the story of the bataan death march and its aftermath and we say yes, we needed another book. so, that is nice praise and so beth and michael are here. they are both professors at nyu, and it is really, i will say obviously they have come to write this book, to begin with beth's book published ten years ago, we band of angels, the untold story of american women trapped on the bataan by the japanese, which was published ten years ago, when beth and michael picked up this story, that led them through to expand the story of bataan, and a really haunting chapter of world war ii history. .. of 76,000

soldiers, 66,000 mile death march, prisoners of war, going quickly back to the research, i think it is the research time spent in the past week 10 years which allowed the normans to tell this story carefully and thoughtfully not just from the u.s. perspective but several points of view, american,

japanese and filipino, not just from the generals in command, the soldiers on each side, a more psychological and historical context. so from elizabeth norman's book to the research, michael norman is a veteran of the vietnam war, elizabeth norman is the daughter of two world war ii veterans say they are prepared to write this book. they will present the book in tandem up here by slides and we will live up for questions. we are filming this season. when a comes time for questions we ask that you get to our microphone in the middle aisle. thank you for being here again, and please help me welcome to politics and prose, elizabeth norman and michael norman. [applause] >> good evening. i would like to welcome the records club of washington. we are happy to see you.

i would like to acknowledge the great help we got from jan herman, steve -- historian who is sitting here, and jerrod and kate michael who are in the back, cousins of ben steel. we will get started. >> thank you for coming to talk about years in the darkness but before we get to the details of the death march and amazing stories of the men from that era, let's talk about the first days of world war ii. 7:55 a.m. on december 7, 1941, japanese bombers and fighters appeared over the u.s. naval base in fort -- coral harbour and destroyed most of the pacific fleet, killing 3,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines. must have heard of that moment of the attack on pearl harbor was only a series of attacks that began world war ii in the pacific. the next week hours they also struck other targets in the pacific, among them america's most important position in the

area, the philippine islands. they bombed clark field, destroy the american air force. two weeks later on december 22nd, the imperial japanese fourteenth army invaded the philippine islands. the japanese landed 43,000 men. the americans and filipinos met them with roughly 110,000 men. with the american air force destroyed, the inexperienced, ill trained and badly equipped american/filipino troops had no airplanes to protect them and no navy to resupply them and it didn't take the japanese want to push the filipinos and americans back and back again to a final defensive position on the tiny peninsula of bataan. they were under siege, 6, starving and outgunned for, the bataan force, 76,000 men, surrendered. was the first major land battle for america in world war ii and the worst defeat in american history. after the battle the japanese want to get their prisoners of of bataan as quickly as possible

for so they could use the peninsula to stage an invasion of the island fortress in the middle of manila bay that not only guard the day but the best deep water port in the pacific. the japanese lined up this 76,000 captives and started marching them north of the old national road under a blistering tropical sun. they didn't give them enough food or water. since the men were sick and starving, they started from. the japanese tried to beat the dropouts to their feet and to keep the columns moving they just killed them. they bludgeoned them, bayoneted them, decapitated them, shot them, ran down like dogs. the death march was only the beginning of this story of war and atrocities and in the three years that followed they were penned up in one stinking hell hole after another. 60,000 filipino soldiers were imprisoned for eight month and released to civilians.

a third of them, twenty-six thousand men, died in prison cam. the americans were held for three years, many were shipped to japan to work as slave laborers in mind, factories and shipyards. in august of 1945 the americans were liberated. 25,000 americans went into captivity at the beginning of world war ii, 15,000 came home. that is a death rate of 40%. by comparison, in the european standards, allied prisoners of war suffered a death rate of 3%. >> it took a long time to find a way to tell this story, tell it so the reader could see war, field work, experience war on the page. we did not want to write a history from on high. we wanted to tell it from ground

level. there are probably 100 voices in tears in the darkness. to keep the story from going in a hundred directions we come back every now and then to one particular voice. come back to one man who went through everything that we wrote about, a young montana cowboy called than steel. ben steele went through everything. the battle, the death march, the prison camps. he taught himself to draw and began a remarkable prof. of art. 22 of those sketches are in here in the text of the book. you will see many of these tonight. we have made slides of them to show you. it took a long time to dig out the story of the japanese. we spent three weeks in japan talking to 23 former imperial

