Some Survived: An Eyewitness Account Of The Bataan Death March And The Men Who Lived Through It

Some Survived: An Eyewitness Account of the Bataan Death March and the Men Who Lived Through It

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.Review"Shows that the human spirit can soar like an eagle from the depths of hell on earth."-Charleston News CourierFrom the Back CoverManny 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 surrendered on Bataan had perished. This is the story of how men can suffer even the most desperate conditions yet, through 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.About the AuthorManny Lawton graduated from Clemson College and joined the United States Army as an officer in 1940. He spent three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea before liberation in 1945. He lived in his hometown of Estill, South Carolina, until his death in 1986.