not much beyond the flatlands for a day's drive or so around his tiny little hometown, and a military base or two from his hitch in the peacetime army of the United States, one lowly private soldier among thousands, grateful just to be fed and clothed and in out of the cold in the worst years of the Great Depression. Now here he was in the big city, with Hollywood Harry ordering up the high life.
Harry had started out a poor boy too, and that pointed him toward the service the same way as Oklahoma. Not the Army, though, the Marines. An elite corps--Harry liked the sound of those words. So he signed up with the reserves. But he never did make it to the real Corps. In the dark days of the 1930s recruiting lines in the big cities were as long as soup kitchen lines, and because the Marines were elite, for every one keeper they came across they could afford to throw back dozens. Harry was well set up, big and strong, but he was bowlegged; when the recruiters stood him at attention, daylight showed between his knees, and that was enough to wipe him out. It was a blow to his pride. He had to settle for the Navy.
His big cruise, aboard the battleship U.S.S. Colorado, took him from Bremerton in Washington State down the West Coast, through the Panama Canal, and up the East Coast to New York. It was the time of the World's Fair, and Harry was detailed to march with his shipmates in a big parade along Fifth Avenue. Passing the Empire State Building, the tallest skyscraper on earth, some of the young sailor boys got carried away and tilted their heads back to gawk; they lost their step and bumped into each other and fell down in a heap and took Harry with them.
Harry did not need the embarrassment. He was doing the parade the hard way already. In Havana, on liberty, his first ever night of catting around in a foreign port, he had picked up his first ever dose of the clap. All the way north to New York he had to suffer the Navy's fearsome gonorrhea treatment, standing at a trough, a nozzle stuck up his urethra to drench his inflamed plumbing with purple potassium permanganate, let that drain out, then take a syringe of Argyrol straight up. He made the Fifth Avenue march feeling sorry for himself, his greatest item of value and distinction tied with a butterfly bandage, and for extra protection a leather Bull Durham sack, so that the gonorrhea drip would not weep all over the crotch of his Navy whites.
By the time his ship got back to the West Coast the drip had dried up. But in Seattle he found a more serious sort of woman trouble to get himself into, a shotgun marriage, and that turned into a curse worse than the clap.
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Product details
Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks (January 16, 1996)
Language : English
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 104 ratings
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world war gavan daws bataan death death march wake island prisoners of the japanese allied prisoners river kwai pacific theater pacific war must read well written pearl harbor rape of nanking pows in the pacific frank fujita human beings ever read american british war crimesVINE VOICE
Top reviews from other countries
Karl
3.0 out of 5 stars
American Account of The POWsReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 11, 2022
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The book has been put together by carrying out hundreds of interviews over many years. And although the Americans were a very small percentage of the total prisoners, the book is almost exclusively about one small regiment from Texas. The details of the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese are explicitly listed and not censored, and so it is quite harrowing, and unthinkable, that a human can do such evil to others.
For me I found it quite upsetting that Americans were killing their own in cold blood, starving (to death) their comrades because they had run up gambling debts, beating to death their own over petty squabbles. And the hatred of all other allied nations the Americans had is just so sad. It even goes on to list how much the Americans hated each country, in order, starting with the Australians the least so, then the Dutch and then the British who they seemed to hate as much as the Japanese. Perhaps it was because they kept their dignity, they remained resolute and together and of all of the groups of allied prisoners only the Americans murdered their own. The half dozen or so Americans the book follows are themselves ruthless and as selfish as humans can be. Survival of the fittest and some!
I have given this book 3 stars for this very reason. I feel that the lack of respect and sensitivity to the other groups (or as the author calls them, tribes) should not be part of this type of book. By sharing accounts and even personal opinions of other nationalities it is a desecration of their memory and their family's too.
Verified Purchase
The book has been put together by carrying out hundreds of interviews over many years. And although the Americans were a very small percentage of the total prisoners, the book is almost exclusively about one small regiment from Texas. The details of the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese are explicitly listed and not censored, and so it is quite harrowing, and unthinkable, that a human can do such evil to others.