army soldiers and a quarter of the book is told from their point of view. we think that perspective makes our story unique. tonight, we are going to try to give you a small sample of those three narratives, war storytelling points of you. we will talk about the heart of the book, the death march, and begin with you experiencing the march through ben steel's point of view, ben steel's eyes. >> we would like you to sit back and imagine that you are on bataan, april 10th, 1942, you have just into your commanding general has surrendered you to the japanese and the rumors are that the japanese don't take prisoners. you don't really believe this because you don't want to believe it but you are frightened nonetheless. you are sitting somewhere, maybe in the middle of the jungle by the sign of a road, just waiting for the enemy to come along and take you into custody or kill you. you are exhausted because today's the enemy has been chasing you and you have been running away from them, running

for your life, your nerves are shot. the enemy has been bombing and shelling you for months and the fear is now permanent part of you. you are hungry, you are very hungry, more hungry than you could have imagined. for months during the battle you have been living on nothing but rice, tuna flakes and monkey meat. you are malnourished and the lack of finance has made your muscles weeks, your mind bubbled, your courage faltered. it is hot, hotter than you have ever known, 110 disease -- 120 degrees. your marching north of bataan, marching in a long column of men after another. you don't know where you are going. it is hard on everything, especially the feet. >> we are going to read some very brief excerpts from the book on the death march and this is the first one from the book. ben steele was watching, men were starting to blister, big blisters the size of half a dollar, blisters in clusters,

breaking and bleeding with every step. some men used sharp rocks to make slips in their shoes and boots, makeshift sandals but their feet were so swollen, the skin just bulge painfully through the openings. others remove their footwear and walked barefoot. wincing with every step. he had to find dry socks or he would be hobbled. ben steele paused, abandoned along the road, finally somewhere north of the cabin, he saw what he was looking for, a cork on the shoulder of the road was just ahead. the dead man was get where in garrison shoes instead of work boots and the laces were untied and loose. ben steel removed one of those shoes, stripped off the sock and was reaching for the other foot when out of the corner of his eye he spotted a guard headed his way and went back to his place in the column. what do you doing with that did guy? said one of the fellow marchers. you got to take care of your

feet, ben steele said, or you are not going to get very far. >> most of all, you are thirsty, circe from the glaring sun, and the dust from the road that hangs like a cloud over you, filling your mouth, your eyes, your nose. water, you have got to have some water but the guards won't let you stop by small rivers and springs and pipes from artesian wells. they're shooting men stock, there stabbing men stock. >> ben steele was drying up, his tongue was swollen, he felt himself gagging on it. he looked at the sun. not a prairie sun, this one was hotter, less forgiving. no trees, no buildings, no shade. he stripped off his t-shirt and draped it over his head. somewhere north of the cab and he caught his first son treatment in an assembly area. most of them more than 2,000 men sitting in the field, where read

the -- why the japs doing that? didn't make sense, mean bunch of bastards. back on the road, he was choking again. the man next to him had some water. give me a drink, will you? the man kept walking. come on, buddy, i am in bad shape, what do you say? here, said the man, relenting. don't take it all, you understand? farther on, looking in the first rank at the head of a column, ben still caught a glimpse of something on the side of the road, half a gallon tin can and it was half filled with water. and offering from one of the locals, he guessed. now he was the one with the drink and other men began to pull at his sleeves and be before him, water, come on, water. when the can was empty when it did in the rice callie or a drainage ditch. he didn't share with everyone, just those he couldn't ignore. give me some water, dear god, please. here, he would say, just don't

take all of it. >> you need help but you know you are not going to get it so you think of home and maybe you start to pray. then you see other men praying and you watch those same men drop to the road with the buzzards squads, the unit's came upon them to do their dirty work. where is god now? >> ben still believed in god but he did not think of himself as a man of faith, a religious man. back home, he rarely spend sundays in a queue and never wandered out to the prairie to listen to the evangelists called the holy spirit into their tents. the holy spirit, he noticed, was nowhere in evidence on the old national road. how many of the men begging for a drink had gone to their deaths with the words please, god, still on their lips. he wasn't angry at the lord, he was just being realistic. faith wasn't going to feed him.

