THE FORTY DAYS

Another one of Oswald Wynd's World War II, Pacific Theater, tours of duty conducted with a stiff lip, upper and lower, efficiency and a minimum of human interest in the lives beneath the uniform. This takes place aboard a Japanese ship loaded with prisoners and there will be an attempted escape, one death from malnutrition and overwork, dysentery, and the inevitable submarine attack. But the real action (inaction?) will take place between three people -- a newspaperman-interpreter, a Major who had been a hotel entrepreneur in Singapore, and a Japanese Samurai (later sentenced to death by a War Crimes Tribunal) who deserves as much sympathy as Wynd is willing to permit. Duly but rather dully resolute.