No comments about Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese.

No comments about Never Plan Tomorrow.

1 comments about Pasaje a La Libertad / Passage to Freedom: La Historia De Chiune Sugihara / The True Story of Chiune Sugihara, the "Japanese Schindler".

1. This is the Spanish version of Passage to Freedom, a 30-page picture book. A remarkable and inspiring story of a Japanese diplomat who disobeyed his government by writing hundreds of visas to Jewish refugees trying to flee Lithuania. With compassion and courage, Sugihara places his own future in jeopardy to save others. Excellent! Don't miss the afterward to see what happened to the Sugihara family.

5 comments about Death March: The Survivors of Bataan.

1. As a descendant of soldiers who were in the Philippine Scouts (they survived the March by escaping into the jungle), I found the first hand accounts of Americans who were there fascinating. It gave me a feeling of being there. It's a story about survival and the indomitable spirit of man.It's amazing what men will do to survive in stressful conditions and adversity. It separates the men from the boys, the strong from the weak.
   I'm not accustomed to reading books in the first hand account style, but I found it more interesting to read the text as opposed to the typical factual style that a history book would have.
   This a great read for you military history buffs out there! It's almost as good as sitting down with the vets and hearing them telling you their experiences.



2. Author Donald Knox has taken personal narratives from over sixty survivors of the Bataan death march and combined them into this gripping story of the struggle to survive. On April 9, 1942, the penninsula of Bataan fell into Japanese hands. The surrendering Americans were then subjected to a ninety mile march without adequate food or water. Men were shot and bayonetted for sport by the Japanese. Once the Americans reached their prison camp, they were herded into a tiny area with only two water spigots. Hundreds of men died each day from dysentery, malaria, and starvation. Many healthy men were soon reduced to skeletons. Others simply refused to go on any further. Still others found that the only way they could survive was to find a friend to help them get through.

   After two to three years of living in this nightmare, the American forces returned to liberate the Philippines. Fearing that the prisoners would be liberated by the returning Americans, the Japanese loaded the surviving POWs into "Hell Ships"; massively overcrowded freighters to be transferred to the Japanese home islands. Some of the men went mad, while others drowned when their ships were sunk by American submarines. Once in Japan, the men were forced to work long hours in Japanese factories and mines while still receiving little in the way of food or medical care. The conditions in the Japanese labor camps were as unimaginable as they were in the Philippines; little food and water and constant beatings by the Japanese guards.

   I've read several oral history books about World War II, and this book is one of the best. Knox lets the survivors' stories create this book. I was in awe of the horrible conditions that these men were forced to survive under. It is a true testament to the human spirit that these men were able to overcome the merciless beatings and the extermely meager food and water rations they received to survive and return home. Anyone who questions why the Americans used the atomic bomb should read about the Bataan prisoners and what they were forced to endure. I highly recommend this fine piece of oral history. Read it and understand what some of the true heroes of World War II did for their country.




3. I am a college student and I originally picked this book up to due research for a project of the Japanese atrocities of WWII. While I specifically picked up for the accounts on the Death March, I ended up reading it cover to cover. The more I read more it became useful for information on the Hell Ships and the conditions of the labor camps. It's a shame that while the stories of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany are told and retold the horrors in the Pacific Theater are barely talked about. The stories that the soldiers tell of struggle and hardship show the true heroism. I often find myself with them hoping them on. I completely recommend this book for anyway with any interest.



4. Have not read the book as yet but pleased with prompt delivery.



5. This book is both Gripping AND Complete. It may not be conventional in the way it is written, but it certainly carries you every step of the way. It will grip your soul and force you to see the depths of humanity. Both the good and bad. This is a must read for anyone who is even slightly contemplating reading it. My heart goes out to all servicemen and servicewomen past, present, and future. As well as thier families. Thank you for your sacrifices!

3 comments about Salt of the Earth, Conscience of the Court: The Story of Justice Wiley Rutledge.