he had to focus on the next swallow or that guard. the one up ahead aiming at a filipino who had just broken ranks and was running to a stand of sugar cane. the bullet caught up for kid in the back, sent him sprawling, and the guard over him was pulling the trigger again. ben steel thought, ok, this may happen to me, but all those other guys are alive and i am not any worse than they are. i am going to hang in as long as i can. if there's going to be anybody left alive from this, i am going to be one of them. >> you have to be smart to stay alive. you'll learn that growing up, you were raised in a hard country, creaks and high desert, you live by your wits in the hard scrub of the montana hills and the vast prairie. live by your wits now on the

march to knows where. >> ben steele had a cowboy's constitution and a cow tender's legs. all those montana morning's miles after some horse he thought had hobbled the night before. as he pushed to sell forward, he reminded himself of all those years of hard work on rough ground and found it easier to keep on his feet. as a rule, he stayed in front of the column, often in the first rank, a good vantage point to spot trouble or look for food or water. watching the gods on the flanks, he noticed a relieving a lot of space between them. it occurred to him that at those distancess, a guard would have to be a hell of a shock to hit a man. from time to time he broke from the line of the march to run for water or stock for sugar train. he thought of escaping but where would he go? into the malarial hills, the

jungle, wander around lost until some jack patrol found him? early afternoons were the worst, the blistering sun left him heavy legs, concentrate, he told themselves, left, right, left, right. when the guards stopped the column for a rest, he would fall into an instant sleep like many of the others, only to the stomped awake by the heel of the boot. >> pay attention, you tell yourself, you have to pay attention. know where the guards are at every moment, shake off the super of heat or exhaustion. if you slip up, lose your concentration for a moment, you will end a bike one of those bodies by the side of the road, so many of them in a drainage ditchs, the dirt and shoulders, so many of them. >> ben still would not allow himself to drift. this was no nightmare with but bears chasing him up the road. the bombing, shooting, stabbings war real.

he knew he wasn't going to wait for them. here was a blonde haired boy, have collapsed on the shoulder, desperately trying to pull himself to his knees and here came a jack to finish him. the boy ground that is all, just groaned as the bastard stuck him in the back. turn away, ben steel fought, turn away from the quarter, just another corpse by the side of the road. no room for loading or hate. a jack spitz in-your-face, so what? to help with the bastard, just keep walking, he told himself, make the best of it. men whistle clawing at him for water but by the time he reached the line and walked 30 miles he had become selfish with his can. he could sympathize with the guy and wanted to help him but he had been carrying the water all day, careful not to spill a drop of it and the can held only enough to last a couple of hours. it is survival of the fittest, he thought. you have got to look out for

yourself. >> how many miles that you walked? you can't tell. one foot in front of the other is all you're thinking about you but your mind once more, some relief of what you are suffering, the, search, hunger, what you are being made to see, the bodies of dropouts, bayonet and blue balloons rodding in the sun, the crows and lizards, your mind once relief. >> from the book, so many were dropping to the road, ben steel thought, it was better to stay aloof, not to get close to anyone, but about 50 miles into the march, he lost his resolve and the friend and a march mate. they talked a bit while walking, where they had been, where they might be headed, what had happened to them and what would happen when they got there. talking made the walking easier, they eat a lot less intense.

that night, sitting together in the compound, they chatted some more and ben steel felt better for the company. next afternoon, on the road, he noticed his new friend beginning to wall. a mile or 2 later, the man's legs gave out and down he went, grabbing for ben steel have legs and hit the ground. come on, ben, help me, he and another man called the drop to his feet and dragged him along down the road. they hadn't gone far before a guard rushed up and screamed at them to led the invalid go. his helper obeid but for reasons beyond all understandings, ben still hung on to the man and the next thing he knew his box were on fire. the guard's blade had penetrated to his pelvis. blood was beginning to course down his leg and his thighs were starting to squirm the wound. he looked at the man he was holding, hoped he would understand and let him sink to

