Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Conduct Under Fire by John A. Glusman Glusman, John A. 1956– PERSONAL: Born February 3, 1956, in New York, NY; son of Murray and Louise (Johns) Glusman; married; children: three. Education: Columbia College, B.A., 1978; Columbia University, M.A., 1980. Politics: Democrat. ADDRESSES: Home —Glen Ridge, NJ. Office —Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 19 Union Sq. W., New York, NY 10003. CAREER: Modern Library, New York, NY, managing editor, 1982–84; Vintage and Random House, New York, NY, associate editor, 1983– 84; Washington Square Press, New York, NY, editor-in-chief, 1984–86; Collier Books, New York, NY, editor-in-chief, beginning 1986; Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, NY, senior executive editor, then editor, beginning 1986; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, NY, currently editor-in-chief. Has also taught at New School for Social Research (now New School University) and Columbia University. Consulting editor for Columbia College Today and Zoetrope; Former member, Helsinki Watch Committee. WRITINGS: Conduct under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941–1945 , Viking (New York, NY), 2005. Contributor to periodicals, including Economist, Washington Post Book World, Christian Science Monitor , and Rolling Stone . Former contributing editor, Paris Review . SIDELIGHTS: John A. Glusman has worked in the publishing field since 1980, holding a number of editorial and management positions. Most recently, he has worked as editor-in-chief of New York-based publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In 2005 Glusman wrote his first book, Conduct under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941–1945 . He had begun researching the book in 2001 when he traveled to the Philippines with his father, Murray Glusman, who had spent years in the country as a prisoner of war. The book's narrative revolves around Murray Glusman and three other Navy doctors—John Bookman, George Ferguson, and Fred Berley—who were captured during World War II on the fall of Corregidor and spent over three years as prisoners of the Japanese. The story follows the doctors through 1945 as they struggle to keep themselves and their fellow prisoners alive. The book's detailed account of life in a Japanese POW camp also addresses the larger struggle between the cultures of the East and West. A number of critics found the author's use of a wide variety of research materials to be a major asset to Conduct under Fire . "Interviews with veterans … coupled with the use of diaries, letters, and war crimes testimony, make this essential for all libraries," attested David Lee Poremba in Library Journal . Other reviewers noted the book's in-depth analysis on the long-lasting effects of war on soldiers and families. The book is a "thoughtful, humane meditation on war and family history, full of myth-bursting truths," concluded a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Glusman told CA: "My interest in writing dates back to my early days in publishing when I began first to review books, then to write essay-length articles, then to conduct interviews and write travel pieces and opinion pieces. As a book editor, I resisted writing a book for a very long time— knowing how much time and effort it would entail. But it seemed that if I didn't write Conduct under Fire , someone else—without the personal connection to the story—might, and that got my competitive juices flowing. "Many writers have influenced me over the years. For Conduct under Fire , Ronald Spector's Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan , and John Dower's War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War were perhaps the two most important influences on me. They're scholarly in approach, brilliantly researched, and beautifully written, so a trade audience as well as an academic one can appreciate them. "I spent a year or so researching Conduct under Fire , reading all of the published accounts—and many unpublished—of Allied prisoners of the Japanese. I traveled to the Philippines, I traveled to Japan, worked with a Japanese researcher and a translator, scoured collections in the National Archives, the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, and I interviewed at length American, British, Australian, and Japanese veterans. Then, one day, I sat down at my computer—I remember the day well—paused, and began to write. I wrote almost every day for fifteen months, in the very early hours of the morning, late at night, on the weekends, on the train while commuting to work—whenever and wherever I had spare time. "I was surprised by how much I enjoyed writing. I found it wonderfully stimulating, intellectually challenging, occasionally frustrating, but always rewarding. "I think F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is the perfect American novel, and consider Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man the perfect British—rather, Irish—novel. In that context, Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce is one of the best biographies I've ever read, and I find the work of military historian Douglas Porch, who has