Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission

Rating:
Summary: Incredible WWII story
Review: This is absolutely one of the best war stories I have ever read (if not one of the best stories in general). Even as a history major I had never learned much about this atrocity, and this book helped fill that void. I could not put the book down, it was an incredible gripping account of this horrific event. The book covers everything from the Bataan Death March to the liberating of the POWs. As you read the book, the author does a great job with paiting a vivid picture, allowing readers to become emotionally attached to the soldiers. Many points in this book left me sick to my stomach because of the reality of the story. This piece of US history is often forgotten and I would suggest that everyone go out and buy this book and read it! It's phenominal!

Rating:
Summary: The story really grabs you
Review: I picked up Ghost Soldiers because it gave me the opportunity to learn more about the Bataan Death March, one of those historic events you hear of, but never know much about. The book tells the story of how many US soldiers ended up in the Bataan Death March and their experiences during and after that trail, as well as their eventual rescue.

For those of us who live in an era of comfort unlike any known before our time, it's intersting and important to glimpse into the lives of people who endured things that almost seem surreal to us now. The description of arbitrary brutality really makes you appreciate the perils endured by those who came before us for our sake.

Sides tells the story gracefully and paces the story steadily. Highly recommended for history buffs, anyone who wants to understand the meaning behing the Bataan Death March, or who values the sacrifices made by others for us.

Rating:
Summary: Best war story I've ever read
Review: I listened to the unabridged audio version and would stay up WAY past my bedtime to find out what happens next. I was moved not just by the prisoners' will to survive, but by the Rangers' resolve to carry out their mission, to risk their lives to save men they'd never met, no matter the obstacles. These were simply extraordinary soldiers.

It was also good to be reminded that having to fight a ferocious enemy who would rather die than lose, who thinks nothing of cutting off a captive's head, who will intentionally kill women and children without remorse, is not a new experience for U.S. soldiers.



Rating:
Summary: Gripping, gritty, and often grim portrayal of true heroes
Review: _Ghost Soldiers_ opens with a chilling account in January 1945 of an American POW camp inside the Japanese-held Philippine territory of Palawan. Home to 150 prisoners, under the ruse of an air raid, the prisoners were ordered into trenches to avoid an American air raid but instead of gaining shelter from bombs they were massacred with machine guns, grenades, or burned alive with aviation fuel. Those that did manage to escape the deadly trenches were hunted down in the jungle and along the beaches; in all, thanks in part to native Filipino help, six men managed to escape the camp and make it to American lines where they told their grim tale.

As American forces were poised to retake the Philippines, would other massacres occur, or was this an isolated incident? Would it be standard operating procedure for Japanese forces to terminate POWs rather than allowing them to be liberated?

American intelligence was aware of a POW camp near the city of Cabanatuan that housed 513 American, British, and Allied POWs, largely remaining survivors from the infamous Bataan Death March after the American loss of the Philippines, the largest surrender in American history. The camp had once held 8,000 prisoners, but disease had taken a toll as well as the fact that in the months preceding most able-bodied prisoners had been sent on ships to Japan or Japanese-held territories to work as slave labor. What was left at Cabanatuan were "the dregs, the sickest and the weakest," the "ghosts of Bataan" as the prisoners called themselves; an "elite of the damned" that were too starved, weak, and/or sick to prove useful to the retreating Japanese. Located close to 30 miles behind enemy lines, could they be rescued before they were massacred?

Fearing time was rapidly running about for these men who had languished in the camp for close to three years, on January 28, 1945 121 specially selected troops from the as yet still largely untested U.S. Army 6th Ranger Battalion, 10 Alamo Scouts, and 280 Filipino guerillas set out on foot to go deep behind enemy lines and liberate the prisoners. Working with numerous source materials, including interviews with survivors (including living Rangers, ex-POWs, and Japanese soldiers), author Hampton Sides put together a vivid narrative of the bold mission, a mission that was much lauded in the day but was quickly eclipsed by later events such as the invasion of Iwo Jima and the bombing of Hiroshima, an epic tale perhaps not that well known to today's readers. He did a good job portraying the personalities of several of the Rangers, notably Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci, commanding officer of the 6th Ranger Battalion, Captain Robert Prince, the assault commander of the Ranger raid on Cabanatuan, and Dr. Jimmy Fisher, the Ranger battalion surgeon.