the road at the guard's feet. no, the man said, no, please, help me. >> one of the things that makes tears in the darkness difference is we shift the story among three different points of view, americans and japanese. we thought a unique perspective my come from the filipino civilians. we did a lot of interviewing on the peninsula and found some amazing stories. we are going to tell you one of them. >> from the book. within a day of surrender, word spread that the japanese were marching filipino and american prisoners of war up the old national road out of baton to a rail head in san fernando. from provinces near and far, filipino kids and can hoping for a glance or a word with their soldier, a lined up along the road. there were thousands of them

waiting, townsfolk from dusty birds along the old national road, waiting to do what they could for the men slogging their way north. they filled pot with water, made rice bowls stuff with me and vegetables and wrapped them in ben and leaves, they boiled eggs and picked fruit and collected small cones of brown sugar. they put water beside the road and tried to hand of the jewels to the soldiers as they passed by. su and the guards had had enough of this and they started to beat people off with clubs and rifle butts so the people started talking their treats into the columns of marchers. there were a number of two story buildings where people packed the upper windows and rooftops and showered the soldiers with chunks of bread and rice, cookies and chocolate bars. enraged by this disruption the guards stomped the food into the dirt and beat the prisoners who

stooped to retrieve it but there were too many filipinos and too few japanese soldiers to stop them. from the side of the road, people would go into the columns, especially children, shoved something in to the soldier's hand, small melon, a sugar cookie, and head off before the guards could kick or club them but after a while the guards relented. as long as the columns kept moving they let the men take what they could get. >> this is also from the book. in the neighborhood in the town of abu kai, are mondo pakistan, 9-year-old, stood back to his mother behind a long iron fence. they had gone there early. now with the light comes --

damien, a soldier in the philippine army, the line of soldiers passing in front of him. they have to study each face, each man's way of walking, they would have to hope and pray. they were hanging on to reach other as they walked. whenever armando looked at his mother she was crying. he was convinced his father was dead but he continued to search the faces coming up the road and then there was, his father in the middle of the soldiers. he crossed the yard, rushed through the gates and threw himself into his father's embrace. he must be sick, the boy thought. where is your mother? the boy pointed toward the fence. we must get away from here now.

go back to your mother. but he did not want to go, he was helping his father, hugging him. have you eaten any thing? i have not eaten food or water for three days. his father against at the fence. go to your mother. the boy wouldn't move. and guard came over to break them apart. are mondo buried his face in his father as midriff, then felt a pain in his back, the toe of a boot and here came a second guard grabbing him, catching the scruff of his neck, pulling from from his father and tossing him to the road. shoving his father back, take good care of your mother. the column of men moved on pass defense, the school. >> finally tonight we are going to offer you the japanese perspective. the death march was not an

organized march perce. american and filipino units were scattered over the peninsula and as they surrendered they were told to make their way to the east coast road where guards waited to herd them into columns and march them north. one of the groups of prisoners were from the philippine army 90 first division. among them, we believe, were many american advisers. this group of about 400 captives, were walking along the jungle trail and crossing the passing river when the japanese took them into custody. the 90 first had seen a lot of action and the japanese believed them to be one of the units that had white doubt, annihilated a japanese regiment early in the battle. someone in a position of command, no one knows for sure, decided that the imperial army should take its revenge for that annihilation, and a group of 400 prisoners from the 90 first was

led across the river and uphill to a waiting area by the edge of a ravine. the filipinos and the american advisers had their hands tied behind them, their backs with communications wire and they were wired together in chains. each chain of men was marched to the edge of the ravine and told to face forward. then a line of japanese soldiers and officers with bayonets fixed and swords drawn, stepped behind them and started to stab them. when the bloody work was done, they kicked the chain of men over the edge and into the ravine. this became known as the massacre of the river, perhaps the worst story from the death march. we found three japanese soldiers who took part in that massacre. 3 men who talked to us about the murders they committed, tonight we are going to tell you the

story of one of them. >> private barack, a, a most unusual man, at least for the times. other parents kids in their sons off to war and told them don't come back alive, or die for your country. but his father hated war and blamed the military for putting the country on a path to defeat and ruin. he reported to the machine gun company, hundred twenty second inventory, his father had tears in his eyes. don't volunteer for anything, his father said. murakami had never seen his father cry before. just come back, his father said. murakami thought of himself as a good soldier who hated the army and hated the war and on april 9th when the guns fell silent he was elated but surveying the courses scattered around him, and many soldiers,

