New book takes chilling look at the Bataan Death March and its aftermath

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath
By Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman
(Farrar Straus Giroux)

The devastation that occurred when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941 has been the subject of numerous books, films and documentaries. But the single largest defeat in American military history didn’t occur on that day. It happened almost four months later, when a battle between American and Filipino soldiers with the Japanese on the tiny peninsula of Bataan ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipino and American troops.

The subsequent journey into imprisonment, the brutal Bataan Death March, resulted in more than 10,000 deaths, plus years of starvation, slave labor, torture, disease and constant beatings.

Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by noted historians and authors Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman examines this story from the viewpoints of three intersecting groups: the Americans, Filipinos and Japanese.

Using source material from 400 interviews and 2,800 books, documents and other original sources, the Normans present a tale that is equal parts revealing, grisly, tragic, and powerful.

A prime figure is POW Ben Steele, a cowboy and artist whose sketches make some incredibly moving visual evidence of the carnage occurring. They present uncensored prisoner accounts but also include recollections from the Japanese side, something that hasn’t always sat well with some readers. And, they include some sharp and detailed criticism of American commander Douglas MacArthur, something else that has generated some negative responses.

Still, Tears in the Darkness doesn’t hesitate to spotlight the viciousness and suffering of the American and Filipino prisoners, and it makes no excuses for their captors. It shows how much humanity gets sacrificed in wartime and provides a stark reminder that the issue of torture isn’t exactly a new one on the international stage.

Fela: This Bitch of a Life
By Carlos Moore
(Lawrence Hill)

It has taken 27 years for Carlos Moore’s detailed and fascinating book about Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, an international symbol of musical independence and cultural rebellion, to finally reach these shores. This updated version, with new introductions from author, journalist and translator Margaret Busby and Brazilian music giant Gilberto Gil, also helps bring the story forward. It covers Kuti’s final years before he died in 1997 at the age of 58.

As the only person ever given the necessary access to pen an authorized biography of the great Nigerian performer, Moore assembled the story from more than 15 hours of tape-recorded interviews covering every phase of Kuti’s life to that point.

He recalled his early days in Nigeria and the impact of his parents. Kuti’s father, the Rev. Israel Ransome-Kuti, was the first president of the Nigerian Union of Teachers while his mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, was a stalwart anti-colonialist campaigner and feminist.

Later came studies in London at Trinity College of Music in the early ‘60s, then key meetings in America with members of the Black Panthers in 1969, along with reading Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Subsequently, Kuti would also be greatly influenced by the charisma and music of James Brown.

Once he returned to Africa, Kuti renamed his band Afrika 70 and began creating the anthems of protest and liberation that would make him the continent’s most visible and popular star. But his unrelenting attacks on the Nigerian government also made him a target, and it responded in many negative ways. These included multiple prison stretches, the destruction of Kuti’s famous commune The Kalakuta Republic, physical attacks that led to a fractured skull and other severe injuries, even the callous tossing of his mother (then in her 80s) out a window, with the resultant fall causing her death.

None of that stopped or silenced Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, who led a maverick professional and personal life (he took 27 wives and his views on women kept him in hot water with feminists). But the remarkable percolating musical brew of jazz, funk, highlife, rock and African rhythm he crafted and called Afrobeat, coupled with his passionate and unending fight against colonialism and corruption, ensured heroic status for Kuti. Fela: This Bitch of a Life vividly presents the story in his own words.

F My Life: It’s Funny, It’s True, Except When It Happens to You
By Maxime Vallette, Guillaume Passaglia and Didier Guedj
(Random House)

F My Life: It’s Funny, It’s True, Except When It Happens to You contains 269 pages of posts made by people describing mishaps, mistakes and disasters that have happened to them.

In two to four sentences, they summarize the awful things that have ruined their day.

Some are funny: “Today I asked a very cute fireman for his number ‘just in case I need you to come to my rescue.’ He told me, ‘Yeah, sure!’ and scribbled it down. After he walked away, I read his note. It said, ‘911.’”

Others are heartbreaking: “Today the history class for which I am the teaching assistant was taking a test. About halfway through, I noticed one kid had a small piece of paper in his hand. I ran up the row, grabbed his test, and ripped it into four pieces. Then I looked at the note. It read: ‘I believe in you. — Mom’”

None are exactly earth-shaking revelations, just anecdotes to make you laugh, cringe, cry or simply be thankful you weren’t the one involved. Yet the three writers who compiled F My Life have taken advantage of the obsession millions have with putting any and every thought, statement or event online somewhere.

Maxime Valette and Guillaume Passaglia had a No. 1 bestseller in France last year. Their volume was crafted from the Web site they created viedermerde.fr (the exact translation can’t be reprinted in a family newspaper, but the approximate one is “Messy Life.”) The site now gets more than 2 million hits per day, and Valette and Passaglia sort through 5,000 daily entries to pick those they deem the most entertaining and interesting.

Didier Guedji subsequently created the English version Fmylife.com, and they both provide the source material for the book. Besides offering 800 posts (including several that previously haven’t been translated) and 30 illustrations from the illustrator Missbean, the book reaffirms the concept’s widespread popularity.

Other mishaps divulged include: a girl discovered her boyfriend’s password was “booty call;” a man who shaved a Hitler mustache to be funny but forgot to shave it off before leaving the house; a girl who texted “I want to kill you and use your head as a hood ornament” to her ex-finance instead of her best friend who scored better than her on a test; and many more.