written on Morocco, the Sahara, and the Mediterranean theater in World War II, fascinating, wonderfully well written, and barbed with humor and insight." BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES: PERIODICALS. Kirkus Reviews , March 15, 2005, review of Conduct under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941–1945 , p. 332. Library Journal , May 1, 2005, David Lee Poremba, review of Conduct under Fire , p. 101. Publishers Weekly , March 21, 2005, review of Conduct under Fire , p. 44; May 9, 2005, Michael Scharf, "Operating in War's Theater," interview with John A. Glusman, p. 28. Conduct Under Fire by John A. Glusman. ISBN 0670034088 Viking Press. Winner of the Colby Medal for Military History February 2007. Conduct Under Fire - Four American Doctors and their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese 1941-1945 by John Glusman, , Viking Press, 2005 Buy at Amazon. In "Conduct Under Fire" , John A. Glusman recounts the ordeals of his father and three fellow Navy doctors captured on Corregidor in May 1942. Interwoven in the scenes of battle, Glusman relates with startling clarity, the savagery and contempt the Japanese visited on the victims of their war to seize the Pacific nations. Glusman's extraordinary writing skills vividly conjures up all of your senses to place you there at the surrender of Bataan and the days that followed. One wants to duck for cover as he tells of the bombardments of Corregidor, scream for air in the fetid suffocating air of the packed holds of the hell ships - carrying the sick and starving prisoners for slave labor in Japan and finally, to weep for the patients who die because of the Japanese hatred of the "anglos". Perhaps one learns more than needed about the effects of starvation but this is a book about the war through the eyes of the beloved doctors. Conduct Under Fire by John A. Glusman. CONDUCT UNDER FIRE 1941 - 1945 BY JOHN A. GLUSMAN. CONDUCT UNDER FIRE 1941 - 1945 By John A. Glusman. Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese. The fierce, bloody battles of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines are legendary in the annals of World War II. Those who survived faced the horrors of life as prisoners of the Japanese. In Conduct Under Fire, John A. Glusman chronicles these events through the eyes of his father, Murray, and three fellow navy doctors captured on Corregidor in May 1942. Here are the dramatic stories of the fall of Bataan, the siege of "The Rock," and the daily struggles to tend to the sick, wounded, and dying during some of the heaviest bombardments of World War II. Here also is the desperate war doctors and corpsmen waged against disease and starvation amid an enemy that viewed surrender as a disgrace. To survive, the POWs functioned as a family. But the ties that bind couldn�t protect them from a ruthless counteroffensive waged by American submarines or from the B-29 raids that burned Japan�s major cities to the ground. Based on extensive interviews with American, British, Australian, and Japanese veterans, as well as diaries, letters, and war crimes testimony, this is a harrowing account of a brutal clash of cultures, of a race war that escalated into total war. Like Flags of Our Fathers and Ghost Soldiers , Conduct Under Fire is a story of bravery on the battlefield and ingenuity behind barbed wire, one that reveals the long shadow the war cast on the lives of those who fought it. 16 pages of B & W Photos. Some links to help you purchase "Conduct Under Fire " Conduct Under Fire by John A. Glusman. Interview with Mr. John A. Glusman The author of Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945 (Viking, 2005, www.conductunderfire.com ) Congratulations on having published this remarkable book, Conduct Under Fire. Synopsis of your book, which received advanced praise from many prominent people including Professor John Dower, reads like the following. The fierce, bloody battles of Bataan and Corregidor in the Philippines are legendary in the annals of World War II. Those who survived faced the horrors of life as prisoners of the Japanese. In Conduct Under Fire, John A. Glusman chronicles these events through the eyes of his father, Murray, and three fellow navy doctors captured on Corregidor in May 1942. Here are the dramatic stories of the fall of Bataan, the siege of "the Rock," and the daily struggles to tend the sick, wounded, and dying during some of the heaviest bombardments of World War II. Here also is the desperate war doctors and corpsmen waged against disease and starvation amid an enemy that viewed surrender as a disgrace. To survive, the POWs functioned as a family. But the ties that bind couldn�t protect them from a ruthless counteroffensive waged by American submarines or from the B-29 raids that burned Japan�s major cities to the ground. Based on extensive interviews with American, British, Australian, and Japanese veterans, as well as diaries, letters, and war crimes testimony, this is a harrowing account of a brutal clash of cultures, of a race war that escalated into total war. Why did you want to write this book? I wrote Conduct Under Fire so a new generation could understand the war in the Pacific from the