5 comments about Lost in Action: A World War II Soldier's Account of Capture on Bataan and Imprisonment by the Japanese.

1. I normally wouldn't pick up a book about war to read. I knew Dick and that it took him decades to get his story the way he wanted. I sensed he was someone who's story i wanted to read. I too, couldn't put it down. This is a story that truely tells the horror of WAR and what "Man's inhumanity towards Man" really is. Dick's book made me a more appreciative American.



2. I just read this 343 paged story of the account of my dad's first cousin's experience as a soldier and prisoner of war, and I will never think the same about the sacrifices made by soldiers as I did before reading this.
   One can also glean insight into the human heart or nature, when it is threatened, or starved, alone and isolated or in a pack or group.
   And for me personally, this story makes me proud of the contribution Bilyeus have made to the United States, not only in wars but many other ways, since the first Billiou (later Bilyeu) landed at what was then called New Amsterdam back in 1661, as Huguenots sailing here from Leyden, Holland, just 41 years after the Pilgrims.



3. Afer I started reading Lost In Action I could not put it down, it is well written and comes very close to my father's accounts of the Philippines, the Bataan Death March, the various camps and Japan. There are many coincidences, that make me wonder if the author knew my Dad?
   I wish the author had included maps, photographs, even the insignia from the Coast Artillery, but I have many of those to refer to. This is not to criticise the verbal descriptions which are very visual.
   I feel that this book was very difficult for the author to write for men like my father had a great difficulty discussing the atrocities and the effects upon their fellow prisoners. I am grateful to the author for his courage and the perseverance that it evidently took to write this book which I hightly recommend.



4. This book is a must for anyone who reads stories of war and the affect it has on the soldiers. I praise the author for the courage he had to write it. I love you grandpa...



5. Although I am the writters son. Based on all the reading I have done over the years. This book comes as close to telling the true story as possible. He had nothing to gain by writing this story. He only wanted to live his life and that he did. Go in peace, Dad!

No comments about Takebe Ayatari.

No comments about The Autobiographical Narrative in Modern Japan: A Study of Kasai Zenzo, a Shi-shosetsu Writer.

2 comments about Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The True Story of a Missionary Family's Survival and Faith in a Japanese Prisoner-Of-War Camp During Wwii.

1. This book is well written and quite well documented. It contains some of the best endnotes I've seen in a long time. The author drew from several other diaries (often not published) to present a more well rounded view often elaborating in the chapter endnotes. My only complaint is that the notes were presented at the end of the chapter instead of as page footnotes. I was constantly flipping pages to access the notes as I read. Overall an interesting book to anyone fascinated with WWII.



2. This book kept me glued to the page. A gripping account of a teenager stuck in a concentration camp without having done anything wrong. A surprising lack of rancor, the author gives a picture of the good and bad in the people on both sides of the conflict. Also unusual are the admissions of less than perfect actions on his own part. It almost made me feel like I had been there.

2 comments about Kokoro: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life.

1. Not to be confused with Natsume Soseki's novel by the same title, Lafcadio Hearn's "Kokoro" is a magnificent collection of essays, vignettes, memoirs, and meditations on Japan in the 1890's. Very much a product of the mid-Meiji period, these masterfully-written little literary pieces are nonetheless timeless. Each piece is quite different from the rest, and yet almost all of them manage to start from everyday incidents or obvious observations and gradually spiral inwards to some deeply moving and startling insight into Japanese attitudes, values, and worldviews; more than once this seemingly methodless method allows Hearn to share with the reader certain common opinions and normal spiritual orientations held by average Japanese folks--the kinds of things usually taken for granted and so unarticulated, hence least amenable to documentation and scholarship (especially of the time, but even today). And Hearn does all this with an unpretentious erudition and an understated and balanced sympathy for his subject that, along with his literary flair for wonderfully clear and flowing prose, places his writings here in a category far above the rest. With him we can find none of the unintentional strains of condescension and orientalism so typical of folklore and religious anthropology, for while he's looking with the surprised gaze of the outsider with one eye, his other eye is that of the insider feeling very much at home where he is. The resulting view is visionary--but in subdued and shadowy tones.
   
   Appendix on an Appendix: in addition to the fifteen excellent essays forming the main body of "Kokoro", there's an extensive appendix featuring Hearn's translations of three popular folk ballads: "The Ballad of Shuntoku-Maru", "The Ballad of Oguri Hangwan" and "The Ballad of O-Shichi, the Daughter of the Yaoya". These are fascinating on a number of levels. They provide a tantalizingly fleeting glimpse of plebian drama, remarkable in its very lack of remarkableness. There's a certain sociological angle, as the versions of these oral ballads collected and translated by Hearn are those recited by mountain outcastes in the area of today's Shimane Prefecture. Religiously the first two ballads are key in understanding popular attitudes concerning pilgrimage in Japan--the first demonstrating a creepy (almost voodoo) edge in Kannon faith at Kiyomizudera Temple, the second delightfully exaggerating the rejuvenating benefits of Kumano and its sacred hot springs. Meanwhile, the third ballad is a straightforwardly melodramatic retelling of a true story better known to us today in a more refined and literary version as found in the novelist Saikaku's "Five Women Who Loved Love" of 1686.



2. "Kokoro" is a difficult word to translate from Japanese to English. Heart, Spirit, Way of Being...it is all of these things. Rather than attempt a direct translation, Lafcadio Hearn offers a selection of stories focusing on Japanese inner life, so that by the end you will understand kokoro.

   The stories follow Hearn's particular interests of Japanese folklore and the vanishing culture of which he found himself a part in post-Meji Japan. Each story is a slice of life focusing on Japanese character, morals and feelings. This is what the Japanese people care about, what they think is important, what is inside.

   The selected tales are non-judgmental and non-orientalist. This is no attempt to explain or highlight the "strange" Japanese, but merely a record and an illumination, in the best sense of the term.

   The collected stories:

   "At a Railway Station"
   "The Genius of Japanese Civilization"
   "A Street Singer"
   "From a Traveling Diary"
   "The Nun of the Temple of Amida"
   "After the War"
   "Haru"
   "A Glimpse of Tendencies"
   "By Force of Karma"
   "A Conservative"
   "In the Twilight of the Gods"
   "The Idea of Pre-Exsistance"
   "In Cholera Time"
   "Some Thoughts about Ancestor Worship"
   "Kimiko"

No comments about The Rainbow Through the Rain: A Tale of a Japanese Prisoner of War.

No comments about Nomo: The Inside Story on Baseball's Hottest Sensation.

No comments about Michi's Memories: The Story Of A Japanese War Bride.

No comments about Daruma Days: A Collection of Fictionalised Biography.

1 comments about Land of the Morning: A Civilian Internee's Poignant Memories of Sunshine and Shadows.

1. Great book about Jean McMurdie's time at an internment camp in the Phillipines during WWII, and her life before and after. A touching, captivating read!!!