3 comments about Niihau Incident.

1. This is a fascinating tale, almost completely forgotten now, a side story to the larger dramas of the attack on Pearl Harbor. At the time, it was hugely important in the decision to intern some 100,000 Japanese-Americans living in Hawaii and the West Coast. Simply put, there was a very real fear that in the event of a Japanese invasion of these two areas (which seemed very real after the attack on Pearl Harbor) the local Japanese-Americans would aid the enemy as had happened on Niihau.

   Time passes, and political correctness, revisionist history, and the very isolation of the island of Niiahu (which cannot be visited except by permission of the locals or from the Robinson landowners) have all caused this story to disappear into the land of forgotten memories. Nowadays, the PC thinking is that the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII was a misguided result of paranoia and racism on the part of the American government, and that the US had nothing to fear.

   I have read a lot of WWII history and had never come across this story before. About two weeks ago, while vacationing in Hawaii, I found this book in the gift shop of the Visitor's Center of the Arizona Memorial. I was waiting for my scheduled ferry ride out to the USS Arizona Memorial, and speed-read/browsed through this book. I have since filled in some of the details that I missed on my cursory reading of this book with some Internet searches.

   The book is written with a chatty, semi-novelized style, typical of so much of current non-fiction history today. I still have a hard time with this style of writing, especially when the author starts to put words and thoughts into the heads of characters in the story that die later on in the story, well before they could have told anybody to record this information for posterity.

   Such was how Shigenori Nishikaichi was introduced in this book, wondering what to do as his A6M2 Zero fighter slowly leaked out its last bit of gas. While participating in the attack on Pearl Harbor, the plane's gas tanks were hit by gunfire. Nishikaichi ended up crash-landing in a rough field on Niihau.

   A group of native Niihauans, although unaware of the attack on Pearl Harbor (there was no radio on the island), were suspicious enough of his arrival in a shot-up combat aircraft from Japan to take him prisoner, after first confiscating his gun and his military papers.

   The two Japanese men on the island were then brought in by the Niihauns to translate for them. It was the Niihauns' intent to hold the pilot and deliver him to the owner of Niihau, Aylmar Robinson, when he stopped by on his weekly visit to the island

   In secret conversation with the two Japanese, the pilot turned them against the natives. The older Japanese, who was born in Japan and was married to a Niihaun woman, later became terribly conflicted and fled into the hills for the duration of the incident.

   The other Japanese, Yoshio Harada, who had been born in the Hawaiian islands and was married to a Japanese woman, gave full support to the pilot's schemes. He found the pilot's gun, as well as another gun (the only other one on the island), and used these to free the pilot. The two then went on a rampage, threatening and terrorizing the native Niihauns. They were trying to recover the pilot's confiscated papers. They also went back to the Zero fighter plane and set it on fire to keep it out of the hands of the US (the US military would not again have an opportunity to get hold of an intact Zero to study until July 1942)

   As this was going on, a group of native Niihauns escaped and began the arduous journey by rowboat to the island of Kauai in order to get help. Aylmar Robinson had not been able to come to the island because travel between the islands had been restricted after the attack on Pearl Harbor. A detachment of US troops landed on Niihau about two days later.

   By then the whole incident was over, mainly because of the courage of one of the Niihauns, Ben Kanahele, He got fed up with the threats from the pilot and Harada, and so he (and his wife) attacked them. In the struggle, Nishikaichi shot Kanahele three times, before Kanahele smashed him into a stone wall and killed him. At that point, Harada committed suicide with the other gun. Kanahele survived to tell many versions of his tale to many people, and was later awarded the purple heart and Presidential Medal of Merit.

   Harada's wife was jailed for much of the rest of the war. Had Yoshio Harada lived, he almost certainly would have been convicted of treason and executed. After all, he had aided in the escape of an enemy combatant, helped destroy a valuable piece of military intelligence (the Zero fighter plane), and participated in the terrorization of the native Niihauns.