japanese soldiers, his moment of exaltation flew away like a startled byrd and all that was left was simple relief. how did i managed to survive? maybe he was just lucky. another thought occurred to him. why did we have to have this work? he was the sp and wandered down to the river to get a drink. upstream, he saw some filipino soldiers getting water. obviously they had yet to surrender. he watched them for a moment and decided to leave them alone. they are thirsty. i will now report that i saw them. he awaited new orders. one day passed, then another, they cleaned their gear, cooked their rice with their midday meal. on the other day, murakami and four other men got word that the company commander wanted to see them. they searched, each company had been ordered to stand five men

to the river for special duty, men had exiled in bay and that training. a lieutenant came to fetch the group, led them up the hill and into the jungle to a section of trail above a ravine. section for prisoners of war, hundreds, filipinos mostly been a handful of americans too. some were blindfolded and tied with rope. some tied with wire. murakami sensed something ominous was about to take place and he did not like it. several of the men, his comrades, were uneasy as well. what am i going to do? show them, the officer said, you're going to kill them. the officer, murakami's name, told him to step forward. he hesitated. just fill one and then you can go back to your unit, is sergeant said. he just stood there, the sergeant tried again. there are lots of officers from other units. their men are killing prisoners.

and the company commander wants to show them that our men can do this too. you should do this as quickly as possible, just kill one and you can go back. the company sergeant said kills them or you will be killed by the company commander. why don't you do that? the officer was growing impatient and barked at the sergeant. why did you tell your men to do it quickly? this is the order of the emperor. murakami thought i have no choice. in training he had stabbed large balls stuffed with straw. he stepped forward with his rifle. the man in front of him was a filipino. highs filled with fear. he tightened his grip on the rifle, flexed his knees, thrust his weapon for word that a point where he imagined the man's heart was. he heard a kind of clicked or snap like a stick breaking. he guessed he had hit a rib.

finish this rogue, yanked the bay and at free. the filipino sank to his knees, blood boring from the wound. he shouted defiantly, i am finished! kick him down, the major yield. he shoved it over the side and into the ravine. following him, the officer told the next man, man after man down the line. which each thrust, there was a scream and when the ravine began to fill with bodies, it too issued a complaint, morning and crying. why do i have to do things like this? he liked his weapon clean and tossed the towel into the ravine. you can go, the officer said. he ran as fast as he could and when he looked back over his shoulder he saw many others

running as well. chasing them from killing round. he chanted a prayer for the man he had killed, for all the murdered men morning and crying in the valley but the prayer didn't work. that night did dad came to him in a dream, one after another. don't come only to me, he told them. but if you want, please appear in front of the emperor and ask the emperor hal he would feel if he had been ordered to stab you ask. >> that concludes the presentation we put together. we want to give you a flavor of different viewpoints on tears in the darkness, and any questions you have for us. [applause] >> thank you, thank you. >> i wonder if you could give us some more context about why you

wrote the book, why at this time did you write the book and what were the political aspects taking place at the same time? you talk on monday about general macarthur and his role in all of this, if you could perhaps address yourself to that? >> i had finished a book about the nurses. i gave the manuscript to michael to and it and he did and he said fine job but what about the other half of the story? that is when we decided we were going to do a book about the men who served on baton. there are many fine books about the subject and we didn't want to repeat what had already been done. we also thought that this many years after world war ii, it was time to tell the story of a battle from every viewpoint. so we would do american, filipino and japanese. that is what started us on this ten years ago. it took a long time to do this book. there was a lot of reading to be

done, a lot of traveling to be done, and just to answer your question, michael has something else to say. >> every author has to have a personal reason for taking ten years to write a subject, you need that passion to sustain you particularly with this kind of work and listening to the stories we listen to. i am a combat veteran from vietnam and for 40 years i have been trying to write about the truth of war and i have failed for nearly 40 years. and editing this book, i look to this story and is the worst war story i have ever read about or ever heard. i thought if we could just gather enough details, thousands of details, if we could render this story, make it come alive on the page, maybe we could get to the truth of the war. >> in terms of why now? we finished it, and also, one of