For me I found it quite upsetting that Americans were killing their own in cold blood, starving (to death) their comrades because they had run up gambling debts, beating to death their own over petty squabbles. And the hatred of all other allied nations the Americans had is just so sad. It even goes on to list how much the Americans hated each country, in order, starting with the Australians the least so, then the Dutch and then the British who they seemed to hate as much as the Japanese. Perhaps it was because they kept their dignity, they remained resolute and together and of all of the groups of allied prisoners only the Americans murdered their own. The half dozen or so Americans the book follows are themselves ruthless and as selfish as humans can be. Survival of the fittest and some!
I have given this book 3 stars for this very reason. I feel that the lack of respect and sensitivity to the other groups (or as the author calls them, tribes) should not be part of this type of book. By sharing accounts and even personal opinions of other nationalities it is a desecration of their memory and their family's too.
So out of all of the horrific accounts remembered by this small group of Americans the lasting impression I got from the book is that the Americans were just as sadistic and savage as their captors.
I really don't understand why the author has allowed himself to include these type of details as a thinly veiled warts and all account that will obviously cause a huge amount of upset and offence.
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jim scotland
5.0 out of 5 stars AmazingReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2013
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This is a fantastic book well written and very educational,did not want it to end,it has to be the best I have read on this subject. I very highly recommend this brilliant book,what a read!!
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Mr. E. W. Bryan
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2016
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Great
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ROY
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2015
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Very interesting read
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars DetailsReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2019
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Gave some more details of the 18th division
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 23 reviews
Monica Wilkes
1 review
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January 18, 2013
This is a horrifying and heartbreaking account of the treatment of prisoners of war during WWII. I could not put this book down, it had me gasping, laughing and cursing out loud. I highly recommend this book.
1 like
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Ted Waterfall
152 reviews14 followers
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July 3, 2019
Prisoners of the Japanese, by Gavan Daws, is an in depth look at the experiences of mostly American POWs held captive by the Japanese during World War 2. It focuses on the specific stories of several individuals including the incidents that caused their captures, and, of course, the terrible trials and ordeals suffered during over three years of captivity.
In graphic detail it describes the tortures, neglect, murders, malnutrition, experiments, and beatings that occurred in camps, hell ships, marches. This book delivered much more than I expected and touches on subjects not covered in most histories of World War 2.
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jim scotland
5.0 out of 5 stars AmazingReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 21, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is a fantastic book well written and very educational,did not want it to end,it has to be the best I have read on this subject. I very highly recommend this brilliant book,what a read!!
Report
Mr. E. W. Bryan
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2016
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Great
Report
ROY
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2015
Verified Purchase
Very interesting read
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars DetailsReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 2, 2019
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Gave some more details of the 18th division
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See all reviews
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 23 reviews
Monica Wilkes
1 review
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January 18, 2013
This is a horrifying and heartbreaking account of the treatment of prisoners of war during WWII. I could not put this book down, it had me gasping, laughing and cursing out loud. I highly recommend this book.
1 like
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Ted Waterfall
152 reviews14 followers
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July 3, 2019
Prisoners of the Japanese, by Gavan Daws, is an in depth look at the experiences of mostly American POWs held captive by the Japanese during World War 2. It focuses on the specific stories of several individuals including the incidents that caused their captures, and, of course, the terrible trials and ordeals suffered during over three years of captivity.
In graphic detail it describes the tortures, neglect, murders, malnutrition, experiments, and beatings that occurred in camps, hell ships, marches. This book delivered much more than I expected and touches on subjects not covered in most histories of World War 2.
For example, on September 12, 1944, far more American POWs were killed by when the Japanese Hell Ships the "Rakuyo Maru" and the "Kachidoki Maru," (unmarked tankers which also contained POWs) were torpedoed by American submarines than were killed on the Bataan Death March.
"Of all POWs who died in the Pacific war, one in every three was killed on the water by friendly fire." (p.297).
While focusing on the Allied side, it also gets into the Japanese psyche and tries to describe how they could be so cold-hearted to captives, apparently claiming that their code of bushido did not apply to POWs and captive civilian populations.
This is a must read add to any World War 2 library, but it isn't pleasant reading. It sheds a light on human behavior, even our own, and it left me with a knot in my stomach more than once.