point of view of the men--American and Japanese, as well as English, Filipino, Dutch, and Australian--who were a part of it. I wrote the book assuming that most readers had little, if any sense of the history of that conflict. I was particularly concerned in presenting a balanced point of view. Too often our histories are slanted by the nationality of the author. I was interested in the war from both perspectives. I worked closely with a Japanese researcher, Ishii Shinpei, and a translator--John Junkerman--who had been recommended to me by the historian, John Dower, author of War Without Mercy. You wrote that while you were growing up your father did not speak much about his POW experience. There must be so many things that you learned for the first time about sufferings of POWs of the Japanese while you were researching. I understand also that you received support from members of the POW Research Network Japan. Can you describe what kind of experience it was to research for and write this book? Another objective in writing the book was to take advantage of the memories and recollections of those veterans still alive. I extensively interviewed American and Filipino defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, and of course my father was instrumental in that process. We traveled together to the Philippines in 2001 and retraced his wartime itinerary there, from the Cavite Navy Yard, base of the Asiatic Fleet, which the Japanese destroyed two days after Pearl Harbor, to Bataan, the island fortress of Corregidor, where he was attached to the U.S. 4th Marines on beach defense, to his capture on Corregidor, his imprisonment in Bilibid Prison in Manila, and later, in Cabanatuan, sixty miles north of Manila. It was an extraordinary experience for both of us. He was 86 years old at the time, and the trip brought back many, many memories, some of them pleasant, but others, were clearly painful for him. He had little interest in returning to Japan, so I went on a separate research trip with Ishii Shinpei. We tracked down the sites of every major POW camp where my father was imprisoned, from Tsumori, and the notorious stadium camp, Itchioka in the Osaka area, to the Kobe POW hospital, to Maruyama outside of Kobe. I met quite a few members of the Japanese POW Network who were enormously useful in my continued research, and I was surprised and delighted by their interest in the subject. Lieutenant (j.g.) Murray Glusman, Medical Corps, United States Naval Reserve, listed as missing in the New York Herald Tribune . You said to me that you would like to see this book translated in Japanese. Why is it important for you that Japanese people have an opportunity to read your book? I'm particularly eager to see Conduct Under Fire published in Japan. Too many POW memoirs present only one side of the war; I made a deliberate attempt to present several. For example, my father was lucky he wasn't killed during the American firebombing of Japan. The hospital where he worked on the Allied medical staff, the Kobe POW Hospital, was destroyed by American B-29s on June 5, 1945. Several patients were killed; quite a few others were injured. I wanted to present that fire raid from the perspective of the POWs on the ground, from the perspective of Japanese civilians whose homes were destroyed, and from the perspective of the American B-29 crewmen who carried out those raids. So I was particularly eager to interview Japanese victims of the firebombing of Kobe, which I did. I was told by one of my interviewees that my visit to her home was the first one ever made by a Westerner. When her daughter listened to her account of the firebombing of Kobe, she was spellbound; her mother had told her nothing whatsoever about it up until this point. That's one of the reasons I want to see this book published in Japan. I think a younger generation of Japanese needs to know about their country's role in the war, just as a younger generation of Americans needs to know about our role in the war. How else, then, can we understand each other as nations, as cultures, as friends? Many tragic episodes of POW abuse by the Japanese are often explained as a result of a clash of cultures. Assuming that we, Japanese and Americans, are still influenced by each of our distinctive culture, how do you hope that your book will transcend that cultural difference and be accepted by Japanese readers? What do you think is universal message in you book? Allied POWs suffered terribly at the hands of the Japanese. They were tortured, beaten, and starved. They were denied medical treatment, and robbed of their dignity. More than 60,000 Allied POWs died while in Japanese custody, a mortality rate between 34-37%. By contrast, less than 1% of American POWs in Germany died. The reasons were many: racial antagonism, cultural naivete, linguistic problems, Japan's failure to ratify the 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, as well as a military ethos that permeated all aspects of Japanese life and came very close to destroying Japan itself. I've tried to capture some of the complexity of the war, show how thin a moral line there is in battle, how quickly behavior changes, frequently for the worse. Just