Sides not only recounted the rescue mission; in alternating chapters he detailed the experiences of those who endured the Bataan Death March, from their initial surrender, the March itself (grimly referred to as the "Hike" by the POWs), to their various experiences in the prisoner camps up to their liberation. Much of this, particularly their time on Bataan prior to its fall, the Death March, and their first camp, Camp O'Donnell (the latter was extremely macabre and disturbing, a place where scores died daily), made for very grim reading. It is one thing for someone to rattle off a list of tropical diseases, but another thing entirely to read first hand what amebic dysentery, cerebral malaria, beriberi, and diphtheria can do to a person; these and other disease ran through the prisoners' ranks like wildfire, the prisoners particularly vulnerable owing to their near starvation levels of diets and sometimes near complete lack of vitamins and minerals (indeed a number would go blind and suffer other maladies from a lack of such nutrients, something sympathetic Filipino insurgents would try to combat at Cabanatuan by smuggling in when they could such things as fruit juice).

I found it particularly interesting that Sides tried to present a balanced picture of the Bataan Death March. While in no way whitewashing some of the petty cruelty, torture, and outright murder of not only American and Filipino prisoners but even in some cases Filipino bystanders who sought to merely give food and water to the marching prisoners, he does try to show that the horrid conditions of the March were more due in part to bad planning rather than malice. General Masaharu Homma had sought to prepare for the evacuation of the POWs months earlier; having foreseen that this would be a huge logistical problem, he prepared a place called Camp O'Donnell, a former training installation of the Philippine Army located about 75 miles north of Bataan's tip, as a way station for the prisoners. Homma thought that those prisoners who were healthy enough would march, the rest riding in vehicles - marching no more than ten miles a day - and taking a 25 mile train ride for the last leg of the journey.

In reality the plan was massively flawed. Homma estimated 25,000 Filipino and American prisoners; in reality there were almost 100,000, which made the amount of food, vehicles, and other supplies planned for completely inadequate. Further, the Japanese were surprised at just how weak the American prisoners turned out to be, how close to starvation many of them were; this combined with the fact that the largely mechanized American army was not used to the amount and level of marching that the Japanese soldier daily endured produced a true humanitarian nightmare. The trek north to Camp O'Donnell took about a week for the average prisoner, yet owing to the huge numbers of prisoners and their widespread distribution the Japanese needed three weeks to finish the evacuation, during which time 750 Americans and 5,000 Filipinos died, with a further 1,500 Americans and 15,000 Filipinos dying at horrid Camp O'Donnell.

An excellent and stirring book, at times grim, exciting, and even humorous.


Rating:
Summary: A must for any reader
Review: Ghost Soldiers is the historic tale in World War II about a POW rescue operation on a now well-known prisoner camp called Cabanatuan. It follows two stories, one of the POW survivors of the Bataan Death March. From when the soldiers surrendered in Bataan to the point where they are rescued in the raid on Cabanatuan, it details their gruesome hardships and their struggle to survive. The other story it follows in the dual story line is the U.S. Rangers sent to rescue them and how they manage to pull off the most successful raid on a POW camp in the history of the world.
This book is well written, solid in both detail and the events that took place. I found the book interesting as although I am aware of many World War II events, I did not know of such POW camps and the details of the Japanese retreat back to their homeland in the Philippines. I liked the dual story line format used to explain the events up to the point of the aftermath of the Cabanatuan raid as it gave a sensible and reasonable time frame to understand. I also enjoyed the many first hand information gathered by the author, Hampton Sides, who went to such great lengths to interview the survivors to write the book accurately.
Despite the many pros of the book, there were some cons to me as a reader. Even though I enjoyed the dual story lines, I found it difficult to fully follow and understand at first as it swapped between the POW's story and the Ranger's story. This con was corrected later on in the book though as it becomes easier to follow as the dual story lines merge towards the raid on Cabanatuan. I also feel it-lacked detail in certain areas, such as the Hukbalahap guerrilla's exact grudge against the pro-American guerrillas and the history behind them. One of the last cons I found in the book is how the many characters in the event all were hard to remember. I feel it might have been possible to represent the characters in an easier fashion that would allow the reader to have an easier time learning each character.
I learned much from the book on the Cabanatuan POW camp and I become aware of the Bataan Death March. The gruesome atrocities committed in the Bataan Death March and the POW's living conditions showed me how gruesome war can be. The book did an excellent job in teaching about the Death March as it went into such detail as many of the murders of the surrendered U.S. soldiers and the unfortunate planning towards the POW's transportation and condition. The book also succeeded in describing how the Rangers managed to complete the Cabanatuan raid, which was the most successful raid in U.S. history due to the fact there was so few casualties taken by both the POWs and Rangers and how many Japanese troops were killed in a very short amount of time. This book is one of the best I have read on a World War II event yet.