   At the time, the Niihau incident was a big story locally, and was also well known to the military and the rest of the government. A song was written about it, and the incident was recorded into many of the early stories and books written about the attack on Pearl Harbor. The incident confirmed the worst fears of the US government and military. An American citizen of Japanese descent, with a previously spotless record, when confronted by an enemy Japanese, chose to abet and give aide and comfort to the enemy that looked just like him.

   All in all, it is good to read this book, and to remember the facts as they actually were in the dark days at the beginning of WWII for America.




2. An amazing tale about a little-known but fascinating incident directly resulting from the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One of the Japanese pilots taking part in the bombing was forced to crash land on a small Hawaiian island, survived in good condition, and was able to persuade, apparently with little trouble, an American-born couple of Japanese ancestry, the Haradas, to help him. The Haradas spoke both Japanese and English and quickly sympathized with him and his ideals. They helped him to the direct detriment and endangerment of their friends and neighbors (mostly of aboriginal Hawaiian ancestry) on the small, sparsely populated, isolated island of Niihau, an island with its own absorbing story apart from this incident. An unexpected look at the motivations and behavior of a secluded group of Americans when the chips were down and America was in mortal danger. Afterwards Mrs. Harada spoke about this tragedy out of both sides of her mouth with Japanese and Americans, appa! rently thinking that what she said in Japanese was safe from American ears.

   The book is well researched and the events surrounding the incident are well written and described. This is definitely the book to read for this significant episode at the very dawn of America's involvement in World War II.




3. In "The Niihau Incedent," Beekman uses interviews of some of the principal individuals in the story, along with thorough research of historical recodrd and news accounts, to relate the story of the "invasion" of the Hawai'ian island of Ni'ihau by a Japanese pilot during WWII. This is a fascinating story, and well worth reading, although the book is not particularly well-written.

3 comments about The Four Immigrants Manga : A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904-1924.

1. This was a very interesting read, although the jokes themselves were rarely funny due to the difficulty of translating puns. It stands out mostly as a sort of documentary about Japanese immigrants in San Fransisco, specifically worker-students. We watch them struggle to find jobs in strange American homes, a social commentary about gambling and the evils thereof, a six to eight page story of the San Fransisco Earthquake, and building their families.
   
   I found it especially interesting to read the notes after each two-page "chapters" in the back of the book, which added depth to what was happening and provided historical content as well as further describing conditions in San Fransisco at that time.
   
   Comments were made at the beginning of the book that the cartoonist had limited his market because he was writing strictly for fellow immigrants, who would best understand the mixture of Japanese and English that he used in his writing. This is denoted throughout the book with shaky letters for English, which immigrants had difficulty following and plain type-set for regular Japanese, their birth tongue.
   
   As for the artwork, think more old-school Japanese and American comics than the manga that is popular today-- don't be expecting tick marks or sweatdrops for example!
   
   For me especially this had a lot of fond memories. I am not Japanese, but my family moved to San Fransisco in the early 1905 from Italy, so a lot of this made me remember stories about my great grandfather and my great grandmother--my great-grandfather built a shoe-store that was destroyed by the San Fransisco earthquake. Even if you don't buy this book for the humor, at least consider the purchase to read about immigrants to America in the 1900's.



2. Henry Kiyama created this terrific book in the 1930's, chronicling the lives of four young Japanese immigrants and their struggle to find work and acceptance in San Francisco at the turn of the century. It was unearthed and translated into English, giving us all the rare privelege of a glimpse into the immigrant experience of that era. Drawn in a simple and lighthearted style and told with insight and depth, Kiyama, along with the rising popularity of Japanese Anime and Manga, reinforces the notion that comics are not just for kids anymore. A great read for a comic lover, a hyphenated-American or anyone interested in the multihued experience of our country.



3. If you're not used to reading comics, this will seem rough and not particularly funny. Readers more familiar with the form will recognize that this book is more subtle and better crafted than your typical comic.

   It's of special interest to Japanese Americans and others interested in the immigrant experience in the USA.

No comments about Mad Wives and Island Dreams: Shimao Toshio and the Margins of Japanese Literature.

