QUOTE FOR THE DAY

 

FUNNY FRIDAY

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Given  that the pastweek has been about facts and books (with one more to go), there are no prizes for guessing the theme of today's Funny Friday: books.

Enjoy readers.

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SOME HUMOUR:

__________

If you take the first two letters of the title of each the 7 Harry Potter books, it spells out a secret message:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

__________

A KGB agent goes to a library and sees an old Jewish man reading a book.

“What are you reading, old man?” he asks.

“I’m learning Hebrew, comrade,” replies the old Jew.

The KGB agent asks, “What are you learning Hebrew for? You know it takes years to get a permission to travel to Israel? You will die before you get one.”

“I’m learning Hebrew for when I go to heaven so I can speak with Moses and Abraham,” replies the old man.

“How do you know you’re going to heaven? What if you go to hell?” asks the KGB agent.

“I already speak Russian."

__________

I launched a series of books aimed at teenagers last week.

Managed to hit three of the little shits.

(Similar but somewhat gross…

I released my own fragrance today….the people in the car didn’t like it)

__________

I went to the bookstore to buy a book about paranoia.

I asked the person behind the counter where they were, and she said "they're all around you" ...

__________

I bought a book on procrastination, I'll start reading it tomorrow.

__________

I told my teenage niece to go get me a phone book...

She laughed at me, and said

"Oh uncle, you're so old. Just use my phone."

So I slammed her phone against the wall to kill a spider.

__________

I asked a librarian if she had a book about Pavlov's Dog and Schrodinger's Cat

She said it rang a bell but wasn't sure if it was there or not.

__________

Years ago, my mother-in-law began reading, "The Exorcist". She said it was the most evil book she ever read. So evil in fact, she couldn't finish it, took it to the ocean and threw it off the pier.

I went out, but another copy, ran it under the faucet, and left it beside her bed.

__________

What do you call a book club that's been stuck on the same book for years?

Church

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So I was sitting on the bus just reading a book when somebody tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around and saw an old lady. She said to me, "Sonny, would you like some nuts? I've got a couple hazelnuts and almonds if you'd like."

"Sure.", I replied. Then she gave me a handful of nuts and went back to sit with her friends.

"What a nice lady", I thought, while happily munching on the nuts.

A few minutes later, I felt another tap on my shoulder and there she was again, offering some nuts. I gladly accepted and she went back to her seat.

After about 10 minutes, she tapped me on the shoulder, once again offering some nuts.

I asked her, "Why don't you eat them yourself?"

"Because we've got no teeth", she replied.

"Then why do you buy them?", I asked.

"Oh, because we just love the chocolate around them."

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LIMERICK OF THE WEEK:

There was an old man

From Peru, whose lim'ricks all

Look'd like haiku. He

Said with a laugh "I

Cut them in half, the pay is

Much better for two."

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GALLERY:

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CORN CORNER:

__________

My girlfriend wants to break up with me because she says I am unAmerican.

I could see that coming a kilometre away.

__________

HELP! I’m a 39-year-old doctor (6'1, 315lbs) and random strangers keep asking me if it's going to rain – why??

Why would they turn to a meaty urologist for the weather?

__________

My best friend’s teacher told him he was ‘worthless and would never amount to anything.’

Which was particularly hurtful.

Especially since he is home schooled.

__________

We should have known communism was a bad idea

There were a lot of red flags

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EXTRACT

 

5 x 5 CONTINUED: BOOKS

 

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Continuing 5 facts abut 5 of my favourite books.

Toay . . . 

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ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

The cover of the 1865 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson, 1832-1898), a mathematics don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. 

__________

Facts:

1.

Alice was a real girl, the daughter of Carroll's boss: Henry Liddell, the dean of Christ Church College at Oxford, where Carroll taught mathematics. Carroll formed a friendship with Henry Liddell, his wife Lorina, and their entire family.  The little sisters in the Doormouse's story — Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie — are references to their three daughters. Lorina Charlotte's initials became Elsie, Lacie is an anagram of Alice, and Tillie was short for Matilda, a nickname given to Edith. (A BBC documentary from 2015, The Secret World of Lewis Carroll, critically examined Dodgson's relationship with Alice Liddell and her sisters. It explored the possibility that Dodgson's rift with the Liddell family, and his temporary suspension from the college, might have been caused by improper relations with their children, including Alice.)

