Tony Bilek

Very interesting memoir of a Bataan death march survivor. As the Japanese attacked military service members with little to no combat training were handed rifles and told they were now infantry and thrown into the front lines of battle. Over 72,000 allied troops surrendered to the Japanese. Only about 56,000 survived the death march. He experienced the POW camps in the Philippines and the slave camps in Japan where he was forced to mine coal for the Japanese. He saw the atom bomb explosion in Nagasaki. The author shares his harrowing experiences with sickness, watching comrades be murdered in front of him helpless to do anything about it, and the mindset it took to be a survivor. Grateful that after years of silence this soldier decided to tell his story so that those that did not survive could not be forgotten.… (mais)