the sad things when we started the book, we reciting the stabbings and bomb blasts, it was safely tucked in the pages of history in 1999, and 2,000 and all the sudden iraq and afghanistan and 9/11 happened and suddenly what we were writing about was in the news pages too. that was a remarkable turn of the events and not a pleasant one. >> to answer your question about douglas macarthur, only two schools of thought on douglas macarthur. we must have five or six biographies, clayton james, three volumes, a wonderful professor from the university of mississippi, joseph mccarthy with a political genius, he really knew how to construct propaganda and have propaganda. at this particular battle, something of a strategic failure, he left his supplies behind, he insisted he was going

to meet the enemy and the feed them at the beaches which was an insane notion given the army he had. he consistently lied to washington about the number of troops he had and the preparation for those troops, and any number of veterans we spoke with, most of them really don't hold macarthur in very high regard. >> you sort of answer one of my questions which was was it true about the food supply and ammunition dumps which were left behind when the army retreated, you answered that question but on another thought, is it true what you say, that the japanese considered the americans and

filipinos almost the same way as the germans considered the eastern europeans and russians, like lowlife people? will you expand on that? >> a terrific scholar from mit wrote a book called war without mercy that talks lot about this. there are probably three things to think about when you think about, try to understand why the japanese did what they did. the first is that this was a culture that helped itself tight. one demonstrated one's character by demonstrating one's reserve. our culture, we sort of do the opposite. second, to surrender in the japanese army was considered not only a shame to yourself but you change your whole family. any army that surrendered, the japanese were taught to think of them as nothing but chattel, captives, not prisoners of war. the third thing to really

consider is the training the japanese imperial army gave its soldiers. was the most brutal army training in the world. they brutalized and beat their own men to death in training camp. they brutalized them to create a brutal army, the savage them to create an army of savage intent and they let that army loose on asia and the consequence was twenty-five million people were killed. >> during the early days of the war the japanese fought the americans were going to be fat, rich and lazy, they had no regard for the american military and say foggy and less of the filipinos. >> live father was a world war ii veteran and he knew the men in the bataan death march and he had a number of them murdered their. he told me that when he was in europe and heard that the bomb had been dropped, his first thoughts were for the men died in bataan. do you think the dropping of the atom bomb was a consequence of

bataan? >> just a little anecdote, i couldn't read you the whole book tonight. ben steele was in a coal mine in japan, not far from hiroshima and above ground when they dropped the atomic bomb and he remembers looking into the sky and seeing a cloud filled with others that he had never seen in any of the bombings before and the ground trembles. a little anecdote about the hiroshima bomb. >> i am not sure that bataan, i don't know how prominently he figured into the decision of the administration to drop the bomb. their two other considerations and one was the savage fighting that took place on eulogy much which was an island that was part of tokyo and an air strip for the japanese and second was the absolute horrendous casualties the allies took taking out. the administration believed if they had to invade the whole

island the casualties would be horrendous. i am echoing a lot of popular history. that figured into the decision allowed more. i will tell you an interesting story. we interviewed -- one of the soldiers the interview was an advance scout who rolled into enemy trenches, he would tap a soldier on the shoulder. when he turned around he would stab him and they would steal the ammunition. japanese were short on supplies. we interviewed this man to get the story of his unit and he said i hope question for you. we set of course, what is your question to he looked at a square in the eye and said why did your country have to job two atomic bombs on my country? we didn't have a very good answer. >> we heard that story throughout asia. this is not in the book, not our expertise but japan was on its knees already. they were starving. these are people whose they did we have to drop the bomb?

