My Hitch in Hell: The Bataan Death March

by Lester I. Tenney

Overview

Captured by the Japanese after the fall of Bataan, Lester Tenney was one of the very few who would survive the legendary Death March and three and a half years in Japanese prison camps. With an understanding of human nature, a sense of humor, sharp thinking, and fierce determination, Tenney endured the rest of the war as a slave laborer in Japanese prison camps. My Hitch in Hell is an inspiring survivor's epic about the triumph of human will despite unimaginable human suffering.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597973465
Publisher:	Potomac Books Inc.
Publication date:	09/30/2000
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	969,963
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lester I. Tenney (Ph.D., University of Southern California) (1920-2017) was a survivor of the infamous Bataan Death March. He was a prisoner of war of the Japanese for a total of three and half years. After a brief stint as a high school teach, he entered the insurance business. He worked with the Arizona state legislature in developing a retirement and insurance program for all Arizona State employees. He was also a professor at Arizona State University. He is the author of several books, including The Courage to Remember: PTSD--From Trauma to Triumph (Lester Tenney, 2014), My Hitch in Hell (Potomac Books, 1995), and the co-authored Your Financial Survival Under the Medicaid System (TLC Publishing, 1992).

Table of Contents

Foreword     xi
Preface     xv
A Hitch in Company B     1
Surprise Attack     17
The Fall of Bataan     35
The March     42
Our First Camp     65
Life with the Guerrillas     74
Back to Bataan-to Work     94
Cabanatuan     107
The Nightmare Ship     114
The Coal Mine     122
Camp 17     138
Fun and Games     149
"We Honor You with Head Cut Off"     158
Bombs and Beatings     163
Our War Is Over     170
"America and Japan Now Friends"     173
Looking for the Americans     177
Meeting My Brother     182
Back to the Philippines     186
Home at Last     196
Japan Revisited     207
Appendix     211
Index     215

Editorial Reviews

Tenney here recounts his experiences as a GI during the fall of the Philippines in 1941, his participation in the Bataan death march and his three-year ordeal in Camp 17, the harshest POW camp in Japan. He witnessed devastating atrocities, including serial slaughter that was a kind of athletic exercise for the guards. Soon after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he was set free; his wanderings about the countryside and interactions with Japanese civilians and leaderless soldiers form the most interesting sections of this engrossing book. Tenney suffered unexpected heartbreak when, upon being reunited with his family, he learned that his wife, believing him killed in action, had remarried. He also experienced depression based largely on his image of himself as one of ``the losers who had surrendered'' in the Philippines. In 1988, he revisited Japan and found that his psychic war wounds were beginning to heal. For all the suffering he witnessed and endured, Tenney's memoir is remarkably upbeat. He is a retired professor of finance at Arizona State University. Photos. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"Riveting . . . A grim story of heroic survival."

"What gets you through torture and isolation with self-respect intact? Let Tenney show you in this book."

"Superb."

“Riveting . . . a grim story of heroic survival.”

“What gets you through torture and isolation with self-respect intact? Let Tenney show you in this book.”

"Superb."

From the Publisher