"One of the challenges of portraying the terrible years of POW life was that much of the history of those events in the Philippines and Japan exist only in the cracks, crevices and recesses of the minds of these men, who are now elderly.   Most of what transpired cannot be found in a history book.   Little has been written.   Every survivor remembers the experience as he endured it.   Each memory is somewhat different; maybe some stories are mixed-up, but they deserve the right to have their stories mixed-up after what they went through.

To those who were living in America during this time period, it appeared that in April and May 1942, the earth opened up and swallowed these military men.   Not much of what happened to them got back to the United States.   But now, after all these years, the surviving ex-prisoners are so tightly bound together that their feeling for one another defies description.   Many believe they are really "Closer than Brothers".

This book has several excellent rosters including the names of those wo saled on the NOTO MARU HELLSHIP from Manila on 15 August 1944, arriving in Moji, Japan on 6 September 1944; listed are those men (some with addresses) who were in HANAWA PRISON CAMP in Japan and a roster of those on the LAS PINAS DETAIL (from the Bilibid cards on microfilm).