Give Us This Day

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book!
Review: In 1967 a friend gave me a worn out copy of this book. The front page was missing and it was falling apart. It was several months before I picked it up and started reading it. If found out that you cannot judge a book by a missing cover. (The first two chapters starts off slow,... but WOW, after that you cannot put it down!) I have since read this book over five times. I'm a shift captain on Winter Haven Fire Department and I let everyone on my shift read it. When I think I have a bad day,...I think of Sidney Stewart. It also has a Christian theme that is very powerful. My prayer for Sidney Stewart and all those on this horrendous event: I PRAY THAT SOMEONE WILL ENCOURAGE GEORGE LUCUS TO MAKE A MOVIE ON THIS BOOK!!!!! AMERICANS NEED TO KNOW THE TRUTH AND HORRORS THAT THESE SOLDIERS ENDURED. IT WILL BE A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER "THAN SAVING PRIVATE RYAN."

Rating:
Summary: An unbelievable tale of survival and the human spirit
Review: My father was a POW for more than 3 years in the hands of the Japanese. He shared many of the same experiences that Mr. Stewart wrote about and he recommends this book to everyone as the "best account of what happened". The descriptions POW life are often graphic and the conditions that the prisoners were forced to endure were horrific. After all he had been through I found it amazing the Mr. Brenner was able to recount the events without sounding bitter towards his captors.

The book's events begin in the Philippines prior to the war and follow the fighting on Bataan, the surrender, the Bataan Death March, POW camps, the horrendous conditions of POW transport by ship and the eventual liberation of his POW camp by Russian soldiers. I highly recommend this book. It will be especially interesting to those interested in this bit of US history, to anyone who knows someone who was a POW or to those interested in the human spirit to survive.

Rating:
Summary: It will bring tears to your eyes.
Review: One day, while I was baby-sitting my cousin, I found this book. Idly, out of boredom, I picked it up, and began to read it. But then I couldn't but it down, it was a remarkable book about the times of war, and the brave men who fought in them. You will find tears in your eyes when you read about the suffering they had to endure, and how bravely they faced it. Sidney Stewart is a true hero, and a great author, as he recalled those horrible times years ago.

Rating:
Summary: An amazing story of the human spirit
Review: The story told in this book is almost unbelievable. It is a testament to the extremes of the human condition - the indomitable nature of the human spirit and the nightmarish brutality of which humanity is capable. I found myself gasping out loud while reading this book. Stewart's will to live in the face of undescribable conditions is remarkable. Just when you think the situation can not get any worse - it does and it usually gets much worse.

The writing style is simple but not simplistic. The other prisoners become very real and the reader develops interest in them as well as Stewart. My only complaint is that with so much horror in the book, it would have been nice to know more of the story of how Stewart returned to the States, how his recovery went, how he adapted back to regular life, did he visit his friends families, how his experiences affected the rest of his life. I have found that most prisoner of war books like this are lacking in this respect.

There are two groups of people who need to read this book: 1) those who think their lives are rough or unlucky, and 2) those who think the use of the atomic bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was uncalled for.

Rating:
Summary: Human Spirit Tested by Japanese Wartime Depravity
Review: This is a remarkable book that will move you.

The author was an American soldier stationed in the Phillipines when WWII erupted. Captured along with our other soldiers, the author survived the Bataan Death March, prision camp, ship transport and imprisonment in Japan. Most of his comrades and friends did not.

Stewart is witness to the horrible conditions, atrocities, death and inhumanity inflicted by his Japanese captors upon our soldiers. These men were starved, denied water, beaten, worked to death and stripped naked by an enemy who seemed not to know the spark of God or humanity. The story is brutal, but provides an important witness of how man can be both a brutal animal and also an enlightened spirit.

Stewart and his friends survived their ordeals with a combination of Christian faith, love for each other and plain old tough mindedness. Challenged every day, those attributes helped the men in riding out these toughest of circumstances.

This book is not a history of the prisoner experience, nor a detailed history of Stewart's own experience. Rather, he uses both the searing atrocities visited upon his countrymen and the noble response of these brave men to present a richly textured testimony. The book is important for what is shows of the nature and history of the human animal. This book will stay with you.

Rating:
Summary: The sacrifices of the men captured at Bataan.
Review: This is truly a heartbreaking book. Mr. Stewart straightforwardly and unemotionally retells his personal story of survival through the Bataan Death March and subsequent captivity, in which he (and his fellow prisoners) experienced extremes of treatment and torture that you and I should be thankful we will never have to endure, an experience every bit as brutal and dehumanizing, as sad and desperate as any experience of World War II (including the brutality of the Holocaust). On top of barbarous treatment by the Japanese they were even bombed (accidentally) by American bombers while being transported in a Japanese warship to a new prison location as the war was drawing to a close. I cannot think of another book I have ever read that humbled me as much as this book and its recounted experiences of Mr. Stewart and his fellow prisoners. If some of these described incidents were given a fictional treatment, I would probably have laughed at their unlikeness (particularly the incident that gave the book its title--one of the most amazing things I have ever read), and yet it is all true. Truth really is stranger than fiction. I really encourage you to read this so we don't forget what the men who fought this war this in sacrifice for their country. I don't think anyone sacrificed more than the men who were captured at Bataan did. All of us should never forget how much they gave for us.