Late in 1940, the young men of the 2nd Battalion, 131st Field
Artillery Regiment stepped off the trucks at Camp Bowie in
Brownwood, Texas, ready to complete the training they would need
for active duty in World War II. Many of them had grown up together
in Jacksboro, Texas, and almost all of them were eager to face any
challenge. Just over a year later, these carefree young Texans
would be confronted by horrors they could never have imagined. The
battalion was en route to bolster the Allied defense of the
Philippines when they received news of the Japanese bombing of
Pearl Harbor. Soon, they found themselves ashore on Java, with
orders to assist the Dutch, British, and Australian defense of the
island against imminent Japanese invasion. When war came to Java in
March 1942, the Japanese forces overwhelmed the numerically
inferior Allied defenders in little more than a week. For more than
three years, the Texans, along with the sailors and marines who
survived the sinking of the USS Houston, were prisoners of the
Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning in late 1942, these
prisoners-of-war were shipped to Burma to accelerate completion of
the Burma-Thailand railway. These men labored alongside other
Allied prisoners and Asian conscript laborers to build more than
260 miles of railroad for their Japanese taskmasters. They suffered
abscessed wounds, near-starvation, daily beatings, and debilitating
disease, and 89 of the original 534 Texans taken prisoner died in
the infested, malarial jungles. The survivors received a hero's
welcome from Gov. Coke Stevenson, who declared October 29, 1945, as
"Lost Battalion Day" when they finally returned to Texas. Kelly E.
Crager consulted official documentary sources of the National
Archives and the U.S. Army and mined the personal memoirs and oral
history interviews of the "Lost Battalion" members. He focuses on
the treatment the men received in their captivity and surmises that
a main factor in the battalion's comparatively high survival rate
(84 percent of the 2nd Battalion) was the comraderie of the Texans
and their commitment to care for each other.This narrative is
grueling, yet ultimately inspiring. Hell under the Rising Sun will
be a valuable addition to the collections of World War II
historians and interested general readers alike.
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