It is a major book about World War II. It is compared to books such as All Quiet in the Western Front and Hiroshima. The ordeal of sufferings and cruelty suffered by Filipino and Americans prisoners of war has to be read, so you can believe it. I have sleepness nights after reading this book, but as a lover of history and growing as child in the Philippines at that time makes reading this book a worthwhile endeavor. I can also personally relate to this book since my father served in the Philippines-American guerrilla forces in Panay Island.
This world II book was written by husband and wife team, of Michael and Elizabeth Norman published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2009. After reading the book, I have nightmares remembering the suffering, horrors and cruelty sufferred by both Filipino and Americans prisoner of war by the Japanese. It discussed in detail the Battle and Fall of the Bataan Peninsula resulting in the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history.
The book also discussed in painful detailed the prisoners of war sufferrings from April, 1942 to August 1945. It described the the forty-one months of cruelty and savagery, starvation, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, torture, murder and the journey on "hell ships" of the prisoners to Japan.
This book was compiled from interviews of hundreds of war prisoners that survived the ordeal. The main hero of the book is Ben Steele, a young cowboy form Montana. Steele recounted the horrors of the war through his drawings and paintings, which is currently exhibited in the Museum of
Art, at the Montana State University in Billings.
The following article is about Ben Steele - the central character in the book, Tears in the Darkness by Michael and Elizabeth Norman. It was written by Joe Nickell Missoulian and posted in Mtstandard.com on Monday, October 3, 2011. Ben Steele died on September 24, 2016 at the age of 98.
There is the Bataan Memorial Death March which is an annual commemoration of the Bataan Death March attended by many of the survivors of the march, along with thousands of supporters from around the world, held at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Held annually since 1989, this is a full marathon, or a 15 mi (24 km) route for those who do not wish to complete the full course. Covering paved road and sandy trails, it is regarded by Marathon Guide as one of the top 30 marathons in the U.S
"Ben Steele remembers it all. He vividly recalls the faces of the dead and dying along the roadside as he marched with thousands of other American prisoners of war from the Bataan Peninsula to the city of Capas in the Philippines. He remembers the bits of fire-pit charcoal that he squirreled to his prison cell and used to draw pictures of his beloved Montana on the floor. He remembers the coal mines of Japan, and even his hazy visits to death’s doorstep. Of course, it helps that he has pictures of those experiences from that dark period of World War II. But unlike today’s soldiers, who often travel through war zones with cameras strapped to their bodies, Steele’s photographic record is his sharp memory, and his pictures all flowed from his hand.
I have very vivid memories of what went on, because it was a gruesome and difficult situation,” says Steele, at 94 one of the last remaining survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March in which Japanese soldiers forced more than 75,000 malnourished, exhausted, injured and sick American and Filipino prisoners of war to march more than 60 miles over the course of less than a week, leading to the deaths of thousands of prisoners. “I have lots of images in my head,” Steele adds. “I could paint them for the rest of my life. I don’t have trouble recalling anything in there; I can recall dates in the camp that I can’t remember in my normal life since. I was impressed very deeply by it.”
In the decades since World War II ended, Steele’s memories — translated to 11 oil paintings and 78 stark charcoal drawings — have taken on a fame of their own, not only because they are among the only images that exist of the march, but also because of their raw emotional power. A number of the images were featured in “Tears in the Darkness,” a best-selling 2009 book about the march by Elizabeth and Michael Norman, which also features Steele as a central character. Now, the vast majority of Steele’s images from the Bataan Death March are on display at the University of Montana’s Montana Museum of Art and Culture, where they have come to reside as part of the state-owned museum’s permanent collection.
“These images form such an important part of Montana’s cultural history,” said Brandon Reintjes, curator at the MMAC. “They have almost a mythic back-story to them, they convey such a powerful and important lesson in history, and they’re truly a reflection of a powerful artistic vision that I think inspires everyone who encounters them.” Something of a miracle. Indeed, the mere existence of Steele’s paintings and drawings is something of a miracle. After entering the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 22, Steele found himself caught up in one of the first and most protracted land battles of the war in the Pacific, as U.S. and Filipino forces attempted to defend the peninsula of Bataan in the Philippines.
The 99-day battle ended with the surrender of 76,000 U.S. troops, including Steele. It was one of the worst defeats in American military history. Steele survived the legendary Death March, and ultimately spent three-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in the Philippines and Japan. Crippled by a combination of dysentery, pneumonia, malaria, blood poisoning and Beriberi, Steele came so close to death that he was read his last rites by priests on two occasions.
Drawing to maintain sanity:. To maintain his sanity, Steele began drawing — first employing nothing but a charred stick on the bare concrete floor, and later on paper that fellow prisoners supplied him. Reached earlier this month at his home in Billings, Steele said that those drawings literally saved him. “I was awful sick and I thought I was going crazy, so I had to do something to occupy my mind,” he said. “So I started to draw on the floor.” At first, Steele drew images of cowboys and mountain scenes from his home state of Montana. In an earlier interview with Reintjes, Steele described the depth of his longing for home during that time. “I used to dream about Montana more than anything else, more than I did food — and I used to dream about food all the time,” he said. Then, as other prisoners began to take notice of Steele’s pastime, they suggested he draw what he saw around him. So Steele began creating depictions of life in the camp - at first on the floor; then on paper, with pencils that were smuggled to him.
Steele was later transported to Japan, where he worked as a forced laborer in coal mines. During that time, he was kept too busy to draw. >In 1945, he was finally liberated. But his drawings were lost. Drawings lost, then re-created “When I went to Japan in ‘44, I left the drawings with a chaplain, thinking he would get out when the Philippines were retaken,” says Steele. “But when he did get out, the ship he was on was sunk by the American Navy, so the drawings went down in the China Sea.” So, during his yearlong recuperation at a hospital in Spokane, Steele re-created the lost drawings and several paintings. “I hated to lose those drawings, but I was lucky to get home in one piece myself,” he says today. “So it didn’t bother me all that much, and it gave me something to do during my recovery.” Following his recovery, Steele pursued a degree at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he studied with noted artists George Grosz, Hans Mueller and Clarence Van Duzer. After receiving teaching credentials from Kent State University and a Master of Art degree from the University of Denver in 1955, Steele became a professor of art at Montana State University-Billings.
Emphasis on realism: But despite all that exposure to the ever-transforming art trends of the 20th century, Steele continued to devote himself to a creative aesthetic that emphasizes realism, brutal as it may be. Over time, he created several more images from the Death March — images which he considers his most important works. “I kind of felt an obligation to the guys who went through that, to illustrate what went on over there,” he says. “I wanted to tell the story.” In that sense, Steele knows he is different from many World War II veterans, who on the whole were notorious for their reticence about speaking of what they had experienced on the battlefields of the Asian and European theaters.
But, he says, opening up about his experiences was an important step in his own life. “I didn’t talk about my experiences for years; and I have friends who won’t talk about it still,” he says. “But when I did all these artworks, it kind of opened me up because I had to explain them. It got me to talk about it very freely. I didn’t have any choice but to talk about it after I did the artwork. I think it helps you to talk about it. Some people ask me how I can draw that stuff, but it’s very easy because it’s so vivid in my mind.”
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