Tears in the Darkness

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
Author: Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman 398 pp
My rating: 4*
Started June 27 2009, Finished July 2 2009.

The central story of this book, the extreme privations faced by the US servicemen who fought the Japanese on Bataan in early 1942 and then were captured, imprisoned and enslaved, inspires horror at man’s inhumanity to man and awe at his capacity for survival. While the writing is no more than serviceable, the central framing device -- following a single still alive survivor, Montanan Ben Steele, through the entire ordeal -- did not particularly enhance the story for me and the last 60 pages, dealing with a someone has to pay even if justice is not served war crime trial and Steele’s homecoming felt perfunctory, the central story is so compelling as to overwhelm any weaknesses.

The cumulative suffering endured by the captives -- months of hopeless rearguard battle, followed by three years of captivity by captors completely indifferent to the survival of their prisoners which included the notorious days of marching through the shade less tropical sun with virtually no water, captivity in a feculent, hideously overcrowded holding pen, transport in the cargo bays of broken down merchant ships under frequent bombardment and finally twelve hour shifts with one day off in ten as virtual slaves in a coal mine -- must rank as the most sustained, inhumane, brutalizing ordeal suffered by any large group in American history; the winter in Valley Forge pales by comparison.

Perhaps I missed such an accounting but the war crimes section should have begun with a final tally of number of prisoners taken in 1942 compared to number of survivors liberated in 1945.

A strength of the book is in providing some insight into the mindset of the Japanese, somewhat humanizing their sadistic indifference to their prisoner’s well being. Apparently the ultra hard line reactionary national leadership propagated an anachronistic (and fabricated) concept of a national identity based on bushido and samurai values which turned the nation and particularly the arm into a savage death cult. Physical brutality was a standard part of army training -- men who received such treatment from their own side could hardly be excepted to have much consideration for the well being of prisoners.

It might be time to read another biography of MacArthur, the commander of the US forces which were captured (though he and his family were evacuated to safety). I have a positive memory of him from American Caesar which Tears considerably tarnishes: he comes off as a self-aggrandizing, incompetent blowhard whose high handed inactivity immediately after Pearl Harbor did much to contribute to the debacle that followed, though to be fair, the US forces on the Philippines in 1942 had no hope of beating the Japanese and once they surrendered, they were doomed.

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From a prewar Japanese pamphlet entitled “Now, how about the Americans?”:
“The men make money to live luxuriously and over-educate their wives and daughters who are allowed to talk too much. Their lack of real culture is betrayed by their love of jazz music … “ (75)

Japanese doctor tells an ambulatory soldier with a shoulder wound “There is not way to treat such a big and serious wound … The only thing you can do is wash it with seawater.” (103)

Towards the end of the battle of Bataan the commanding general of US forces asks his subordinate commanders what percentage of their troops are effective, meaning they could “walk a hundred yards without stopping to rest, raise his rifle to his shoulder, take aim and shoot at the enemy. By that definition the officers said “only fifteen out of one hundred were fit to fight, and at the moment no one in the command shack could say exactly how many men were still under arms or in their fighting holes.” (145) In a battle shortly thereafter, Ben Steele hears an officer initiate a retreat by shouting “It’s every man for himself!” (145)

Japanese parents often sent their sons off to war with admonitions such as “Don’t come back alive” or “Go and die for your country.” (209)

[For a forced labor road crew bivouacked in the jungle] Instead of a rice pot, the Japanese gave them a rusty old wheelbarrow coated with dried concrete. (253)

[About Japanese transport ships] Life at every level belowdecks was so miserable (in tropical waters the holds reached temperatures of 130) the Japanese troops complained bitterly among themselves, and headquarters, apparently getting wind of the grousing, tried to put the troops’ predicament into perspective. In the 1941 handbook (“Read This Alone and the War Can Be Won”), the hohei were told, “Never forget that in the dark and steaming lowest decks of the ship, with no murmur of complaint at the unfairness of their treatment, the Army horses are suffering in patience .. Remember that however exhausted you yourselves may feel, the horses will have reached a stage of exhaustion even more distressing.”

In the open area in the middle of the holds, men were made to stand so tightly bunched that, looking down from the hatch above, the Japanese guards could see only heads and shoulders, like the tops of pickles jammed into a jar.” (308)

Conditions were so bad on the Japanese transport ship taking prisoners from the Philippines to Japan in late 1944 comes under US bombardment, a US colonel among the trasportees thought “ I hope we get hit. Better to takes our chances [in the water] than continue in this hell-ship”. (311)

On another transport ship, the Enoura Maru, during a 48 day transit at in late ‘44 and early ‘45, only 425 of the 1619 prisoners who started the journey survived. Untreated wounds, dysentery, disease, hunger and thirst killed the rest. (316)

Once Japan had surrendered, the US tried to air drop supplies to POW camps. At one camp, POWs who had survived over three years of extreme ordeals were killed by the falling supply barrels when their parachutes failed to open. (331)

The way a Japanese met death was taken by his countrymen as an emblem of the way he had lived his life. Hope for the best, embrace the worst. Life is precious -- let it go, like it was nothing at all. (351)