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MY HITCH IN HELL

THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH

A riveting eyewitness account of the notorious Bataan Death March and of three and a half years in enemy prisoner-of-war camps. Tenney was there on December 8, 1941, when a huge and well- equipped Japanese force invaded the Philippine island of Luzon. After a heroic defense, the American and Filipino soldiers surrendered. In the sadistic march that followed, Japanese soldiers broke all of the rules for humane treatment of prisoners of war. Tenney believes that the Japanese soldiers were seeking revenge for the defenders' stout resistance, the loss of about 20,000 Japanese, and the loss of face of their general. The author notes that the Japanese guards also meant to show their superiority over the Americans before Filipino onlookers by hitting, shoving, and spitting on the starved, sickly prisoners who walked too slowly to the prison camp. In some cases, the Japanese shot, bayoneted, or beheaded Filipino civilians who tried to give food to the Americans. Tenney bitterly remembers the survivors reaching Camp O'Donnell suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, dehydration, pneumonia, beriberi, or diphtheria. Men were killed in the presence of their comrades in heat of well over 100 degrees. In camp, the author relates, Japanese captors refused medical treatment to American prisoners, who were dying at the rate of 50 or more a day, and to Filipino prisoners, who were dying at the rate of 150 a day. Tenney escaped and joined a guerilla group before being recaptured and returned to Camp O'Donnell, where he was further tortured. Finally sent to Japan, Tenney was set free after the Nagasaki bombing. But he retains a permanent sense of sadness for those who never returned: Of a total of 72,000 who were in the Bataan Death March, only 7,500 survived, and of 12,000 who were Americans, only about 1,500 came home. A grim story of heroic survival.

Pub Date: June 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-02-881125-9

Page Count: 256

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

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NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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