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Adam Mills
241 reviews2 followers
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July 4, 2019
A detailed documentary of the vicious and inhuman way prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese during the second world war. The author interviewed many Japanese ex-POWs during the 1980s and 1990s and the book was originally published in 1994.
While focusing on the Allied side, it also gets into the Japanese psyche and tries to describe how they could be so cold-hearted to captives, apparently claiming that their code of bushido did not apply to POWs and captive civilian populations.
This is a must read add to any World War 2 library, but it isn't pleasant reading. It sheds a light on human behavior, even our own, and it left me with a knot in my stomach more than once.
written-reviews
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Adam Mills
241 reviews2 followers
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July 4, 2019
A detailed documentary of the vicious and inhuman way prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese during the second world war. The author interviewed many Japanese ex-POWs during the 1980s and 1990s and the book was originally published in 1994.
The atrocities are sometimes unbelievable in their cruel and casual brutality and it is hard to imagine any human perpetrating them. There is also a chapter on the appalling way the US government in particular and other national governments treated the prisoners on their return. Sometimes they had to fight for years for any sort of recognition or disability payments. Almost all of the survivors had chronic, debillitating health problems directly attributable to their treatment in capture and died much younger than they otherwise would have done.
The book also raises the question about why so few of the Japanese were ever tried for war crimes when what they did was equally as bad if not worse in some cases than the Nazis. Why was was the emperor Hirohito not tried for war crimes for example. He continued to reign in Japan after the war for many years and Japan has never expressed any sort of contrition or given any sort of apology for its behaviour during the war. A devastating and shocking book but an essential record.
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Tony
28 reviews2 followers
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February 18, 2023
This is a very detailed history volume detailing the many statistics (and, much more importantly, the stories) regarding prisoners of the Japanese during WW2. The story needed to be told, and the many many statistics are a part of the story, but the vast numbers make it a slower read. By looking over the references in the back, this book encompasses vast resources containing hundreds of interviews. The final few chapters bring their stories to a good conclusion.
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Lisa
222 reviews
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January 14, 2019
This book makes me heartsick for the POWs and all survivors. So many lost at young ages. It also makes me angry for the sheer savagery of the Japanese, the unfairness POWs, contractors and survivors who were not cared for by their governments - physically and emotionally. Why is this part of the war not taught in our schools?
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Luisa Knight
2,763 reviews727 followers
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May 9, 2017
Cleanliness: there is some language and several mature issues; including an entire chapter regarding torture. I plan to read this again and create a Clean Guide. Check back again or message me to request this be bumped to the top of the list!
history-and-documentaries world-war-2
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David Hull
267 reviews2 followers
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July 15, 2020
The cruelty of man upon fellow man knows no bounds 😔
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Barry
462 reviews
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December 28, 2020
3.5 stars
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James Crawford
5,240 reviews23 followers
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January 29, 2016
Prisoners of the Japanese
462 pages. 34 pages of notes. 1994.
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Tony
28 reviews2 followers
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February 18, 2023
This is a very detailed history volume detailing the many statistics (and, much more importantly, the stories) regarding prisoners of the Japanese during WW2. The story needed to be told, and the many many statistics are a part of the story, but the vast numbers make it a slower read. By looking over the references in the back, this book encompasses vast resources containing hundreds of interviews. The final few chapters bring their stories to a good conclusion.
Like
Comment
Lisa
222 reviews
Follow
January 14, 2019
This book makes me heartsick for the POWs and all survivors. So many lost at young ages. It also makes me angry for the sheer savagery of the Japanese, the unfairness POWs, contractors and survivors who were not cared for by their governments - physically and emotionally. Why is this part of the war not taught in our schools?
Like
Comment
Luisa Knight
2,763 reviews727 followers
Follow
May 9, 2017
Cleanliness: there is some language and several mature issues; including an entire chapter regarding torture. I plan to read this again and create a Clean Guide. Check back again or message me to request this be bumped to the top of the list!
history-and-documentaries world-war-2
Like
Comment
David Hull
267 reviews2 followers
Follow
July 15, 2020
The cruelty of man upon fellow man knows no bounds 😔
Like
Comment
Barry
462 reviews
Follow
December 28, 2020
3.5 stars
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James Crawford
5,240 reviews23 followers
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January 29, 2016
Prisoners of the Japanese
462 pages. 34 pages of notes. 1994.