Lewis Carroll and the Lidell children

2.

On a boating trip up the Thames in the summer of 1862, Carroll spun a fantastic tale for Alice Liddell and her sisters. But after that, the kids pestered him to retell the story — Carroll even wrote in his diary about telling "the interminable Alice's adventures." So he eventually wrote the story down and gave it to Alice for Christmas 1864. (The original was half as long as the version later published and didn't include scenes like the Mad Hatter or Cheshire Cat.)

3.

In addition to partial deafness and other health complications, Carroll suffered from a rare neurological disorder that causes hallucinations and makes objects appear larger or smaller than they are. The disease wasn't discovered until 1955 by English psychiatrist John Todd. Eventually, it was named Alice in Wonderland Syndrome or Todd's Syndrome.

4.

After reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Queen Victoria suggested that Carroll dedicate his next work to her. She probably should have been more specific: Carroll was a mathematician, so his next work was An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations. He presented it to the Queen.

5.

Since it was published in 1865, it has been translated into 176 languages. At the time, the book was so popular that its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, sold out within seven weeks of its publication. By the way, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, were both banned in China in 1931. Why? On the grounds that "animals should not use human language."

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EXTRACT FOR THE DAY

Opening paragraphs, The Old Man and the Sea:

by Ernest Hemingway -

He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. In the first forty days a boy had been with him. But after forty days without a fish the boy’s parents had told him that the old man was now definitely and finally salao, which is the worst form of unlucky, and the boy had gone at their orders in another boat which caught three good fish the first week. It made the boy sad to see the old man come in each day with his skiff empty and he always went down to help him carry either the coiled lines or the gaff and harpoon and the sail that was furled around the mast. The sail was patched with flour sacks and, furled, it looked like the flag of permanent defeat.

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

5 x 5 CONTINUED - BOOKS

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Continuing 5 facts about 5 of my fabourite books . . . 

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THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA

Original book cover

The Old Man and the Sea is a 1952 novella by the American author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). Written between December 1950 and February 1951, it was the last major fictional work Hemingway published during his lifetime. It tells the story of Santiago, an aging fisherman, and his long struggle to catch a giant marlin. The novella was highly anticipated and was released to record sales; the initial critical reception was equally positive, but attitudes have varied significantly since then.

__________

Facts:

1.

The Old Man and the Sea was the last major work Ernest Hemingway published in his lifetime. The simple story is about an old man who catches a giant fish in the waters off Cuba, only to have it devoured by sharks. Defeated, he returns home with the fish’s skeleton attached to the boat. Many consider this spare novel to be Hemingway’s best work. He wrote The Old Man and the Sea to prove he wasn’t finished as a writer - his last successful book, For Whom the Bell Tolls, came out in 1940 and his 1950 novel Across the River and Into the Trees was panned by critics. There was comment that Hemingway was "through" as a writer, The Old Man and the Sea was intended to prove that not only was he still in the writing game, he had yet to produce his best work.

2.

Ernest Hemingway claimed there was no symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea. The fable-like structure of the novel suggests that the story is symbolic, which is why many view The Old Man and the Sea as an allegory. But Hemingway thought all that was bunk—or at least, that’s what he said. "There isn’t any symbolism," he wrote to critic Bernard Berenson. "The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man … The sharks are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know."

3.

In the mid-1930s, the Cuban guide Carlos Gutiérrez had related a story involving an old man and a giant marlin to Hemingway, who retold it in Esquire magazine in an essay titled "On the Blue Water: A Gulf Stream Letter". This tale was likely first told in 1891 and was consistently retold by fishermen over the next forty years. Significant influence came from Hemingway's own experience with the Gulf Stream, where he sailed for thousands of hours in the decades before writing The Old Man and the Sea. He greatly enjoyed the sport of big-game fishing, participating in and winning several tournaments on his boat, the Pilar. Having put off a novelisation for sixteen years, but aided by his love and knowledge of fishing and the sea, Hemingway suddenly found himself writing a thousand words a day for The Old Man and the Sea, Twice as fast as usual.

4.

