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3 out of 5 stars
By
Jean
on
03-15-15
"Yankee Boy"
Philip Harman was a professional tennis player from Berkeley California in the late 1930s. He went to Hong Kong for a fundraiser to help the Children of China. In December 1941 Japan captured Hong Kong and he was taken as a prisoner of war.
Harman gives a detailed account of the fall of Kowloon and Hong Kong. He starts off more excited about seeing history made than understanding the danger he was in. He points out that the Japanese were not interested in doing any fighting; they had only one interest and that was the gang and brutal rape of every female. They beat and raped every female from babies to old women leaving many of them dead. Then they started beating and interrogating white men staying in the major hotels. Harman was badly beaten several times and thought he was going to be killed. He said that the Japanese officers called him “Yankee boy,” He was starved and suffered from Beriberi and other starvation related diseases.
The Swedish arraigned to give the prisoners safe conducted back to their countries of Britain, Netherlands and United States. The story ends with his boarding a Swedish ship.
The book is written in the first person and is an interesting firsthand account of the fall of Hong Kong. Similar to other memoirs of the Japanese takeover of China it reveals the brutality of the Japanese soldiers particularly toward the females.
The audio production is amateurish but the content was interesting enough to over look it. Glenn Langohr was the narrator.
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