The Hike into the Sun: Memoir of an American Soldier Captured on Bataan in 1942 and Imprisoned by the Japanese Until 1945 - Tapa dura

"a much valued, intimately descriptive contribution to the growing body of literature on the Japanese treatment of war prisoners and daily life (and death) in the camps"--Midwest Book Review; "unusually well written"--The Cellar Book Shop.

Sergeant Bernard T. FitzPatrick endured the long road to Japanese prisoner of war camps, an event known thereafter as the Bataan Death March. In Japan he was forced to work at the Yawata Steel Works at Kokura--the original target of the Allies' second atomic bomb. FitzPatrick's service at Clark Field in the Philippines, the brutal fighting on Bataan, and the harrowing details of his time as a Japanese POW are detailed. Interspersed are his thoughts on U.S. preparations for the Pacific war, his Japanese captors, and the American, Filipino and Japanese men and women who risked their lives to ease the harsh conditions in the camps.