Rating:
Summary: Ghost Soldiers
Review: The title derives from the name for the men placed in captivity in the Philippines. When General MacArthur abandoned the country in 1942, the ghosts of Bataan were left. Upon the invasion of Lingayen Gulf by American forces in 1945 there was fear that the prisoners in the camps would be slaughtered by the Japanese. The Japanese were increasingly turning to frenzied acts.

The Japanese view of POW camps differed from the American one. It was felt to be a mark of dishonor to be a POW.
Mass suicide had been attempted by Jjapanese prisoners in Australia. In 1944 Tokyo issued a kill-all order.

The Rangers were a new, elite infantry group, patterned on the British commandos. The real problem at Bataan had been disease. Those nearer the quartermaster ate better. It is a rule of war that rations shrink. Bataan seemed to be an heroic struggle to prolong a hopeless cause. The siege was an epic drawdown. There were increments of material and spiritual depletion. In 1942 armaments were destroyed in expectation of General King's capitulation.

On the same day as Robert E. Lee's defeat, April 9th, General King proposed to lay down his arms. The plan of withdrawal to the Bataan Peninsula had always been based upon the ability to restock. Unfortunately, Japan had destroyed the U.S. Navy and the army was starving. Roosevelt and MacArthur purveyed false hope.

MacArthur had been ordered to leave Corregidor and be evacuated to Australia in March. General King had no official consent to surrender. He assumed he would be court-martialed. The surrender, of necessity, was unconditional. The defeated foot soldiers on Bataan had no protocol to follow. The men hoped they would be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention but feared the worst. There had been rumors.

Counting civilians, about 100,000 soldiers and others surrendered. The Japanese Generals needed to move the prisoners northward. The Japanese overrated the health and the strength of the prisoners.

Shifting back to 1945, the Rangers sought to liberate a camp of POWs. Colonel Mucci, leader of the Rangers, arranged for photographers to accompany them to record their historic mission. In 1945 for the Japanese it would be Bataan in the reverse. Ranger outfits typically had naive optimism and moved with improvisational boldness. Filipino guerillas would lead the Rangers to the prison camp.

In 1942 American and Filipino prisoners had marched North and the Japanese had marched to the Bataan Peninsula to take Corregidor. The evacuation to Camp o'Donnell lasted for three weeks for reason of the great numbers of Americans and Filipinos and their weakened condition. If the corpses had been apportioned along the seventy-five mile route, there would have been a corpse every twenty yards. This was not premeditated atrocity. Brutality took place in piecemeal fashion. The Bataan Death March occurred because the original evacuation scheme was faulty. Japanese war planners were deficient in improvisational skills. The prisoners had no vocabulary to describe Camp O'Donnell. Americans had seen nothing like it since Andersonville.

The Rangers planned to move the sick prisoners out in water buffalo carts. Since Camp O'Donnell was overcrowded, the Japanese chose to put prisoners at Cabanatuan, a prewar Philippine Army installation. It was sixty miles east of Camp O'Donnell.

The guards in the camp were the dregs and misfits. The prisoners were obsessed by food. In December 1942 the Red Cross brought Christmas packages. The prisoners committed small treacheries of survival. They were scroungers. The prisoners lived under the dominion of a culture they truly did not understand.

To their rescuers, the inmates of the camp seemed like scared vermin. The Rangers tried to make the prisoners understand the urgency of the situation. The Rangers were shocked at the grotesque condition of some of the men.