Obviously this is so filled with information that I will just point out a few areas that I thought were most interesting. There is material here about specific people and also about the camps in general.
1. The book opens with general information about when the most prisoners were taken, how they were used (which often led to their deaths), and where they ended up.
2. Racism and classism played rolls in the camps as the whites looked down on the blacks and the rich (especially from England) looked down on those not as rich as themselves.
3. There were also differences in behavior among those in the camps depending on what country they came from.
4. Only Americans killed each other during captivity.
5. There were hundreds of POW camps.
6. Officers tended to be separated from non-officers and were sometimes treated better.
7. The Bataan March, in all its horrors, is described.
8. Reasons, from the Japanese viewpoint, for killing prisoners are given.
9. Reasons for Japanese not being taken prisoners are given.
10. Cigarettes became a main bartering item in the camps.
11. The Japanese assumed illness was a weakness of spirit.
12. Things POWs would be punished for in the camps are noted.
13. The Japanese looted Red Cross packages meant for the prisoners.
14, The construction of the Burma railway is described.
15. The troubles the Japanese had as the war went on are described in detail.
16. The end of the war and what happened to the prisoners afterwards is also discussed.
This is only a small fraction of the information covered in this very useful text.
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Joy Kidney
Author 4 books33 followers
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September 2, 2019
According to the author, during the first months following Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured more than 140,000 Allied prisoners. More than four died at the hands of their captors--denied medical treatment, starved, or worked to death. In Japan, the killing went on to the last moments of the war. Downed airmen were tortured by the hundreds, and even beheaded.
The book includes extensive Sources, including interviews, POW diaries, and 27-volume The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, and official histories. There are also several pages of notes.
My uncle, Dale R. Wilson, may have been a POW of the Japanese during World War II, when his B-25 was shot down in New Guinea in late 1943. This book has been a resource in trying to learn what may have happened to Dale. When I learned how the Japanese brutally mishandled downed airmen in the Southwest Pacific Theater, maybe it would have been better if he’d perished with their plane and rest of the crew on the day they were shot down.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 23 reviews
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My uncle, Dale R. Wilson, may have been a POW of the Japanese during World War II, when his B-25 was shot down in New Guinea in late 1943. This book has been a resource in trying to learn what may have happened to Dale. When I learned how the Japanese brutally mishandled downed airmen in the Southwest Pacific Theater, maybe it would have been better if he’d perished with their plane and rest of the crew on the day they were shot down.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 23 reviews
===
PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE
POWS OF WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC
BY GAVAN DAWS ‧ RELEASE DATE: NOV. 11, 1994
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gavan-daws/prisoners-of-the-japanese/
A wide-angle saga that adds a chapter long missing from official and traditional histories of WW II's Pacific theater: the story of the torments endured by Allied military personnel captured when Japanese forces overran Greater East Asia. Drawing on interviews with survivors of the Japanese prison camps as well as archival sources, Daws (A Dream of Islands, 1980, etc.) effectively combines the experiences of individual American, Australian, British, and Dutch POWs with a panoramic perspective. He probes why the death rate among the more than 140,000 men interned by the Japanese reached 27% (as against but 4% for military prisoners of the Germans). By the author's painstakingly documented account, the causes were legion: inhuman living conditions, starvation diets, an almost complete lack of medical care, constant beatings by brutish guards whose (heartily reciprocated) racial hatred of whites often led to summary executions, forced labor on construction projects like the Burma- Siam railroad, and workaday atrocities. Thousands more POWs perished when the ships transporting them from the fetid jungles of conquered lands to Japan were blown out of the water by Allied aircraft or submarines. Daws provides a start-to-finish narrative, tracking the battered veterans of Bataan, Java, Midway, Singapore, and other campaigns before, during, and after their captivity. While he devotes considerable attention to group bonding, scavenging, and the other stratagems it took to stay alive behind the wire, Daws doesn't neglect the surprisingly cool receptions accorded repatriated POWs. Indeed, he reports, there are precious few memorials to Allied soldiers who died in Asian camps, let alone tributes to the brutalized, sometimes bestialized, survivors condemned to make peace with their freedom after VJ day. Overdue witness, eloquent and harrowing. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
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