After early adulation faded, less positive reviews began to appear – overrated, more of the past bad writing, a "mock-serious fable" with "radical weaknesses". Despite the cooling critical outlook, The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction on May 4, 1953, the first time Hemingway had received the award, having been overlooked previously for A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. The Old Man and the Sea's highest recognition came in 1954, as the only work of Hemingway's mentioned by the Swedish Academy when awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature; they praised its "powerful, style-making mastery of the art of modern narration".

5.

In 1958 The Old Man and the Sea was made into a superb motion picture, starring Spencer Tracy. After seeing the film, Hemingway expressed his disappointment, remarking that Spencer Tracy looked less like a Cuban peasant fisherman than the rich actor he was. Nevertheless, Tracy earned an Oscar nomination for the role. Ernest Hemingway can be seen sitting in the cafe in the final scene wearing a tan baseball cap and conversing with other fishermen. This was his movie debut. Mary Hemingway, who was Ernest Hemingway's fourth wife and later became his widow, plays the blonde tourist at the end of the film. She crosses the street and takes a seat in the café, but speaks no lines.

Spencer Tracy as Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea

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EXTRACT FOR THE DAY

From Catch-22, by Joseph Heller:

“'And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways,' Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. 'There is nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatalogical mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?'

“'You'd better not talk that way about Him, honey,' she warned him reprovingly in a low and hostile voice. 'He might punish you.'

'Isn't He punishing me enough?' Yossarian snorted resentfully. 'You know, we mustn't let him get away with it. Oh no, we certainly mustn't let Him get away scot-free for all the sorrow He's caused us. Someday I'm going to make Him pay. I know when. On the Judgment Day. Yes, that's the day I'll be close enough to reach out and grab that little yokel by His neck and -'

'Stop it! Stop it!'

'What the hell are you getting so upset about?' he asked her bewilderedly in a tone of contrite amusement. 'I thought you didn't believe in God.'

'I don't,' she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. 'But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make him out to be.'

Yossarian laughed and turned her arms loose. 'Let's have a little more religious freedom between us,' he proposed obligingly. 'You don't believe in a God you want to, and I won't believe in a God I want to. Is that a deal?'”

B\5 x 5 CONTINUED: BOOKS -

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Continuing 5 facts about 5 books, today . . . 

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CATCH-22

Catch-22 is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller (1923- 1999) first published in 1961. The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of antihero Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. The novel examines the absurdity of war and military life through the experiences of Yossarian and his cohorts, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.

__________

Facts:

1.

This was Heller’s debut book. While lying in bed in his apartment on the West Side of Manhattan in the early 1950s, over the course of an hour and a half, he developed the basic plot and collection of characters that he’d ultimately use in his novel. Heller, an advertising copywriter, spent the workday following writing out the entire first chapter of what would become Catch-22 by hand. A full year passed before he completed a second chapter.

Joseph Heller in 1986

2.

The title was changed to Catch-22 after numerous alternatives were rejected:

• Heller’s agent felt that Catch-18 would be confused with a WW2 novel published at that time, Leon Uris’s Mila 18.

• Catch-11 was suggested but it was thought that this might be confused with the 1960 movie Oceans Eleven.

• Catch-17 was rejected as being too similar to the movie Stalag 17.

• Catch-14 was rejected by the publisher as not being a funny number.

• Catch-22 was selected as having the right syllables and because it sounded repetitive, reflecting repetition which occurs in the book.

3.

The novel's Catch-22 is as follows:

• a combat pilot was crazy by definition (he would have to be crazy to fly combat missions);

• since army regulations stipulated that insanity was justification for grounding, a pilot could avoid flight duty by simply asking;

• but if he asked, he was demonstrating his sanity (anyone who wanted to get out of combat must be sane) and had to keep flying.

Catch-22 soon entered the language as the label for any irrational, circular, and impossible situation. For example, needing a key to enter a locked room but the key is in the locked room.

4.

Catch-22 is set in World War II, but its tone is shaped by the events of the 1950s. This was a decade of repression in America, exemplified by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy. The loyalty oaths and political paranoia in the novel reflect McCarthyism. Catch-22 grew in popularity during the years of the Vietnam War, when the general population became more attuned to Yossarian's point of view.

5.