>> two questions, slightly different, those that were captured, did any of them escape into the hills and did they survive? and number two, the japanese that you spoke to, a critical question, i want to make myself look good. are you convinced that they were really being upfront with you? >> to answer your first question, hundreds, probably thousands of filipinos escaped into the hills, they joined a guerrilla movements. there were probably several dozen americans who escaped to join the filipino guerrilla movement but not many americans. >> it was their country, it was much easier for the bill for -- filipinos to strip off their uniforms and bar code from local villagers and blend into the

population. i would have a more difficult time standing out. >> how truthful do you think -- >> this book was originally with another publisher which will go unnamed. the editor who was thinking of buying the book, we told him we wanted to write more than a short history, we wanted to go to japan, what makes you think they won't lie to you? we have been asked to that question before. i have been a professional journalist for 30 years. we ask questions that we didn't know the answers to, at least a broad, general way, we had a good sense of who we were talking to. we were with their wonderful japanese associate. there was a literal translation of everything that was said, great detail, of the 23 men we spoke with, only one of them lied to us and he had been a

lieutenant in the japanese propaganda war. he was still in the propaganda war when he spoke with us. this is kicking me with the other foot and just let it go. >> the river story, throughout the book, lots of stories of the japanese. when we were in japan, many of these men cried when they spoke to us. when we finished with the interviews they were utterly spent. if they were pulling the wool over our lives, i don't thing that would have happened. one of them said why would you tell us in such detail, he looked at us and said it is time for the world to know. >> he brought his wife to the interview.

>> ft thank you for your book. >> what is your review of general wainwright and how did you come to tell the story of ben steel? >> in terms of general wainwright, he was a cavalry officer in command of the philippines in the middle of the battle for australia on presidential orders. general wainwright is universally beloved by the men and women who were there. he stayed with them until the end, he surrendered into prison camp. when you write a book like this, we focus on macarthur and what he did or didn't do. there were a true american heroes who were leaders and he was one of them. the general who surrendered and another one huge those men

showed leadership under conditions we can under imagine. these stand as testaments to military leadership. >> i went out on the first american for as, we are trying to save our research money, i was trying to fund a book like this. many of them were not quite right. some of them were able to tell their stories, some were not. as i was swinging back through the west, i have a catalog from ben steel's are work. we were talking about it. an art professor would have a tremendous amount of insight. we spend the extra money to go to montana. there were a cluster of

veterans. as soon as i met ben steal, i wanted to drive out to his house for the first interview and he said i am coming to the motel to pick you up. the pickup truck pulls up, this guy has a white cowboy hat, biggest smile you ever been seen, opens the pickup truck, throws his hand out and says our you doing? welcome to my town? you could just almost tell instantly that this was just a boy and, wonderful man and i started talking to him and it was clear that he really had fought long and hard about the war and his reaction to it. a man who came home with 8 in his heart and manage to dispel that and worked very hard to bring himself back to a point where he could understand what happened. >> we like the idea of writing about a montana cowboy, a man who rode the range in my -- we got michael on a course.

when you think about what they represent, many people, that is america, everybody going for us. >> general wainwright is buried in arlington cemetery next to his father. >> wonderful. >> my knowledge of world war ii is world war ii movies. general macarthur ordered general mccain not to surrender and in fact he did surrender and this was unbeknownst to general wainwright. weather that is true or not, did the american -- how did the american military -- the second is very brief. the survivors and people he interviewed, did you find anything that was a common

trend, why these people survived other than just luck? >> there was no direct communication with between general macarthur who was in australia at the time, macarthur quit communicating. wainwright was the supreme commander of the philippines after macarthur. he could have jumped up and down and wainwright could have turned his back on. wainwright was getting his orders from washington, wainwright's final decision to surrender must have been an extremely difficult decision. to me, that was the more difficult decision. here are the japanese troops, less than a mile from the lines, there's a field hospital with 5,000 men right in the middle of the japanese guns, his men are falling back, he says to his

officers what shea are our men in? they couldn't even walk a hundred yards or fire a rifle. it took a tremendous amount of courage for an american general to surrender. he surrendered on april 9th, he was from georgia. a relative of is had fought in the silver war, robert e. lee surrendered on april 9th, and he knew this history and was thinking about that history, he handed his pistol to the japanese. >> he did not tell general wainwright he was gone to surrender. the reason he didn't tell wainwright he was going to surrender was he didn't want to be smirch his record. he thought for sure his military career was over and he would be court-martialed and whenever he met the men in the prison camp after the death march and for years after the war after he

survived can anybody -- i surrendered baton, i surrendered you. he took that very seriously. >> he lived five 46 years. he married a men or woman who was 12-year-old, madly in love with her, the have their love letters, she was madly in love with him. his last five 46 years were spent on the georgia coast, peace with the women he loved, he is a helluva guy. >> the common thread with the survivors, there was a lot of luck involved and fears will to live. in 1956, the same thing to the question, we are not the heroes, the rose the men buried over there. they feel that to their core. thank you. >> this is a little different.

our country has 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's prisoners. it seems from what i am reading, we are becoming more and more brutal to the people we are improving. some of them are mental cases, mental health care, what i am asking you is, deals with the brutality up front, and if leaves the reader to respond to that. what do you think is happening to the country if we are getting more brittle with our prisoners?

>> i leave the tough questions -- >> honestly, a difficult question to answer, nothing we are experts in. i don't know what is happening, why it seems brutalities increasing in the penal system. >> no. i am not sure the situation is at all analogous, frankly. you have got to understand the nature of battle to begin to understand why after a battle is over there has never been an army in the history of the world that has treated its captives kindly. there's a tremendous amount of animus that builds up in a battle and won the last shot is fired, it doesn't stop. it spills over. that is just one explanation for y. the prisoners were treated the way they were. >> we will take the last three

questions. >> thank you for your presentation. it was short, i was so moved and saddened and i just wonder what was it like for you all during that ten years he spent working on the book? >> i will try a short answer, the short interviews to conduct. it is hard not only to hear the stories but to watch the people telling you the stories as they relive what they at of. it took a toll, it really did. i am glad there were two of us doing this because we were able to support each other. it is not easy to do. >> sometimes as a historian/reporter, you like to think you can slip into a dispassionate objective part of your mind and focus on what is being said and focus on material, but that was impossible with almost every

interview. everyman we interviewed at least touch me in some way. our fabulous japanese colleague, i never thought i would be a japanese journalist breakdown on an interview, she openly wept in front of our subject, we had to stop the interview so she could collect herself, she was unable to continue. >> other than ben steel, who was your main character, among the americans, can you give an example of a specific moment of courage illustrated by another american on this death march?

>> the remarkable thing is the first twenty-five miles, when the men help each other, they did help one another, a wonderful story of a colonel who was shot in the legs and line on the side of the road, begging the men, stop, help me, nobody would. and richard gordon from the 30 first american infantry stopped and said come on, he got a few other guys to carry the guy and that night they put the man down, and they were completely wiped out. the three men helping him had slipped into the darkness and borden, one of the bravest men we had interviewed, he looked away in the morning before the march started. there were many acts of courage and many acts of self preservation.

>> the bags of an older colonel, quartermaster officer, the man could carry them anymore. there was an awful lot of courage and camaraderie among some of the men on the march. >> you interviewed the japanese, did the japanese comport themselves in a compassionate manner? >> yes, on a particularly brutal work detail, he had malaria and was dying, it was the real malaria that he had, a japanese soldier dropped a roll up by him and there was a tabloid that had been rolled up, and the individual japanese infantry men, some of the individual japanese soldiers were so appalled, their humanity

overwhelmed the conditioning. >> jan has the last question? >> hopefully it won't be too tough. the mechanics of putting a book together, spending ten years of the life, i am sure it took its toll. i estimate takes its toll on me. how did you find a japanese. >> going to veterans groups like our american legion, in japan, veterans organizations has its own group, and should go to the meetings and a lot of them would be together in a group and look at the man standing to the side, she would approach him first and speak with him, he would agree to be interviewed and would go free interview him and that is how she found most of the men.

they're being very clever with picking out men who might be willing to talk. >> 300 questions, pick and choose from the kinds of men, the things we wanted to know. when we got over there, she was so good she picked up on the pattern of questioning, we told her this is not like a normal report, we need great detail. we would have question, she would ask her own question and tell us a question she had asked. we developed a very nice rhythm with her. between the three of us we were able to dig into the japanese stories. >> when we would meet these japanese veterans for the first time, many of them ask this question, they wanted to know if they spoke to us, could they be tried for war crimes? obviously the statute of limitations is long over but that was very interesting.

>> many of your interviews were done around 2000 and previous to that. we should all be grateful for the fact that you got these folks while they are still here because i am sure many of the people you already interviewed are no longer with us. ..