POWs

1-19-14

I mentioned in a way – earlier post that I had just finished reading No Ordinary Joes, an amazing book about about captured submariners who endured the bulk of the war in squalid prisoner-of-war conditions working as slave laborers in Japanese factories that made war materials.

I have just recently finished another book about the same subject:   Unbroken (by the same author that wrote Seabiscuit; Laura Hillenbrand.)   It’s a hell of a story about a very compelling character   –   an American Olympic athlete who finds himself in a B-24 crew and is shot down over the waters of the South Pacific.   I won’t elaborate any more than that.

Japan “signed” the Geneva Convention but never ratified it     –     and completely ignored it’s provisions in their prisoner of war “camps.”   The horrors endured by American and Allied prisoners was unbelievable.   Read it if you can   –   however, it seems that Anjelina Jolie is involved in the making of Unbroken into a movie   and is currently on location in Australia.   Like any other book movie   –   it will likely “fall short” of the book, however.

steve