Some Survived: An Eyewitness
Account of the Bataan Death March
and the Men Who Lived Through It by
Manny Lawton
Bataan Death Mark... Most Did Not Surive
Manny Lawton was a twenty-three-year-old Army captain on April 8, 1942,
when orders came to surrender to the Japanese forces invading the
Philippine Islands. The next day, he and his fellow American and Filipino
prisoners set out on the infamous Bataan Death March--a forced six-day,
sixty-mile trek under a broiling tropical sun during which approximately
eleven thousand men died or were bayoneted, clubbed, or shot to death by
the Japanese. Yet terrible as the Death March was, for Manny Lawton and
his comrades it was only the beginning. When the war ended in August
1945, it is estimated that some 57 percent of the American troops who had
surrendered on Bataan had perished.

But this is not a chronicle of despair. It is, instead, the story of how men
can suffer even the most desperate conditions and, in their will to retain
their humanity, triumph over appalling adversity. An epic of quiet heroism,
Some Survived is a harrowing, poignant, and inspiring tale that lifts the
heart.
Personal Review: Some Survived: An Eyewitness Account of
the Bataan Death March and the Men Who Lived Through It by
Manny Lawton
The worst of the worst Japanese soldiers responsible for the horrific
savagery inflicted upon allied soldiers and civilians during the Bataan
Death March were tracked down, tried, and executed after the war. Still,
once can't help but be deeply troubled by reading over and again, of the
pleasure Japanese guards took in the starving, beating and killing of allied
prisoners during World War II.
Ignoring even the most basic rules of international humanitarian law,
Japanese soldiers behaved in as depraved, evil and barbaric manner as
one can imagine. They slapped, kicked and brutalized prisoners on a daily
basis, beheaded others at will, and - by war's end - they had enslaved,
tortured, and killed thousands of civilians and defenseless allied soldiers.
The author, Manny Lawton, takes the reader back in time, back to the
beginning of the Pacific Campaign. He is a 23-year-old Army Captain, a
couple of years out of Clemson University's ROTC program and the U.S.
Army's Infantry School. Assigned as a "battalion military advisor," to the
500-man, 1st Battalion, 31st Infantry of the Philippine Army, he is the only
American in the battalion. Then, when the American forces are overrun in
the Philippines - four months after Pearl Harbor - we see that he and the
other soldiers are already shell-shocked, exhausted, starving, and
suffering from malaria, beriberi and a host of other tropical maladies.
We follow Lawson, from the beginning when he is captured and joins the
thousands of others as they are force-marched five to six days, on the
notorious "Death March"; then we follow him as he is moved and marched
from one prison to another, one ship to the next, through the Philippines, to
Japan and then - by war's end - to a hard labor camp in Korea.
We meet his friends from his old units, from the ROTC program back home
and then - as the years pass - from previous prison camps. We hear him,
as he tells in his own words, his feelings of fear, anger, and then sheer
determination, as he suffers and watches hundreds of others go through
sheer hell. We read of the horrendous suffering and thousands of men who
died aboard the Shinyo Maru, the Arisan Maru, the Oryoku Maru, the
Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru.

Lawson honors the dead by telling their story very effectively. With the
guidance and assistance of William Emerson -- former editor of the
Saturday Evening Post -- and the noted Southern scholar, and editor, Dr.
Louis D. Rubin, Jr. his words flow easily. The reader can't help but feel that
they "are there" in the bunk, in the foxhole in the ship's hold, there with
him. He tells the story in a patient, painstaking way; the truth, and nothing
but the truth -- allowing the reader to learn what really happened during
those years, in a manner that is not exaggerated, not overly emotional or
glossed over in any way, just the truth.
It is important that this story not be forgotten, that we honor the memory of
all of the American, British and soldiers of other nationalities, who died so
savagely at the hands of their murderous and truly evil Japanese captors
during World War II.
Lawson's book is a testimonial - a story of sorrow and thanksgiving - it
belongs on the bookshelf of every public library in America, the Philippines
and Japan. Highly recommended.
Note: This review is written in memory of my old friend, Sgt. Pasquale S.
DiGiacomo, of Brooklyn, New York. Captured as a Japanese prisoner of
war at age 29 on Bataan on April 9, 1942, "Pat" participated in the "Death
March," was imprisoned at Camp O'Donnell and then shipped to Japan
where he was a slave-laborer in the Osaka Camp steel mill. Beaten almost
daily, starved, and suffering from malaria and broken bones, by war's end
he had worked 3-1/2 years of his life as a slave for the Japanese. Now
deceased, Sgt. DiGiacomo never understood why he never received a
penny of reparation or an apology of any kind from the Japanese
government.
R. Neil Scott
Middle Tennessee State University
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