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In this extraordinary story of World War II, the author's father, who enlisted in the army at age 16, describes the experiences that would affect the course of his life. Douglas Valentine tells of his capture by the Japanese in the fetid jungle of New Guinea, as well as his internment with Australian and British prisoners-of-war in the Hotel Tacloban—a place where no mercy was shown or expected, and from which few came home alive. A celebration of camaraderie and a testament to "the soldier's faith", this is a story of murder, mutiny and an incredible military cover-up.
"A very true book and a story well told, chilling in its accumulation." (The Los Angeles Times Book Review)
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Mike Cook
reviewed The Hotel Tacloban on December 21, 2016
The Hotel Tacloban
This is a very strange book. It purports to be about the experience of a US army private who was captured by the Japanese in New Guinea and somewhat miraculously taken all the way to a POW camp in the Philippines, where he spent the rest of the war under trying circumstances. Yet the text has been written by the man's son, presumably as he recounted it, and it veers back and forth between being a not very believable fictionalized account and a totally intimate and almost obviously believable account filled with numerous excruciating details. The early New Guinea section I thought poorly written, yet the writing improved unaccountably as the book progressed and the voice of the person whose story this purports to be suddenly sounded quite real.
But the really strange thing is, and this is very much part of the plot (although I am not really giving anything away, but I suppose I should say "spoiler"), that the POW camp in question seems to have entirely disappeared from the historical record. I googled away for several hours and could find nothing to indicate that there had ever been a camp nicknamed the Hotel Tacloban near the town of that name on Leyte. By the way, the book is probably worth more than three stars in a review, but a) there are much better accounts of the Japanese POW camp experience out there and b) it is not without the realm of possibility that the story has been made up out of whole cloth. But there is a healthy ring of truth to much of what is recorded here and it is a quick and easy (sic) read...
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