Hell Under The Rising Sun: Texan POWs and the Building of the Burma-Thailand Death Railway (Texas A&M University Military History Series) | 
 enlarge | Author: Kelly E. Crager
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 585118
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 196
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 1585446351
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.54725209591
EAN: 9781585446353
ASIN: 1585446351
Publication Date: February 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: hardcover book and dust jacket in excellent condition-fast ship
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Book Description
Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field Artillery Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in Brownwood, Texas, ready to complete the training they would need for active duty in World War II. Many of them had grown up together in Jacksboro, Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any challenge. Just over a year later, these carefree young Texans would be confronted by horrors they could never have imagined. The battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java in March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week. For more than three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and marines who survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were prisoners of the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942, these prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate completion of the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored alongside other Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build more than 260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They suffered abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and debilitating disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner died in the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero's welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29, 1945, as "Lost Battalion Day" when they finally returned to Texas. Kelly E. Crager consulted official documentary sources of the National Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal memoirs and oral history interviews of the "Lost Battalion" members. He focuses on the treatment the men received in their captivity and surmises that a main factor in the battalion's comparatively high survival rate (84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comradery of the Texans and their commitment to care for each other. This narrative is grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under the Rising Sun will be a valuable addition to the collections of World War II historians and interested general readers alike.
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| Customer Reviews:
Good Story - Not Quite Up to Par March 1, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've probably read 50 - 60 books, mostly autobiographies, about POWS of World War II. Some are self-published, some are best-sellers, some are excellently written and some struggle. The story of our young men and what they had to endure, mostly at the hands of the Japanese is inspiring. Hell Under the Rising Sun had an interesting quirk to it, the fact that this was a Texas National Guard artillery unit, many of them had grown up together, got called up and then were captured almost before they even got into the war. I'm glad Kelly Crager elected to do this story. I feel, however, the book lacks SOMETHING although it's hard to figure out. There's a lot of redundancy, telling the reader the same thing several times such as "this camp is worse than the last one". After we've been told that once, we don't need to keep being reminded. I caught myself skipping over much of it. I never felt I really got "close" to the men the story was about. I think it might have helped if Mr Crager had been able to interview any remaining survivors himself to get a better feel. I also felt as if Mr Crager dwelt a little too much on the popular belief today that veterans never recover from their service during war time. The things these men went through was horrendous but research has actually proven that almost all returned to long, active, productive lives. I would have l liked to have more of that aspect pointed out. Also, and the most disturbing, I don't think I've ever read a book about POWs where there wasn't some mention of their faith in God. In the nearly 60 books I have in my library on this subject, I believe the men's religious faith is mentioned in all of them. That was such a part of the lives of families in the 1930's and 40's that I wonder why it wasn't even mentioned among the Texas boys or was it something not deemed necessary to include by the writer, the editor or whomever at least once or twice. Reading through the book I suspect this was a dissertation for an advance degree rather than an urgency to tell the story of the men. It was somewhat well researched (note the pages and pages of notes and bibliography but with no interviews by Mr Crager himself), awkward to read but I'm still glad Mr Crager put the words to paper. It did leave me with an urge to edit though! I would recommend it to anyone who had a friend or family member in the 131st Field Artillery Regiment or the USS Houston, you need to know all you can.
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