as there were. Americans whose "conduct under fire" was heroic, there were some whose behavior was less than exemplary. Similarly, there were Japanese, and here I'm thinking in particular of Dr. Ohashi Hyojiro, commandant of the Kobe POW Hospital, who did everything within his power to improve the lot of the POWs in his charge. The Allied POW medical staff had an enormous amount of respect for Dr. Ohashi; indeed, it was a letter they wrote after the firebombing of Kobe thanking him for his considerate behavior that in all likelihood prevented him from being charged by the American authorities with war crimes. One of the highlights of my trip to Japan was meeting Dr. Ohashi's two daughters, and his grandson, Yoshihisa, who I think of as a friend. I felt as if I were truly stepping across generations and back into the pages of history. So I suppose if there is a universal message in this book it is one that asks the reader to weigh both sides of a story, to question a particular government's rationale for waging war, to uphold a universal sense of decency, morality, and a respect for human rights. That message seems more relevant now than ever. Unlike many tales of the Pacific War where soldiers from both sides met in battlefields, it seems to be difficult for Japan and the U.S. to find a common ground on topics such as POW abuse, fire bombing of Japanese cities, and the dropping of the Atomic bombs. How do you think we can overcome that? What efforts are needed on both sides? The only way to overcome historic animosity, transgenerational trauma, is through education, cross-cultural dialogue, and self-examination. Politicians have their own agendas, but we must bring them to task. We cannot look the other way. We must take responsibility for our actions. Otherwise, we are bound to commit the same errors of our fathers and grandfathers. Otherwise there really will be no hope for world peace. One researcher in the Japanese POW Network set up e-mail classes between her students and a variety of Americans. I cannot tell you how thrilling it was for me to be in touch with a Japanese high school student who was learning about World War II for the first time, learning about her past, thrilled to discover of a part of her own history. That was a genuine trans-Pacific dialogue. The place to begin is with our children, which is why I dedicated Conduct Under Fire to my own children. Did the Navy uniform on the jacket of your book belong to your father? Yes , the Navy uniform on the jacket of Conduct Under Fire was my father's. He kept it stored in a metal footlocker, along with two Bronze Stars, and a photograph taken of the Allied medical staff of the Kobe POW Hospital. As a child, I rarely saw that footlocker open, but I was fascinated by it. Who was the man who wore it? What experiences did he encounter during the war? What could I learn from it? Now, so many years later, I know at least some of the answers to those questions. You wrote about your father's postwar years as follows: His postwar career in neurological research was launched at New York State Psychiatric Institute, and he won a position as an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia. His research took off, and in a double promotion he leaped over an associate professorship to become a full professor. He used his training in neurology to specialize in behavioral physiology, with a focus on the neural mechanism in the brain that trigger responses with which he was all too familiar: fear, anxiety, and aggression. Your father passed away this January. You said that he was able to read Conduct Under Fire in its entirety. What did he say? My father read the book in its entirety in manuscript form. He was an avid reader of histories and biographies, and he was a very tough critic. In later years, he began to write newspaper editorials on a variety of issues, some pertaining to the war and to Japanese-American relations. I thought he might shy away from the more personal details I revealed of his life, but he didn't at all. He was enormously proud of Conduct Under Fire , impressed with the breadth and depth of my research, and I know he learned a good deal from it. But to the end of his life, he downplayed his own role in the story. "We did nothing extraordinary," he said. "We lived in extraordinary times." An engaging story of generosity, survival in WWII. Beginning in 1943 with the publication of Richard Tregaskis' "Guadalcanal Diary," America's World War II battles with Japan have been the source of some of the best writing this country has produced. John A. Glusman's "Conduct Under Fire: Four American Doctors and Their Fight for Life as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-1945" adds to this rich and long tradition. Glusman's story centers on four young Navy doctors--his father, Murray Glusman; Fred Berley; John Bookman; and George Ferguson--who were lucky enough to avoid the Bataan Death March but unlucky enough to spend three years in Japanese prison camps following the May 6, 1942, surrender of American and Filipino forces on the tiny fortress island of Corregidor in the mouth of Manila Bay. The result is not only a must read for anyone who cares about the