Taken Captive: A Japanese POW's Story

In January 1945, Ooka (Fires on the Plain), a 35-year-old literary critic who would become one of Japan's leading literary figures, was captured by American forces in the Philippines. Three years later, he began a series of journals, later compiled into a book, about that experience. In this first appearance in English of the memoir, Ooka portrays himself as a reluctant combatant obsessed with the fear that he might die fighting for the imperial army. That fear nearly became a self-fulfilling prophecy when a malaria-ravaged Ooka tried to kill himself while being hunted by American troops. His suicide grenade failed to explode, however, and he was taken prisoner by the Yanks, nursed back to health and interned in a POW camp until he was repatriated to Japan at war's end. In this graceful narrative, Ooka, a translator of Stendhal, brings his considerable intellectual and literary powers to bear in contemplating the complexities of POW society and his own place in it. He reveals, among other matters, that he repeatedly ""had to stanch the impulse to toady to my captors,"" whom he admired, and that he took ""dark pleasure"" in ""adopting the manner of the enemy"" by imitating the long, powerful strides of the Americans. Possessed of an ironic, challenging intelligence, this clean-hewn work can now take its place on stateside shelves with other classic memoirs of POW life. (May)