1 comments about Drifting Toward the Southeast: The Story of Five Japanese Castaways.

1. Although John Manjiro never came to Maui, an annual dance festival in his honor has been held in Lahaina several times. Now, for the first time in English, we have the man's story in his own words, as translated by Junya Nagakuni and Junji Kitadai and accompanied by gorgeous reproductions of the illustrations that decorated his handwritten 1852 account -- words and pictures that helped revolutionize Japan, even though they circulated in a limited number of handwritten copies, each with a somewhat different set of illustrations.
   Manjiro was a poor fisherman, too low in status even to have a family name, when he and four companions were shipwrecked on Hurricane Island (Tori Shima) in 1841. At the time, Japan was almost cut off from the rest of the world.
   The quintet was rescued by an American whaling captain, and the older men were taken to Oahu, where one of them married an islander and disappeared from history. Manjiro, only 14, was taken to New Bedford and educated in English, Christianity, surveying and navigation and coopering.
   He spent six of the next 10 years at sea, as he and his companions struggled to return to Japan. Whether they understood that, by law, returned exiles were subject to execution is uncertain, but according to the editors, there is no record that the Shogunate actually did kill any returnees.
   However, on one attempt to land, the local Japanese were frightened enough to run away from the suspect exiles.
   The American captain, then, refused to let his refugees land, carrying them back across the ocean.
   The bitter disappointment of the yearning exiles must have been profound, but Manjiro, a stoic, relates his dismay in just a line.
   In 1852, Manjiro, who also used the American name John Mung, and two of the others managed to get close to home on a whaler and then to sail a whaleboat into Okinawa, a somewhat more welcoming re-entry point than the home islands had been earlier. It was happily timed for Manjiro, because just one year later Commodore Matthew Perry came demanding trade and refuge for whaleships, whether the Japanese wanted it or not.
   Other castaways had made it home earlier; in fact, footnotes to this edition of Manjiro's "Hyoson Kiryaku" ("Brief Account of Drifting toward the Southeast") suggest that Japanese waifs were thinly spread all over the Pacific in the mid-19th century.
   The connection of Manjiro to Lahaina comes from this little diaspora. Four other shipwrecked Japanese sailors had landed in Lahaina in 1838 -- before Manjiro ever left home -- and were given succor by missionaries. Manjiro's later fame rubbed off on these men, who never played the role in introducing the two nations to each other that he did; and in legend Manjiro became a visitor to Maui, but his charts reproduced in "Hyoson Kiryaku" show that he landed on Oahu several times but never on Maui.
   A few elite Japanese at home had learned something about the outside world before Perry showed up, including a samurai, Kawada Shoryo, who was assigned to write down Manjiro's story.
   Shoryo, an accomplished painter, also elaborated Manjiro's sketches.
   The book was a sensation, though not available to very many. The power elite of Meiji Japan saw it, though.
   Only a few copies survive, with illustrations of variable quality.
   Shoryo had European books and prints, supplied by the Dutch at Nagasaki, to help with street scenes as described and roughly sketched for him by Manjiro, but some things were utterly mystifying to stay-at-home Japanese.
   One illustration of a "sea horse" looks like a deformed horse, and the editors speculate that perhaps it was an attempt to draw a walrus from no more than a verbal description.
   Since Manjiro said he had seen it while sailing around Cape Horn, it could not have been a walrus. Was the sailor spinning a yarn, just once, in his otherwise very serious account of suffering and revelation?
   Whichever, John Manjiro comes across as an attractive personality.
   He went to California in the Gold Rush and struck it rich -- $600 for only 70 days work. According to Kuwada, "he thought it would be indecent to continue" and set off for Honolulu to collect other stray Japanese and go home.
   Once there, he became an expert, though the Shogunate officials never quite trusted him, suspecting him of being a pawn in an American plot.
   Manjiro did much better when the Meiji emperor took over, becoming a samurai, a university teacher, translator of Bowditch's "New American Practical Navigator," author of a primer for teaching English and acquiring the privilege of a patrynomic, Nakahama.
   The editors comment, though, that "Manjiro must have struggled inwardly with his own identity and the clash of different cultures." When he died in 1898, they say, he "must have felt great satisfaction that his self-appointed mission to open Japan to the West was accomplished."
   Their final assessment is that "Manjiro's real message was perhaps born out of his inner struggle between 'John Mung' and 'Nakahama Manjiro.' Out of this unique identity crisis came wisdom and character."