Heller served in the US Army Air Corps during World War II and flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. and he based a number of Catch-22’s characters on his army buddies. Yossarian’s name came from fellow WWII veteran Francis Yohannan. Additionally, the sociopathic Milo Minderbinder was designed with Heller’s childhood friend, Marvin “Beansy” Winkler of Coney Island, in mind.

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EXTRACT FOR THE DAY

 

5 x 5: BOOKS - WATERSHIP DOWN

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WATERSHIP DOWN

Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams (1920-2016), published in 1972. Set in Hampshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they possess their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home (the hill of Watership Down), encountering perils and temptations along the way.

__________

Facts:

1.

This debut novel by Adams (then aged 54 and a civil servant), was originally called Hazel and Fiver and was rejected by 7 publishers before being published by Rex Collings, a one-man publishing outfit in London. Collings wrote to a friend at the time, “I’ve just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I’m mad?” He also changed the title to Watership Down, the place where the rabbits resettle. ('Watership' derives from Old English, meaning 'a body of water, a piece of water’; 'down' has the meaning of a hill). The book was a smash hit and won numerous prizes.

Richard Adams

2.

Adams told the BBC in 2007 that the story started on a long car ride: He and his two daughters were going to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Judi Dench in a production of Twelfth Night. His elder daughter demanded a story to pass the time. "This called for spontaneity, it had to, and I just began off the top of my head: 'Once upon a time there were two rabbits, called eh, let me see, Hazel and Fiver, and I'm going to tell you about some of their adventures,'” he explained. “What followed was really the essence of Watership Down.” The story continued over the next few months during the morning school run; Adams told The Telegraph in 2014 that he’d go to bed forming the narrative in his mind, ready to tell the girls the next morning. In a way, the continually-forming story was Adams’ attempt to be a constant, steady presence in his daughters’ lives: “I’ve got a thing about that. Parents ought to spend a lot of time in their children’s company. A lot of them don’t, you know.”

3.

The rabbits were in fact modeled after WWII officers. Lieutenant Richard Adams commanded C Platoon in 250 Company’s Seaborn Echelon, and, as he wrote in his autobiography, he based Watership Down and the stories in it around the men of the 250 Airborne Light Company RASC—specifically, on their role in the battle of Arnhem. The battle, fought over nine days in September 1944 in and around the Dutch towns of Arnhem, Oosterbeek, Driel, and Wolfheze, resulted in devastating losses for the Allied forces, including in Adams’ company. Adams says that two characters were directly drawn from life. Hazel was inspired by Adams’ commanding officer, Major John Gifford, a man he described as “brave in the most self-effacing way” and an “excellent organiser” who rarely raised his voice, adding, “Everything about him was quiet, crisp and unassuming.” Gifford survived the war; Captain Desmond “Paddy” Kavanagh, on whom warrior Bigwig was modeled, did not. Daring, debonair Kavanagh was, Adams wrote, “afraid of nothing,” a “sensationalist,” and “by nature entirely the public’s image of a parachute officer.” He was killed in action outside Oosterbeek while providing covering fire for his platoon, at just 25 years old. As for Adams, he said in 2014 that he identifies more with Fiver: “Rather timid and not much of a fighter … but able to contribute something in the way of intuitive knowledge.”

4.

Before Watership Down, Adams hadn’t written a word. In an interview with The Guardian in 2015, he said, “I was 52 when I discovered I could write. I wish I’d known a bit earlier. I never thought of myself as a writer until I became one.” But Adams also acknowledges that nothing he’s done since has matched the power of his debut: “I try to look at it in a positive way, to say to myself, ‘Look at Watership Down – if you can do that, you can do any ruddy thing.’ Of course you can’t expect to have another success like that, but it does give you the confidence and the enjoyment to go on writing.”

5.

Watership Down has never been nationally banned in the United States. However, it has been banned by individual schools because of its violent content. Even though it is a novel about rabbits, it addresses dark topics like suicide, prejudice, and genocide. However, on the flip side, Watership Down symbolises the struggle to build a just society in a world where leaders all too often value their own power and egos over the safety and happiness of their followers.

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BOOK EXTRACT

From The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame

'There's only one thing more to be done,' continued the gratified Badger. 'Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here, what you fully admitted to me in the smoking-room just now. First, you are sorry for what you've done, and you see the folly of it all?'

There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and that, while the other animals waited in grave silence. At last he spoke.