1. At long last, thanks to Judge Ferren, we have a complete biography of Justice Wiley Rutledge. While Rutledge is not much remembered today, and his tenure on the Supreme Court was relatively brief (1943-49), his significance merits more attention than he has received. Judge Ferren employs a completely different approach than the only other biography of the Justice, Harper's "Justice Rutledge and the Bright Constellation" (1965). Harper focused almost exclusively upon Justice Rutledge's decisions. Judge Ferren does not get Rutledge on the court until page 222 (out of 548). While one might conclude that perhaps too much detail occupies the pre-Court discussion, I can't think of another judicial biography that so effectively affords one a feeling of becoming so intimately familiar with its subject. This initial section is particularly effective in discussing the political maneuvering that accompanied filling several vacancies on the Court, including Rutledge's. The book's central focus, Rutledge on the Court, is very well developed. Judge Ferren not only brings his own insight into the judicial process to his analysis, but discusses some unique aspects as well, such as Rutledge's habit of asking trusted law faculty members their opinions on issues before the court, and Rutledge's exhaustive preparation for writing opinions. The book also adds to our understanding of the personal interplay in that most bombastic of Supreme Courts, that chaired by Chief Justice Stone. Interspersed with the discussion of Court cases is additional biographical material relating to the Justice. Finally, the underlying research is simply awesome--truly a labor of love. While it is a very long book, if you are interested in Justice Rutledge or his period on the Court, it makes for indispensable reading.



2. As the folks at Amazon could tell you, I read many novels and very few biographies. I am a corporate lawyer, and have not practiced constitutional law since I clerked for Judge Ferren, the author of this Rutledge bio, more than 20 years ago. I picked up this book because of my connection to the author, but I stuck with it for other reasons. First, the writing is elegant and precise; it is a very readable book. The book tells the story of a good man (and very good lawyer/dean/judge) who is concerned with doing his job right, respected others, was respected by others in return, and achieved great things -- what an encouraging, uncynical story! (Not dissimilar to the author's own story, a fact that creates an extra richness of texture in this book, especially in its descriptions of the life of an appellate judge.) In addition, the constitutional issues that the Court dealt with during WWII and the immediate post-war era remain fascinating -- and very timely. These issues are made understandable to nonexperts without being oversimplified. I learned a lot, and greatly enjoyed the process.



3. For anyone with an interest in law or history this is a great read. Justice Rutledge was my grandfather's first cousin -- thus the initial reason I bought the book. Unfortunately the dust jacket was crinkled upon arrival so I'll have to send it back for a new copy.

1 comments about Courage on Bataan and Beyond: Memories of an American POW who was a slave of the Japanese during WWII for 3 ¿ years.

1. I have to say, this book is just amazing. Abel Ortega Jr. did a fantastic job and has obviously spent much time and dedication writing this book. Abel Ortega Sr. is one of the last surviving POW's and probably has the best account of the events ever recorded. There are such amazing stories and many testimonies of how God protected him through all the unbearable circumstances. There are actual copies of documents and photos throughout the book. It is worth every penny, especially if you are a history buff.

No comments about Out of the Alleyway: Nakagami Kenji and the Poetics of Outcaste Fiction (Harvard East Asian Monographs).

5 comments about Sleeping on Potatoes.

1. Nomura's sparse style of writing is not unlike the character of a differential equation expressing the essential. He cuts to his distilled memory and leaves the residue of honed understanding through the filter of life experience. His life is an engaging tale; to me it seems a Horatio Alger story of the Japanese American community. He was born in a boxcar in Montana, was dislocated to Japanese internment camps and made the journey to Corporate Senior Vice President for Honeywell Corporation. Now he contributes to his community in Port Townsend, Washington in very beneficial ways, besides enjoying his own interests, family and travel.
   
   His story brings greater understanding and deep appreciation of the diversity of our American culture by his unflinching exposure of his own family history. Nomura recounts with accuracy the emotional pain, isolation and dislocation from traditional Japanese culture in the struggle for the promise of a better life in America. He voices his life experience with insight and humor, which is the great expression of the commonality of the human experience seen through the filter of a kind mathematician.
   
   He tells his story, even including poetry, which supports understanding and intimacy through his selected descriptions of challenging moments about his cultural heritage, marriage, family and career. In the end the real meaning and importance of life is about relationship.
   
   But most of all I think this book, Sleeping on Potatoes is worthy of recognition for his dedicated and talented effort to build links of understanding between cultures, family, relationships and the poetic spirit of a curious mind.



2. I've known Carl Nomura for 20 years, seen various versions of this book and watched him grow as a writer. With this book, he's really done it. Sleeping on Potatoes is humorous, touching, poignant and readable. I particularly love Carl's description of his childhood as son of Japanese immigrants. Equally facinating are the years of internment during World War II. Never bitter, often whimsical, Carl gives us a touching picture of people unfairly interned. Ultimately Carl went on to earn a PhD and a postion as executive in a large corporation -- an amazing leap from his early lumpier bed.