history of World War II but a book that, like Primo Levi's "Survival in Auschwitz," raises the question of what it means to keep one's humanity when virtually everything that makes ordinary life worthwhile is taken away. In order to survive, the four doctors quickly learned that dignity as they knew it in peacetime was no longer an option. They smuggled food, lied to their captors and, shortly before they were liberated, killed and boiled a cat for dinner. But what they never did was betray their duties as physicians. Although it became harder and harder to practice the kind of medicine they had been taught in the states, the four continued to define themselves by the service they were able to render to the sick and dying men around them. Emblematic of that service was an incident that took place shortly after Japan surrendered but before American occupation troops took over the country. Along with another Navy physician, two of the doctors, unarmed and unescorted, made a dangerous train trip from the Maruyama prison camp in which they had been held to Tokyo. Their purpose was to get the arriving American forces to begin immediate evacuation of their tubercular patients, who they feared would never make it home. Nobody would have blamed the doctors for playing it safe after all they had gone through, but against all odds they made it safely to Tokyo and were able to leave a message for the arriving American officials at the Swiss consulate. It is stories like this, told in detail and utterly free from patriotic moralizing, that make "Conduct Under Fire" such a page turner and explain its title. In equally telling, unsentimental concluding chapters, Glusman, the editor in chief of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, chronicles the postwar experiences of the three doctors who survived the war (Ferguson was killed in 1945 when the Japanese ship he was on was sunk by an American submarine). For those doctors, life would never be the same. Bookman tells Glusman that every once in a while he thinks of choking a Japanese patient. Murray Glusman reacts to the news that a young friend of his son's who had a liver tumor has died by remarking, " `That's the way the ball bounces.' " The author is enormously sensitive to this barely repressed rage and coarsening, seeing it as part of the price the doctors paid for their heroism. And he, too, is angry. Glusman believes that Japan has avoided properly accounting for its World War II atrocities and that America, eager to make an ally and democracy of Japan during the Cold War, abetted this avoidance by refusing to treat Emperor Hirohito as a war criminal. Glusman notes that Hirohito failed to condemn the barbarities committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during the assault on Nanking, authorized the use of poison gas in 1937 in China and sanctioned the use of bacteriological weapons against China in 1940. He then points out that while America apologized for its World War II internment of Japanese-American citizens, awarding each $20,000 even if interned for a day, it made it impossible for American POWs to collect compensation from the Japanese government when it signed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, "which waived `all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan.' " For Glusman, who in 2001 traveled to the Philippines and Japan with his father, then 86, such historical remembering is important. He sees it as a generational obligation that is inseparable from keeping the story of World War II alive. But what ultimately defines Glusman's book is the generosity that his father and fellow doctors constantly showed. Near the end of the war, the three surviving doctors were stationed at the Kobe Prisoner of War Hospital. There the doctor in charge, Ohashi Hyojiro, was an unusual Japanese physician who made a point of providing the best care he could to the Allied prisoners of war under his control. Before leaving Kobe, the three doctors, along with other allied medical personnel at the hospital, wrote Ohashi a note expressing their "deep appreciation and gratitude" for the treatment they received from him. The note was simply a courtesy. The doctors had no sense it would make a difference in Ohashi's life. But months later the note became a lifesaver. In November 1945 Ohashi received a letter from American headquarters in Tokyo. He was a war- crimes suspect, ordered to report to Sugamo Prison for questioning. A former POW had accused him of taking Red Cross parcels intended for Allied prisoners for his own use. For more than five months a depressed Ohashi languished in Sugamo while American authorities figured out what to do with him. Then in April 1946 a guard suddenly appeared at his cell door. Ohashi was free to go. There would be no trial and no explanation of why he was being returned to civilian life. Ohashi would, nonetheless, have no doubt as to why he was set free. He had been able to show authorities the June 17, 1945, note of the POW doctors thanking him "for the sincere and untiring efforts which were made by the Nipponese Hospital and Medical Authorities." Like the doctors' patients, he, too, had benefited from their conduct under fire.