'No!' he said, a little sullenly, but stoutly; 'I'm not sorry. And it wasn't folly at all! It was simply glorious!'

'What?' cried the Badger, greatly scandalised. 'You backsliding animal, didn't you tell me just now, in there - - '

'Oh, yes, yes, in there,' said Toad impatiently. 'I'd have said anything in there. You're so eloquent, dear Badger, and so moving, and so convincing, and put all your points so frightfully well— you can do what you like with me in there, and you know it. But I've been searching my mind since, and going over things in it, and I find that I'm not a bit sorry or repentant really, so it's no earthly good saying I am; now, is it?'

'Then you don't promise,' said the Badger, 'never to touch a motor-car again?'

'Certainly not!' replied Toad emphatically. 'On the contrary, I faithfully promise that the very first motor-car I see, poop- poop! off I go in it!'

5 x 5: BOOKS - THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

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5 facts about 5 books.

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For the next 5 days I am posting single instalments of 5 x 5 regarding some of my favourite books. Plus an extract or quote from each book.

Books have, for younger people at least, given way, to e-books, social media and videos. They no longer know the joy and satisfaction that comes from being absorbed in a good book, of wanting to continue reading despite the early hours and having to go to work.

If you agree with my 5 x 5, disagree, wish to comment, drop me a line by email.

If you haven’t read the subject books, I recommend doing so.

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Book 1:

THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

The cover art for the first edition release of The Wind in the Willows

A classic children's novel by the British novelist Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) first published in 1908. It details the story of Mole, Ratty, and Badger as they try to help Mr. Toad, after he becomes obsessed with motorcars and gets into trouble. It also details short stories about them that are disconnected from the main narrative.

__________

Facts:

1.

In 1899, at age 40, Kenneth Grahame married Elspeth Thomson and the next year they had their only child, a boy named Alastair (nicknamed "Mouse"). He was born premature, blind in one eye, and plagued by health problems until his death at age 20. When Alastair was about four years old, Grahame would tell him bedtime stories, some of which were about a toad, and on his frequent boating holidays without his family he would write further tales of Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger in letters to Alastair. The stories were further developed in letters Graham wrote while he was alone on boating vacations.

2.

In 1908, Grahame took early retirement from his position as secretary of the Bank of England. He moved with his wife and son to an old farmhouse in Blewbury, Berkshire. There, he used the bedtime stories he had told Alastair as a basis for the manuscript of The Wind in the Willows.

Kenneth Graham

Alistair Graham

3.

While he was in office, U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Grahame to tell him that he saw the novel’s principal characters—Mole, Ratty, Toad, and Badger—as “old friends.”

4.

Kenneth Grahame died in 1932, a broken-hearted man of 73, who hadn’t written anything of note since The Wind In The Willows was published in 1908. His broken heart was from the death of Alistair, the two being buried in the same cemetery in Oxford.

5.

Mouse committed suicide 12 years before his father’s death, aged 20, prompted by his health problems, a fragile and nervous disposition, his finding it difficult to cope with his father’s immense fame and his father’s unrealistic expectations of him. His father was always a distant figure, incapable of demonstrating love to both his wife and his son. The evening of his death, Mouse made his way down to the Thames (ironically the home of Ratty, Toad and Mole). There he lay down on the railway track running across Port Meadow and awaited the train that ended his misery. His death did at least bring one consolation; in recognition of his suffering, Oxford University, for the first time, made special provision for disabled students.

Kenneth Graham

Alastair Graham

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

 

BADASSES

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The US word ‘badass’ can mean different things in different contexts: brave, tough, mean, cool and so on. 

Perhaps we can stay with the comment about the rhinoceros: hard to describe but you know one when you see one.

Here is a bio about a true badass . . .

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Chaplain Robert Preston Taylor

Chaplain (Major General) Robert Preston Taylor, USAF (1909 – 1997) was an American military officer who served as the 3rd Chief of Chaplains of the United States Air Force.

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Why he was a badass:

Taylor enlisted as a chaplain in the US army in September 1940, his unit being located in Manila in the Philippines. With the declaration of war and invasion by the Japanese, the Philippine Division was transferred to the front lines on the Peninsula of Bataan. Chaplain

Bataan:

The Battle of Bataan (January 7 – April 9, 1942) was fought by the United States and the Philippine Commonwealth against Imperial Japan, the most intense phase of the Japanese invasion of the Philippines during World War II. Under General Douglas MacArthur, he Bataan Peninsula and the island of Corregidor were the only remaining Allied strongholds in the region.

