"When a rumor first crossed Special Agent Philip Cheles's desk in November 1945, there was no way to imagine the horror he would soon discover. Determined to uncover the truth behind an informant's report of a downed B-29 plane - and the assertion that one or more of the survivors had perished at the hands of local villagers - Cheles ultimately learned that nine soldiers had been captured and placed in the custody of the infamous Kempei Tai, the much-feared...

"Joe Johnson Jr. ran away from home at the age of 12, hopping a freight train at the height of the Great Depression. Two years later, he managed to talk his way into the U.S. Army. Seeking freedom and adventure, he was sent to the Philippines. After a misstep with a teenage prostitute, he vowed to right the wrongs he'd done and help the girl have a better life. Yet when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941, his hopes of being with the girl had...

Following the U.S. surrender to the Japanese on the peninsula of Bataan in 1942, 76,000 American and Filipino POWs began the infamous Death March. This gripping narrative, told in unsparing but sympathetic detail, focuses intermittently on American POW Ben Steele, whose sketches adorn the book, and the hell of Japanese prison and labor camps that introduced these captives to the starvation, dehydration and murderous Japanese brutality that would become...

"Twelve hours after Pearl Harbor, Clark Field in the Philippines was attacked by Japanese aircraft. Among the survivors was Private Victor L. Mapes. Mapes' memoir chronicles a gruelling three-year ordeal that was punctuated by strange and often amusing encounters with fellow Americans, Japanese, Filipinos, and the fierce Moros of Mindanao Island"--Provided by publisher.

"On a May afternoon in 1943, an American military plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary sagas of the Second World War. The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini."--Book...