Samyann
A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Statistics – percentages – lots of them. It’s apparent the author did a tremendous degree of research regarding the war in the Pacific. There is a voluminous amount of detail from the survival ratios relating to American pilots and/or POWs. Everything from airplane crash stats to PTSD stats, to shark attack stats, etc., etc. What comes to mind is that when the primary character in the book, Louis Zampernini, made mention of something, i.e., life in a POW camp, or survival on a raft in the middle of the Pacific, Hillenbrand took that information and proceeded to conduct detailed research, and would pepper the story with pages of that research resulting in prolific detail, not all of which contributes to the story. It’s a compilation, albeit well done, of her notes, in many instances. Supremely educational, especially to those who are ignorant of WWII in the Pacific and Japan atrocities. It’s the true story of this man, and likely many, many other men, who were subjected to equally horrific abuse. As a baby-boomer descendant of ‘the greatest generation’, I wonder what the descendants of Japanese prison guards think when they read stories like this. There are ‘black eyes’ in the history of all peoples, Americans included, but this type of inhumanity is beyond comprehension. Everyone should read. But be prepared for lots of numbers. Edward Hermann, as I listened to the audiobook, was the right choice for this historical read.