5 comments about Sleeping on Potatoes.

1. `Sleeping on Potatoes is the metaphor for the bumpy and lumpy ride I had in my formative years,' Dr. Carl Nomura explains in the preface to his debut publication Sleeping on Potatoes: A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower (Erasmus Books, Washington, 2003). Nomura then extends this metaphor into a vivified mosaic of his life's experiences by bringing them to view through the eyes of a child and all the way up to a person with aspirations.
   
   Starting informally with his mother Mizuko's story, a Japanese woman who married Nomura's father because `she heard that in America everyone was tall', Dr. Nomura creates a series of true, non-fictional, real life stories that border on the line between short story and personal essay. Reliving in linguistic light the hardship of poverty, a heartless father, the humiliation of being forced to move into relocation centers during the Second World War, and the travails of disease and bereavement, Nomura throws his readers into a joyous shock with the amazing optimism of his attitude and his lively humor that arises spontaneously from the interaction of situation and language. One instance is from his school days: `we thought her name (Sister Perpetual) fitted her because she beat us perpetually'. Certainly not to overlook the fun of fishing and poker, and giving smoking up for good when an angry woman comes inches from your face and calls you a `polluting pig.'
   
   Though a doctor of philosophy in Solid State Physics, and an important figure in the corporate world of technology, it is Nomura's flair of seeing things as matter of course that lures one to appreciate his magnanimity. Not going a braggart, he opens a window to the philosophy of life-contentment, be it a doctorate in physics and excellence in management of small businesses, or using a bathroom 200 feet away from his bed in a trailer. Life is joy if you have your guts tuned to its frequency of vicissitudes.
   
   Marking Sleeping on Potatoes as a book to amuse would be a reader's pitfall. It is a book enormous in its scope, though not in its volume (250 pages). By no means is this the adventurous story of a single person, reflecting on his past. It is the story of many characters that endured and fought against social injustice and untoward circumstances-from women like Mizuko and Louise, to the sufferers in relocation centers, and the motherless litter of cats who were lucky enough to make it to Nomura's house. His heart touching memories of Mox, the neighbor's dog, harbor all the richness and beauty of life. Nomura traces the causes of discontent in marital life, discusses issues associated with terminal illness, and informs on linguistic and the cultural relativism of English and Japanese native speakers.
   
   Now in his eighties, retired and coping with prostate cancer, Nomura's lumpy ride has not come to a pause. It is bumping all along with new interest in learning and doing things and new ways of adding to the richness of his life. With his new wife, children and grandchildren, pets, garden, books, and the untamed freshness of mind, Dr. Carl Nomura lives as if he is immortal.



2. The Smell of Freedom
   Carl Nomura is an honest recorder of life. His memoir, Sleeping on Potatoes, is a frank and often revealing celebration of experiences, and hopes for more of them. He examines his childhood, education, marriage, his children's childhoods, his jobs and his seniority.
   His title refers to a life-molding time when, soon after Pearl Harbor, at 18, he and his Japanese-American family were incarcerated at Manzanar, an internment camp in a dusty high-Sierra desert of California. He detested the insult of the camp and escaped by volunteering to help worker-short Idaho farmers. It was exhausting stoop labor, thinning, weeding and topping sugar beets in the fertile crescent of the Snake river.
   When the job ended eight months later, instead of returning to Manzanar captivity, he volunteered for potato warehousing work in a huge root cellar. He sorted and bagged potatoes, and at night slept on the filled bags. He recalls wriggling the spuds into a form-fitting mattress, and the awful smell of rotting potatoes. But, he writes, "After only one day, we got used to the odor and never smelled it again."
   Well, I drove my family through southwestern Idaho, years ago. Crossing the Snake river from Oregon, we came on a "Welcome to Idaho" billboard and were at once engulfed by the stench of rotten potatoes. My kids screamed, "Phew, Idaho!"
   At Nomura's words I smelled it again myself and wondered how he could acclimate to, or ignore, that awful scent while I can still smell it. Of course, as he hints a page or two later, what he smelled was different from what I smelled.
   What he smelled was better than Manzanar.
   This honest book holds many revelations of significance in Nomura's life, and in our own lives as well.



3. Sleeping on Potatoes:
   A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower
   By Carl Nomura
   
   2003 Erasmus Books
   ISBN: 0970194730
   
   Reviewed by George Katagiri
   Portland, OR
   
   
   Carl Nomura's writing style brings to life his unique perceptions of growing up and encountering his world. His descriptions are so vivid and captivating that it is often difficult to put the book down.
   Nomura tells about being born in a boxcar somewhere between Deer Lodge and Three Forks, Montana. At retirement, he is the Corporate Senior Vice-President of the Honeywell Corporation. In between these two events are numerous adventures of (1) growing up in poverty, (2) climbing the corporate ladder, (3) rearing children, (4) getting along in marriage, and (5) the joy of loving and being loved. It is the journey along the way that is captured in the book.
   Noteworthy are his memories of growing up. The descriptions of living with a domineering and abusive father makes one wonder how he survived his childhood. His drive to succeed stems from his ninth grade algebra teacher, who suggested that his mental capability was marginal and that he should not enroll in geometry but pursue courses in the manual arts. This spurred him on to teach himself mathematics, which became one of his favorite subjects.
   Later in life, he encountered problems in his marriage. After consulting with marriage counselors and trying to gain insight through group therapy, he finally gave up on external help. His children got together and conducted sessions which resulted in the most constructive advice in solving his problems.
   Carl Nomura is an exceptional person. Rather than following the footsteps of others, he blazes his own path. When he retired, his counselor advised him to wait a year before making any major decisions. Most people would heed this advice, but not Nomura. Shortly after, he held a huge garage sale in Minneapolis, sold his house and moved to the West Coast. The descriptions of how he makes decisions are consistently humorous and reflects the maverick character of a man who achieved much satisfaction and success in life.
   Besides being amusing, this is an inspirational book.



4. I've known Carl Nomura for 20 years, seen various versions of this book and watched him grow as a writer. With this book, he's really done it. Sleeping on Potatoes is humorous, touching, poignant and readable. I particularly love Carl's description of his childhood as son of Japanese immigrants. Equally facinating are the years of internment during World War II. Never bitter, often whimsical, Carl gives us a touching picture of people unfairly interned. Ultimately Carl went on to earn a PhD and a postion as executive in a large corporation -- an amazing leap from his early lumpier bed.



5. Nomura's sparse style of writing is not unlike the character of a differential equation expressing the essential. He cuts to his distilled memory and leaves the residue of honed understanding through the filter of life experience. His life is an engaging tale; to me it seems a Horatio Alger story of the Japanese American community. He was born in a boxcar in Montana, was dislocated to Japanese internment camps and made the journey to Corporate Senior Vice President for Honeywell Corporation. Now he contributes to his community in Port Townsend, Washington in very beneficial ways, besides enjoying his own interests, family and travel.
   
   His story brings greater understanding and deep appreciation of the diversity of our American culture by his unflinching exposure of his own family history. Nomura recounts with accuracy the emotional pain, isolation and dislocation from traditional Japanese culture in the struggle for the promise of a better life in America. He voices his life experience with insight and humor, which is the great expression of the commonality of the human experience seen through the filter of a kind mathematician.
   
   He tells his story, even including poetry, which supports understanding and intimacy through his selected descriptions of challenging moments about his cultural heritage, marriage, family and career. In the end the real meaning and importance of life is about relationship.
   
   But most of all I think this book, Sleeping on Potatoes is worthy of recognition for his dedicated and talented effort to build links of understanding between cultures, family, relationships and the poetic spirit of a curious mind.

1 comments about The Films of Oshima Nagisa: Images of a Japanese Iconoclast.

1. Being the World Cinema buff that I am, I always ask my friends from other countries what their favorite film from their home countries is. Whenever I've asked a friend from Japan this question, they have unanimously responded by saying "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" by Oshima Nagisa. Here in the U.S., we are led to presume it would be Kurosawa Akira, but that isn't so. For some reason, Oshima's film about Japan's atrocities during World War II resonate more, if not with most Japanese, with the younger generation with whom I interact. Maureen Turim's book "The Films of Oshima Nagisa" proceeds to tell us why, reviewing beyond Oshima's major features to include his documentaries as well. Along the way, she presents the Eastern and Japanese specific references and influences in Oshima's work rather than assume that Oshima primarily looked to the West for his inspiration as is shown in the over-emphasis in Western reviews of the Brechtian influences and the parallels to Goddard. This book also provides a solid feminist critique of Oshima's films, again with respect to what Feminism means in Japan. This book has trully enhanced my appreciation of Oshima's films and I recommend it highly.

4 comments about Prisoner of the Rising Sun.

1. This is an excellent first hand account. It is rather well done, more so than several others I have read. I do wish we had more like this one. Very inspiring. I felt it gave even a greater insight to the war in the Pacific. Recommend you add this one to your collection.



2. The author of this book is my grandfather. I found this book to be inspiring as I am also a soldier. I am in the Army and found this book to give me a greater appreciation of my profession as well as bring a greater understanding of my grandfather's life and why he is so proud. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand what POWs in the Philippines went through. I have lent my copy of his book to several of my friends and they all gave it great reviews as well.



3. William Berry has written a well-detailed, although brief, look at his attempted escape and captivity after the fall of Correigdor. While not a scholarly look at these events, the author gives a good account of his capture, escape and trek through the jungle, recapture and liberation by American servicemen from Bilibid prison in Manila. He painfully recounts the agony these men went through as they were crammed, up to 13 men at one time, into a 10 by 10 cell and forced to sit, without flinching, and stare at the wall all day.

   As a recaptured prisoner, Berry and his two comrades somehow survive the war, as the usual penalty for escape is execution. They were sent to the maximum security prison in Manila for "special prisoners", and many prisoners stopped here only long enough to be sentenced and shot. Berry, who was a fledgling lawyer before enlisting in the Navy, saw these skills save his life and the lives of his friends when being sentenced, not so much his arguments, of course, but rather how he shaped it to fit his audience (A Japanese tribunal)

   This book does not take long to read, but it is an interesting tale, and well worth the time invested. But, if you want greater scope and detail of Americans in Japanese captivity, read "Prisoners of the Japanese" by Gavan Daws, an extremely informative and well-written look at the horrors these men had to endure daily.




4. One of the few true to life books written by a WWII POW. As a history buff I find the first hand accounts in this book of the authors experiances and the others he came in contact a first rate story of America's darkest time. A must for all those who want to know more about POW's of the Japanese.

   Having been stationed in the Philippines and traveled to Battan and Corrigidor it brought the meaning of those visits a little sharper in focus.

No comments about A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer.

3 comments about Surviving Bataan And Beyond: Colonel Irvin Alexander's Odyssey As A Japanese Prisoner Of War (Stackpole Military History Series).

1. The editing was sloppy with reference numbers wrong. He irritatingly keeps using the word `object' when he means of course `abject' Annoying to have to keep flipping to the back of the book which is composed of one third references.
   However bearing he was an amateur I thought it was an interesting book and yes well worth a read of a first hand account of a quite dreadful experience.



2. This was one of the best books on the subject of the Bataan death March and Philippine Invasion that I've read. Col. Alexander's personal account brings the events upfront and real to the reader. You truly feel part of the Col.'s ordeal. I reccomend it highly.



