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Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath |  | Authors: Michael Norman, Elizabeth M. Norman
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
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Seller: St. John Street Books
Rating:  91 reviews
Sales Rank: 15871
Media: Paperback
Pages: 496
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0312429703
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.547252095991
EAN: 9780312429706
ASIN: 0312429703
Publication Date: March 2, 2010
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Product Description
For the first four months of 1942, American, Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought America's first major land battle of World War II: the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the single largest defeat in American military history. This was only the beginning. Until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered forty-one months of unparalleled cruelty and savagery. Michael and Elizabeth Norman bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a young cowboy and aspiring sketch artist from Montana who joins the army to see the world and ends up on a death march. Juxtaposed against Steele’s story are the heretofore untold accounts of Japanese soldiers who struggled to maintain their humanity while carrying out their superiors’ inhuman commands. Tears in the Darkness is an altogether new look at World War II that exposes the myths of war and shows the extent of suffering and loss on both sides. Michael Norman, a former reporter for The New York Times and a Marine Corps combat veteran of Vietnam, is now a professor of journalism at New York University. He is the author of These Good Men: Friendships Forged from War, a memoir.
Elizabeth M. Norman, the author of Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam and We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese, is a professor of humanities at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. For the first four months of 1942, American, Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought America's first major land battle of World War II: the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the single largest defeat in American military history. From then until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered forty-one months of unparalleled cruelty and savagery, far from the machinations of General Douglas MacArthur.
Michael and Elizabeth Norman bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a young cowboy and aspiring sketch artist from Montana who joins the army to see the world and ends up on a death march. Juxtaposed against Steele’s story are the heretofore untold accounts of Japanese soldiers who struggled to maintain their humanity while carrying out their superiors’ inhuman commands.
Tears in the Darkness is an altogether new look at World War II that exposes the myths of war and shows the extent of suffering and loss on both sides. Tears in the Darkness is an altogether new look at World War II that exposes the myths of war and shows the extent of suffering and loss on both sides. "The Bataan Death March has been written about before, and well, by a number of historians . . . But then you pick up Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman’s calm, stirring and humane Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, and you think: yes, we needed another . . . Tears in the Darkness is authoritative history. Ten years in the making, it is based on hundreds of interviews with American, Filipino and Japanese combatants. But it is also a narrative achievement. The book seamlessly blends a wide-angle view with the stories of many individual participants. And at this book’s beating emotional heart is the tale of just one American soldier, a young cowboy and aspiring artist out of Montana named Ben Steele . . . What is now known as the Bataan Death March began on April 10, 1942. Some 76,000 soldiers, many already close to death, were forced to walk 66 miles during the hottest season of the year—there were almost no buildings along the way, no trees, no shade—with little food and almost no water. It was called a death march for a simple reason: if you stopped marching, you were killed, by bayonet or rifle. There were many other ways to die during the Bataan Death March; it was a spree of arbitrary brutality. For sport, Japanese soldiers fractured skulls with their rifle butts. Japanese tanks ran over men who fell. Good Samaritans who tried to help fallen comrades were beaten or stabbed. Men were forced to bury others alive. To be on this march, one soldier said, was what it must feel like to 'come to the end of civilization' . . . What’s remarkable about this story, for Ben Steele and many others, was that it was just the beginning of the horrors that awaited them as Japanese prisoners of war . . . There are many Japanese voices in Tears in the Darkness. Mr. and Ms. Norman don't excuse Japan’s actions, but place them in careful context. Japanese soldiers, they write, were the products of 'a closed world of violence where men were subjected to the most brutal system of army discipline in the world.' These soldiers 'had been savaged to produce an army of savage intent' . . . In the end, though, Tears in the Darkness is a book about heroism and survival. All along you are glued, out of the corner of your eye, to one story, Ben Steele’s. If you aren't weeping openly by the book’s final scenes, when he is at last able to call home and let his family know that he is still alive after more than three years 'missing in action,' during which time this thin young man lost 50 pounds, then you have a hard crust of salt around your soul."