Counting the Days: POWs, Internees, and Stragglers of World War II in the Pacific-Fast Shipping

Description

Counting the Days isthe story of six prisoners of war imprisoned by both sides during theconflict the Japanese called the “Pacific War.” As in all wars, theprisoners were civilians as well as military personnel. Two of theprisoners were captured on the second day of the war and spent theentire war in prison camps: Garth Dunn, a young Marine captured on Guamwho faced a death rate in a Japanese prison 10 times that in battle; andEnsign Kazuo Sakamaki, who suffered the ignominy of being Japanese POWnumber 1. Simon and Lydia Peters were European expatriates living in thePhilippines; the Japanese confiscated their house and belongings,imprisoned them, and eventually released them to a harrowing jungleexistence caught between Philippine guerilla raids and Japanesecounterattacks. Mitsuye Takahashi was a U.S. citizen of Japanese descentliving in Malibu, California, who was imprisoned by the United Statesfor the duration of the war, disrupting her life and separating her fromall she owned. Masashi Itoh was a Japanese soldier who remained hiddenin the jungles of Guam, held captive by his own conscience and beliefsuntil 1960, 15 years after the end of the war. This is the story oftheir struggles to stay alive, the small daily triumphs that kept themgoing—and for some, their almost miraculous survival.