Some Survived An Eyewitness Account of the Bataan Death March and the Men Who Lived through It

by Lawton, Manny; Toland, John

• ISBN13: 9781565124349
• ISBN10: 1565124340
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-03
• Publisher: Algonquin Books

Summary

Manny Lawton was a twenty-three-year-old Army captain on April 8, 1942, when orders came to surrender to the Japanese forces invading the Philippine Islands. The next day, he and his fellow American and Filipino prisoners set out on the infamous Bataan Death March--a forced six-day, sixty-mile trek under a broiling tropical sun during which approximately eleven thousand men died or were bayoneted, clubbed, or shot to death by the Japanese. Yet terrible as the Death March was, for Manny Lawton and his comrades it was only the beginning. When the war ended in August 1945, it is estimated that some 57 percent of the American troops who had surrendered on Bataan had perished. But this is not a chronicle of despair. It is, instead, the story of how men can suffer even the most desperate conditions and, in their will to retain their humanity, triumph over appalling adversity. An epic of quiet heroism, Some Survived is a harrowing, poignant, and inspiring tale that lifts the heart.

Author Biography

Manny Lawton graduated from Clemson College and joined the United States Army as an officer in 1940. He spent three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea before liberation in 1945. He lived in his hometown of Estill, South Carolina, until his death in 1986

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Maps	x
Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
Introduction by John Toland	xvii
1. The Fall of Bataan	1	(13)
2. The Death March	14	(11)
3. Camp O'Donnell	25	(7)
4. Cabanatuan	32	(16)
5. Move to Davao	48	(17)
6. Davao Penal Colony (DAPECOL)	65	(4)
7. Red Cross Packages	69	(3)
8. Ten Men Escape	72	(9)
9. Another Escape	81	(20)
10. Back to Cabanatuan	101	(12)
11. Tragedy at Sea	113	(25)
12. Ordeal by Water	138	(11)
13. Hell Ship #1-The Oryoku Maru	149	(33)
14. Hell Ship #2-The Enoura Maru	182	(16)
15. Hell Ship #3-The Brazil Maru	198	(13)
16. Japan at Last	211	(7)
17. The Last Move	218	(16)
Epilogue-Coming Home	234	(11)
Appendix I	245	(14)
Appendix II	259	(34)
Index	293