— Dwight Gardener, The New York Times"Balanced, beautifully written . . . Many books have examined World War II in the Philippines, but none of them pack the punch of, or are as beautifully written as, this compelling volume . . . A superb book about the unspeakable tragedy of war and the triumph of the human spirit."— Terry Hartle, The Christian Science Monitor"For Americans the Death March was a first encounter with the brutality that would define Japan's military behavior, and the fact that the story has been told many times before does not dissuade Michael and Elizabeth Norman, both professors at New York University, from another effort. The result is an extremely detailed and thoroughly chilling treatment that, given the passage of time and thinning of ranks, could serve as popular history's final say on the subject. The Normans spent a decade in research and writing, interviewing more than 100 surviving American veterans and relatives of scores of others, and traveling to Japan to track down the most elusive and difficult sources some 20 former soldiers who were involved in the march and a guard from one of the miserable camps where more captives died from sickness, torture or starvation. The authors also find an ideal protagonist in Ben Steele, a former Montana cowboy who in 1940, at 22, joined the Army Air Corps and was sent to the Philippines. Steele survived the Death March and prison camp, and his personal story is the thread by which the authors spin their harrowing narrative, also using Steele's sketches to illustrate it . . . They have little admiration for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. commander in the Philippines who was being glorified at home in 1942 as the greatest American military hero since Ulysses S. Grant. On Jan. 15, the authors report, MacArthur sent his beleaguered troops on Bataan a would-be morale booster, promising them that reinforcements in the form of troops and planes were on the way from the United States. 'It was a lie, a Judas kiss,' they write. 'The Philippines was cut off. Washington knew it and so did MacArthur.'"— Richard Pyle, Associated Press
"Deeply researched and finely documented, Tears in Darkness is written brilliantly in lucid prose . . . A model of excellence in historical bookmaking . . . I couldn't put it down."—Philip Kopper, The Washington Times
"Tears in the Darkness should be required reading for students learning about World War II. Michael and Elizabeth Norman have written a lean, moving account about the infamous Bataan Death March. They describe what happened to the 76,000 American and Filipino soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese in 1942. Many books have described the atrocities. Prisoners were starved, beaten and killed. This is different. It's told from the perspective of an ordinary American soldier named Ben Steele, whose drawings illustrate the book. The authors also interview Filipino and Japanese soldiers. The story they all tell has nothing to do with Hollywood heroics. It's about what men do to survive. Powerful."—Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
"Tears in the Darkness is a valuable addition to the literature on the war. It is the best single volume on Bataan now available. Through a hard-driving narrative interspersed with numerous flashbacks, the Normans retell the painful saga of the battle to control the Philippines, which occurred in late 1941 and early 1942; the 66-mile Death March that followed the surrender; the atrocities that took place in the Japanese POW camps; and the Japanese 'Hell Ships' that transported thousands of POWs to the home islands for slave labor. Although the authors weave the stories of many people in and out of the narrative, they focus largely on Ben Steele, a young Montana cowboy who endured 41 months of agonizing captivity. During this ordeal Steele discovered his artistic talents—he would later become an art professor—and quietly began to sketch his surroundings. Since we have minimal visual documentation of Philippine POW camp life, Steele's many pen-and-ink drawings, recrea...
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 91
surprisingly great read June 10, 2009
Charles H. Perle (Jersey City, New Jersey)
144 out of 148 found this review helpful
This book may be history, but it reads like a novel. The authors have obviously done a lot of interviewing- more than 400- and it really shows. They have woven a story that's hard to put down. My only knowledge of the "Bataan Death March' was from the movies. This is some story. They take you to the Philippines before the battle and set the stage for it. Then they take you into the battle itself, right into the action. It's like you are there with the men. Then comes the surrender on April 9, 1942, 76,0000 men under American command, the biggest military defeat in our history. Then comes the death march. I think it's the longest chapter in the book. It was both hard to read and hard to stop reading. The details that these writers have accumulated are just unbelievable. You can see the work that went into this. Two things I especially like. First, although there must be literally more than a hundred characters in this book, they keep coming back to touch base with one character, a guy named Ben Steele, who was a young cowboy who grew up in Montana. His story really drew me in and I liked following him from the first page to the last. He became an artist after the war, and a many of his sketches, from that time in his life, are in the book. Surprisingly, I enjoyed reading about some of the Japenese soldiers. What's interesting is that you are angry at the Japanese and also feel for them at the same time. That's the way this book is written. Sometimes the good guys are bad and sometimes the bad guy are good. In the end, of course, the American and Filipino soldiers really suffered, so this is really a story of great courage and endurance. This is now my favorite war novel. Five stars all the way through the read.