3. I cannot of course write a review of this book yet as I do not have a copy. I do have the original manuscript and I will give you my opinions after I read the book. I am his daughter in law and the mother of his four grandchildren.

   Janet Alexander 4910 Meadowlark ln. DICKINSON tX, 77539

3 comments about I Am Alive!: A United States Marine's Story of Survival in a World war II Japanese POW Camp.

1. "I Am Alive!: A United States Marine's Story of Survival in a World War II Japanese POW Camp," by Charles R. Jackson, has been edited by Bruce H. Norton. The introductory materials of the book note that Jackson graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served as an Army officer. He resigned his commission in 1925 and enlisted as a private in the Marine Corps in 1927. He rose to the rank of sergeant major and was made a warrant officer before retiring. This book draws on his experiences as a prisoner-of-war held by the Japanese in the Philippines and Japan.
   
   This is a remarkable book. While firmly in the tradition of the American military narrative, it is quite different in tone from any military true-life story I have ever read. Jackson's voice is that of a folksy storyteller. In the book he specifically mentions the tradition of military oral folklore, and his own style draws on that tradition.
   
   Most of the book is structured as a series of interconnected character sketches. The gallery he presents is a very diverse group: officer and enlisted, as well as civilian; Japanese, Filipino, and American of various ethnic groups; Christian and Jew; even non-human. I found some of the most striking pieces to be the following: "The Story of Lieutenant Asaka," about an enigmatic Japanese prison commandant who is respected as a "real soldier" by his own enemies; "The Story of the Old Swede," about a Marine first sergeant who is an alcoholic; and "The Story of First Sergeant Santaleses," about a formidable soldier of the Philippine Scouts. But my favorite tale is "The Story of Soochow," about a little mongrel dog who becomes a Marine mascot, and stands by his Marines in battle and in prison.
   
   Jackson's sketches bring all of these characters to life. Despite the serious subject matter, the author's tone is often quite funny--at times he made me laugh out loud. But he also unflinchingly describes the horror and violence of war, and the often horrific suffering of the POWs. Jackson also touches often on Marine tradition and esprit-de-corps.
   
   Jackson's is a truly extraordinary voice: witty, learned, clever, playful, and deeply humane. This book is a valuable contribution to the canon of military narrative, as well as to the literature of imprisonment.



2. I was somewhat disappointed in that the author seemed to focus more on times before capture than times inside the prison camp and mine. The book seemed to jump around alot and the writing styles seem to change from chapter to chapter which detracted from the stories the auther told. Over all though, he went into great detail in describing to the readers about what made each man unique. The author shows an incedible talent in portraying each man's stengths and weaknesses. He shows how even the Japanese guards that tormented them had human and good qualities that kept him from hating them outright. This book seems to focus more the human soul than the life of a prisoner.



3. I AM ALIVE! is a collection of short stories told by Marine Sergeant Major Charles R. Jackson, a West Point graduate who resigned his Army commission, in 1926, to become a Private in the United States Marine Corps. Fifteen years later, he was a sergeant major in the 4th Marine Regiment, fighting for his life on Corregidor, and later dealing with life as a POW in the bottom of a copper mine in northern Japan for nearly four years.
   Much credit is due to Major "Doc" Norton,USMC, who edited this work and ow presents this story as a masterpiece of World War II experiences. I know the phrase, "I couldn't put it down," is well-worn, but that is exactly what happened to me. One story leads to another, each one better than the last. The finished product is a marvelous collection of observation of fellow Marines, soldiers, Japanese officers, and even Shoo Chow the mongrel mascot of the 4th Marine Regiment, who also survived being a "guest of the Emperor."
   I have read many of Major Norton's books, but this is without question his best effort yet. There is no doubt in my mind that this is an award-winning book. I would encourage every veteran, every parent, and every service man and women, to read
   this great book. They will immediately learn where their military heritage comes from. Without doubt, a 5-Star book. I'll buy 25 copies as Christmas presents.

   found himself