During the Battle of Bataan, America’s first major loss in the Pacific theatre of World War II, Taylor supported the U.S. combatants as they endured disease, starvation, supply issues, and traumatic devastating bombardment. Seemingly abandoned by their country that didn’t get them the supplies or reinforcements they needed, American defenders in Bataan were beset by malaria and other tropical illnesses and subsisted on whatever food they could get their hands on — scraps of rice, monkey, meat, dogs, rats, and slugs. Meanwhile every morning ushered in a fresh barrage from the attacking Japanese. There, during the months long battle, Taylor won a Silver Star for rushing into open fire to evacuate wounded men.

The American surrender at Bataan to the Japanese after three months of fighting, with 76,000 soldiers surrendering in the Philippines altogether, was the largest in American and Filipino military histories and was the largest United States surrender since the American Civil War's Battle of Harpers Ferry.

The invading Japanese controlled the Philippine media, which portrayed imperial forces as helpful liberators. This front page from the Manila Tribune claimed that Japanese occupation will bring peace and tranquility to the Philippines, April 24, 1942. 

U.S. soldiers and sailors surrendering to Japanese forces at Corregidor, May 1942. Captured Japanese photograph

Bataan Death March:

The Bataan Death March, the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war, began on 9 April 1942. The total distance marched to various camps was 65 miles (105 km). Sources report widely differing prisoner of war casualties on the march: from 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths and 500 to 650 American deaths during the march.

The march was characterised by severe physical abuse and wanton killings. POWs who fell or were caught on the ground were shot. After the war, the Japanese commander, General Masaharu Homma and two of his officers, Major General Yoshitaka Kawane and Colonel Kurataro Hirano, were tried by United States military commissions for war crimes and sentenced to death on charges of failing to prevent their subordinates from committing atrocities. Homma was executed in 1946, while Kawane and Hirano were executed in 1949.

A photograph of a burial detail at Camp O'Donnell, the terminus of the "Death March".

Prisoners of war on the Bataan Death March.

Prisoners of war on the Bataan Death March.

POW:

Taylor survived the march and was interred, along with tens of thousands of other POWs in the notorious Cabanatuan prison camp in the Philippines. The Japanese imperial army wasn’t known for its compassionate treatment of POWs, but what Taylor endured in the camp far superseded that of most of its detainees.

As a chaplain, Taylor considered it his duty to support his fellow soldiers both spiritually and physically. To accomplish this, he communicated with a network of spies both within and without of Cabanatuan’s fences, including the Filipino resistance. Together, they worked to smuggle food, medicine, and messages from family into the camp, and military intelligence out of the camp.

When the Japanese discovered the spy network, they were furious. They cracked down on all the chaplains in Cabanatuan, torturing many of them to death. Taylor was thrown into solitary confinement in the “heat box.” This was a tiny bamboo cage, with very narrow slats, that was too small to stand, lie down, or stretch out his legs. The Japanese placed the box under the direct heat of the sun and kept him there for nine weeks straight. There, Taylor read the Bible five times and also worked through Dostoevsky’s “The House of the Dead.”

After weeks in the box, Taylor was no longer moving or responsive. American prison doctors lobbied the Japanese for the right to remove Taylors body and bury him and were given permission. The doctors pulled out the limp and lifeless body and quickly realised that Taylor was actually breathing faintly. They secretly snuck him to what passed for an “infirmary” in the camp. After weeks in the infirmary, he was hobbling around the camp on crutches. He had made a miraculous recovery and he used his condition to inspire hope in his fellow soldiers.

When a crowd of prisoners gathered around him, he told them, “Ask me about my condition. I’m dirty, nasty, and all I have on is my underwear. Can you smell the stench of my rotting teeth? Listen to me, listen without pity, I’m not going to die. I’m going to live and you are too, because God is going to give us strength.”

Former prisoner of war Benjamin Steele's drawing of one prisoner giving a drink to another at the Cabanatuan camp.