Exploration of the human spirit June 9, 2009
D. Abrahamson (Evanston, IL USA)
85 out of 88 found this review helpful
In their book, "Tears in the Darkness," Michael and Elizabeth Norman, have taken a historical event, the American defeat and its horrific aftermath in the Philippines at the start of Word War II in 1942 and turned it into a spell-binding exploration of the human spirit. At the center of the tale, of course, is the Bataan Death March. But after ten years of incredibly detailed research on both sides of the Pacific, the authors are able to render its full reality from a variety of individual perspectives: American, Japanese and Filipino. The result is a revelation -- not merely a narrative of courage, sacrifice, cruelty and suffering, but also, ultimately, of the redemptive power of reflection and forgiveness. It may also be the most moving book ever written about those dark April days almost seven decades ago and men who experienced them.
Great Book June 11, 2009
Ann M. King
79 out of 82 found this review helpful
I'm not usually inclined to read books about war, but I picked this up and couldn't put it down. It follows the story of a boy from Montana who ends up a soldier in the Bataan Death March. Even though the reader knows in the first few pages that the soldier, Ben Steele, survives, and is still alive in fact, I found myself on the edge of my seat and praying for him to make it. His story is heartbreaking, uplifting and compelling all at once. The book is not for the faint of heart and is harrowing in many places, but it's written with a kind of simplicity and grace that shows above all, the ambiguity of war. Tremendous.
A moving account of quiet heroism and racial brutality June 18, 2009
Robert Busko (North Carolina)
43 out of 43 found this review helpful
Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael and Elizabeth Norman, both professors, is one of the finest treatments of how American POW's were treated by the Japanese ever written. Tears in the Darkness is profoundly insightful and laboriously researched, and presents the reader with an honest view into both the American psyche as well as the Japanese victors.
As the son of a navy vet who served on an escort carrier in the Pacific and saw action at Macon Island, Tarawa, and later at Leyte Gulf, I found Tears in the Darkness very moving. I've read extensively about the Pacific war and in many ways still haven't forgiven the Japanese for what they caused. Political Correctness be-gone.
The Normans focus on a young American who happened to be serving in the Army Air Corps when the war began. Focusing on Ben Steele allows the authors to use his experiences to study the wider specifics of the Bataan death marches and the POWs later treatment in the camps. With information gleaned from more that 400 interviews and many of Steele's pen and ink drawings, they provide the readers of a later era a revealing glimpse into what true torture is. No water boarding here. Starved, deprived of water, beaten, and allowed to die of horrendous diseases, Americans and their Pilipino allies, suffered and died together.
By traveling to Japan to interview the few guards still alive, the Normans provide an authoritative element to the story they want to tell. Without allowing the Japanese an easy out, the authors do provide background that at least helps to explain the level of brutality suffered by the captives. No alibis here.....just facts about how the Japanese chain of command worked. Interesting.
I also recommend We Refused to Die by Gene S. Jacobsen as a companion read.
I highly recommend Tears in the Darkness.
Semper Fi!
The rare book that transforms readers June 20, 2009
Richard S. Wheeler (Livingston, MT United States)
34 out of 34 found this review helpful
The Normans' magisterial history of one of the darkest chapters of modern warfare is one of those rare books that transforms readers. Those who read this book will be affected in different ways; some by the inconceivable suffering and cruelty, and some by the courage and grace of those who suffered.
The authors have included not only the entire history of the death march and imprisonment, but also the consequences of these things on individuals, especially Montana's courageous Army Air Force enlistee Ben Steele, one of the few who survived.
There was one episode that was particularly telling. After the war Steele became an art professor, and the day came when a Japanese-American student entered his class, and all the horror and bitterness and desolation of his three years of imprisonment rushed back into Steele's mind. But then he learned that the student's Japanese-American family had been interned here in the States. Steele invited the student into his office for a heart-to-heart talk, and out of it came reconciliation. Ben Steele treated his Japanese student with all the fairness he could muster. Other readers will discover other treasures in this powerful and luminous history. But no reader will finish the book unchanged.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 91
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