Some Survived

This is an autobiography of Manny Lawton’s experience during World War II. He was a soldier helping to fight in the Philippines in 1942 when the Japanese had invaded and overcome the US military. He along with around 4,000 other soldiers were captured as prisoners of war.

The start of that imprisonment was the infamous Bataan Death March. They were forced to march for about 60 miles with no food or water for four days. Several hundred died from injuries, sickness, or being killed mercilessly by the Japanese soldiers.

Over the next three years, they went through extreme starvation and torture in various prison camps. Manny talks about how he and a few others would stand next to each other through each horror that they had to go through. It was the support of each other that kept them going.

When the soldiers were rescued in the end, there were only a couple of hundred who had survived out of several thousand.

This book does get into some extremely graphic descriptions of the horrors that they had to live through. When you think about the pain and suffering that they had to endure it will cause you to weep.

It shows the level of horror that mankind is capable of doing when they do not have the love of God in their lives and hearts.

Although there is mention of a few believers in the book and how they did a service to others out of love the book does not have a Christian viewpoint at all. There is no real mention of Manny having a relationship with Jesus.

There a several instances where some foul language is used in the book. Maybe, a total of 5-10 times and only one word at a time. The hardest part in reading this book is the extreme graphic description of horrors that was seen.

If you like to read about history or war situations, I would recommend this book. But you must be prepared for extreme graphic descriptions of violence and suffering.

This book is just one man’s description of his experiences in one war. There are many others who have gone through similar conditions or other situations in war. It will cause you to pray for the end of wars and a desire to seek peace. Pray for all soldiers everywhere for strength to survive what they must go through in their time of duty.