3. Sleeping on Potatoes:
   A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower
   By Carl Nomura
   
   2003 Erasmus Books
   ISBN: 0970194730
   
   Reviewed by George Katagiri
   Portland, OR
   
   
   Carl Nomura's writing style brings to life his unique perceptions of growing up and encountering his world. His descriptions are so vivid and captivating that it is often difficult to put the book down.
   Nomura tells about being born in a boxcar somewhere between Deer Lodge and Three Forks, Montana. At retirement, he is the Corporate Senior Vice-President of the Honeywell Corporation. In between these two events are numerous adventures of (1) growing up in poverty, (2) climbing the corporate ladder, (3) rearing children, (4) getting along in marriage, and (5) the joy of loving and being loved. It is the journey along the way that is captured in the book.
   Noteworthy are his memories of growing up. The descriptions of living with a domineering and abusive father makes one wonder how he survived his childhood. His drive to succeed stems from his ninth grade algebra teacher, who suggested that his mental capability was marginal and that he should not enroll in geometry but pursue courses in the manual arts. This spurred him on to teach himself mathematics, which became one of his favorite subjects.
   Later in life, he encountered problems in his marriage. After consulting with marriage counselors and trying to gain insight through group therapy, he finally gave up on external help. His children got together and conducted sessions which resulted in the most constructive advice in solving his problems.
   Carl Nomura is an exceptional person. Rather than following the footsteps of others, he blazes his own path. When he retired, his counselor advised him to wait a year before making any major decisions. Most people would heed this advice, but not Nomura. Shortly after, he held a huge garage sale in Minneapolis, sold his house and moved to the West Coast. The descriptions of how he makes decisions are consistently humorous and reflects the maverick character of a man who achieved much satisfaction and success in life.
   Besides being amusing, this is an inspirational book.



4. The Smell of Freedom
   Carl Nomura is an honest recorder of life. His memoir, Sleeping on Potatoes, is a frank and often revealing celebration of experiences, and hopes for more of them. He examines his childhood, education, marriage, his children's childhoods, his jobs and his seniority.
   His title refers to a life-molding time when, soon after Pearl Harbor, at 18, he and his Japanese-American family were incarcerated at Manzanar, an internment camp in a dusty high-Sierra desert of California. He detested the insult of the camp and escaped by volunteering to help worker-short Idaho farmers. It was exhausting stoop labor, thinning, weeding and topping sugar beets in the fertile crescent of the Snake river.
   When the job ended eight months later, instead of returning to Manzanar captivity, he volunteered for potato warehousing work in a huge root cellar. He sorted and bagged potatoes, and at night slept on the filled bags. He recalls wriggling the spuds into a form-fitting mattress, and the awful smell of rotting potatoes. But, he writes, "After only one day, we got used to the odor and never smelled it again."
   Well, I drove my family through southwestern Idaho, years ago. Crossing the Snake river from Oregon, we came on a "Welcome to Idaho" billboard and were at once engulfed by the stench of rotten potatoes. My kids screamed, "Phew, Idaho!"
   At Nomura's words I smelled it again myself and wondered how he could acclimate to, or ignore, that awful scent while I can still smell it. Of course, as he hints a page or two later, what he smelled was different from what I smelled.
   What he smelled was better than Manzanar.
   This honest book holds many revelations of significance in Nomura's life, and in our own lives as well.



5. `Sleeping on Potatoes is the metaphor for the bumpy and lumpy ride I had in my formative years,' Dr. Carl Nomura explains in the preface to his debut publication Sleeping on Potatoes: A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower (Erasmus Books, Washington, 2003). Nomura then extends this metaphor into a vivified mosaic of his life's experiences by bringing them to view through the eyes of a child and all the way up to a person with aspirations.
   
   Starting informally with his mother Mizuko's story, a Japanese woman who married Nomura's father because `she heard that in America everyone was tall', Dr. Nomura creates a series of true, non-fictional, real life stories that border on the line between short story and personal essay. Reliving in linguistic light the hardship of poverty, a heartless father, the humiliation of being forced to move into relocation centers during the Second World War, and the travails of disease and bereavement, Nomura throws his readers into a joyous shock with the amazing optimism of his attitude and his lively humor that arises spontaneously from the interaction of situation and language. One instance is from his school days: `we thought her name (Sister Perpetual) fitted her because she beat us perpetually'. Certainly not to overlook the fun of fishing and poker, and giving smoking up for good when an angry woman comes inches from your face and calls you a `polluting pig.'
   
   Though a doctor of philosophy in Solid State Physics, and an important figure in the corporate world of technology, it is Nomura's flair of seeing things as matter of course that lures one to appreciate his magnanimity. Not going a braggart, he opens a window to the philosophy of life-contentment, be it a doctorate in physics and excellence in management of small businesses, or using a bathroom 200 feet away from his bed in a trailer. Life is joy if you have your guts tuned to its frequency of vicissitudes.
   