Hell Ships:

Unfortunately for him, his miraculously recovery came at the worst time possible. It was late 1944 and the Japanese were starting to lose the war and were panicking. Soon, America would retake the Philippines. The Japanese started making plans for moving the healthy prisoners who could still work, transporting them to the Japanese mainland and out of reach of American hands. The sick, infirm, and injured prisoners remained behind and those who survived would later be rescued in a daring American raid on the camp.

However the healthy prisoners were shipped to Japan. To transport their human cargo, the Japanese threw thousands of POWs at a time on the so-called “hell ships.”

The term refers to a ship with extremely inhumane living conditions or with a reputation for cruelty among the crew. It now generally refers to the ships used by the Imperial Japanese Navy and Imperial Japanese Army to transport Allied prisoners of war and rōmusha (Asian forced slave laborers) out of the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong, and Singapore in World War II. These POWs were taken to the Japanese Islands, Formosa, Manchukuo, Korea, the Moluccas, Sumatra, Burma, or Siam to be used as forced labor.

The Japanese military packed thousands of POWs into dark, suffocating conditions in ships’ holds. Men would panic, suffocating to death or turning on each other in their hysteria.

In a tragically ironic twist, American bombers often strafed these Japanese ships, sending the soldiers trapped in the hold to the bottom of the ocean.

Taylor graduated from the infirmary just in time to be forced aboard the Oryoku Maru along with 1,600 others.

Inside the hold, “The heat was indescribable, unbearable,” Taylor remembers. During the first dark night aboard the ship it was pitch black and some men were delirious from fear and thirst, literally biting the people next to them and sucking on their blood. “The worst nights of our lives,” Taylor claimed.

The next morning, American bombers found the ship and bombed it, crippling it irreparably. Taylor and 1,300 others survived the explosion and swum to the shore, where the Japanese kept them outdoors, exposed to the roasting sun, and on starvation rations for a week. Those who were badly injured in the explosion were beheaded by the Japanese. The rest were packed into the hold of yet another ship, where they were fed only rarely during the three week long voyage to Japan.

While moored at the harbor in Japan, this ship was also discovered by American planes and strafed again, killing even more. Of the original 1,600 who made the journey, only a few hundred had survived, Taylor among them, but he had suffered a broken arm during the ship bombardments.

Liberation:

The group was transported around prisoner camps in Japan, where they were treated relatively well due to their weakened and injured state. They were fed poorly, but the rations were better than they had been in the Philippines and they were given light work to do. After a few months, they were liberated from the camps. Taylor weighed only 98 pounds. He was also the only chaplain to survive Japanese imprisonment.

After the war:

After surviving the Bataan Death March and forty-two months of captivity as a prisoner of war, Taylor returned home in 1945 to find that his wife, Ione, who had been told that he had not survived, had remarried just one month earlier.

In 1950, Taylor married Mildred Good.

He stayed in the military, reached the rank of major general, and was named Air Force Chief of Chaplains by President John F. Kennedy. Taylor retired to Texas in 1963, where he served as a lecturer and preacher at the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary.

His decorations and awards include the Silver Star, Bronze Star and the Presidential Unit Citation with two oak leaf clusters.

Gallery:

Interview with Chaplain Taylor (lengthy and detailed):

https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/interview-robert-preston-taylor-world-war-ii-pow

From the above interview:

Chaplain Taylor:

Of course, there were rough times, but never once did I give up, you know, did I succumb to these temptations. A man could literally die if he wanted. If he just gave up, he could die. I've seen them die who just gave up, and they'd be dead in five minutes—just turn over and die. It was easy to do. But you have to keep your chin up and you have to look forward to live through such circumstances.

This was not because I was any better than anybody else or those of us who survived were any better. I think the key to all of it, though, was . . . of course, the providence of God, but in his good way we were able to be optimistic and to keep on fighting, keep on pushing, keep on pulling, not only for yourself 
but for those about you. That's the key to it. I don't think I could have ever made it if I'd just been pulling to see that Preston Taylor got through. That's not the point at all.

It brings up the big question about what's life all about. It's not just for me or just for you. If we try to live it in that way for our own gratification, our own benefit, then we soon give up. If you get to thinking about, "Now, gee, there's no use me fighting this thing because I am not going to make it." But if you think there is a reason to fight because it might help somebody else to make it, you see, that's the key. I think that's a key to life, really.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY