Chapter One
 
                    "Defeat in the Philippines"
 
 
          In war, casualties are expected. Some men are killed
 
outright. Others are wounded but recover. Still others lose an
 
arm, a leg, or are mutilated in other ways, and they bear the
 
scars or pains of this mutilation for the rest of their lives.
 
These grim consequences of war are accepted as a part of 
 
war's grim custom and tradition.
 
          It is also a custom and tradition of war that, when
 
men fight honorably and are forced to lay down their arms in sure
 
render, the war for them has reached an end. As helpless prisoners 
 
of war, such men do not expect to be pampered. They do expect
 
enough food, shelter, clothing and medical care to keep them alive.
 
They do expect reasonably humane treatment from their captors, and
 
they do expect their captors to treat them as human beings. These 
 
things they expect under the comity of nations which decrees that
 
there can be honor even among peoples which are at war.
 
             For the 65,000 men who were overpowered and forced to
 
lower the American flag on Bataan and Corregidor, in the
 
Philippines, the enemy provided new rules. 0r, rather, those
 
rules of humanity which had been built up in the past were com-
 
pletely ignored or deliberately forgotten.
 
         We are two of the Americans who were captured by the
 
Japanese in the fall of Corregidor. With eight others, we were