   Marking Sleeping on Potatoes as a book to amuse would be a reader's pitfall. It is a book enormous in its scope, though not in its volume (250 pages). By no means is this the adventurous story of a single person, reflecting on his past. It is the story of many characters that endured and fought against social injustice and untoward circumstances-from women like Mizuko and Louise, to the sufferers in relocation centers, and the motherless litter of cats who were lucky enough to make it to Nomura's house. His heart touching memories of Mox, the neighbor's dog, harbor all the richness and beauty of life. Nomura traces the causes of discontent in marital life, discusses issues associated with terminal illness, and informs on linguistic and the cultural relativism of English and Japanese native speakers.
   
   Now in his eighties, retired and coping with prostate cancer, Nomura's lumpy ride has not come to a pause. It is bumping all along with new interest in learning and doing things and new ways of adding to the richness of his life. With his new wife, children and grandchildren, pets, garden, books, and the untamed freshness of mind, Dr. Carl Nomura lives as if he is immortal.

4 comments about Tsuchino: My Japanese War Bride.

1. There is little literature available about Japanese War Brides and this book gives an excellent first-person accounting of a husband and wife's strengths and devotion. I read the book in efforts to gain information for research, but found that I could not put it down, not because of my interests, but because it is a true story of overcoming the odds and finding success/happiness in love and marriage!
   
   Michael Forrester has a provided his life story in an easy to follow, chronological manner that gives one a sense of understanding of the time and events. It is real, interesting, humorous and most of all heartwarming! I would suggest this book to all readers.



2. I enjoyed the book. Very easy read . I learned a few things about bureaucracy in the military that were disturbing.... dare to question and you pay for it, even if you are right.
   The author by his life shows how to succeed by hard work , by giving 110% and by being well prepared so when an opportunity arose he was able to jump at it. Tsuchino is his perfect mate; expecting him to so his best always and willing to back him and follow him wherever his path led. A very inspiring love story .



3. 
   I found the book to be entertaining and humerous. It brought to mind memories of post-world war II attitudes and bureaucratic obfuscation that will be familiar to anyone who served in the military or worked for the government. Both Mike and Tsuchino come across as likeable, intelligent and determined people.



4. I found My Japanese War Bride to be very enlightening. It shows how the right combination of two people can overcome any adversity and come out stronger. It takes us through Mike and Tsuchino's struggle to go from nothing to being able to have anything they want, and I found myself rooting for them against the military and both their families. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to sit down and just be entertained by two peoples faith and hope.

4 comments about Prisoner of the Rising Sun.

1. One of the few true to life books written by a WWII POW. As a history buff I find the first hand accounts in this book of the authors experiances and the others he came in contact a first rate story of America's darkest time. A must for all those who want to know more about POW's of the Japanese.

   Having been stationed in the Philippines and traveled to Battan and Corrigidor it brought the meaning of those visits a little sharper in focus.




2. William Berry has written a well-detailed, although brief, look at his attempted escape and captivity after the fall of Correigdor. While not a scholarly look at these events, the author gives a good account of his capture, escape and trek through the jungle, recapture and liberation by American servicemen from Bilibid prison in Manila. He painfully recounts the agony these men went through as they were crammed, up to 13 men at one time, into a 10 by 10 cell and forced to sit, without flinching, and stare at the wall all day.

   As a recaptured prisoner, Berry and his two comrades somehow survive the war, as the usual penalty for escape is execution. They were sent to the maximum security prison in Manila for "special prisoners", and many prisoners stopped here only long enough to be sentenced and shot. Berry, who was a fledgling lawyer before enlisting in the Navy, saw these skills save his life and the lives of his friends when being sentenced, not so much his arguments, of course, but rather how he shaped it to fit his audience (A Japanese tribunal)

   This book does not take long to read, but it is an interesting tale, and well worth the time invested. But, if you want greater scope and detail of Americans in Japanese captivity, read "Prisoners of the Japanese" by Gavan Daws, an extremely informative and well-written look at the horrors these men had to endure daily.




3. The author of this book is my grandfather. I found this book to be inspiring as I am also a soldier. I am in the Army and found this book to give me a greater appreciation of my profession as well as bring a greater understanding of my grandfather's life and why he is so proud. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to understand what POWs in the Philippines went through. I have lent my copy of his book to several of my friends and they all gave it great reviews as well.



4. This is an excellent first hand account. It is rather well done, more so than several others I have read. I do wish we had more like this one. Very inspiring. I felt it gave even a greater insight to the war in the Pacific. Recommend you add this one to your collection.