“A respected historian and researcher” —Publishers Weekly “A prize is waiting somewhere out there, which Linda Holmes richly deserves for revisiting some appalling realities in a positive way fifty years after the fact.” —Nancy Steffens Seaman, Smithsonian Magazine’s Board of Editors “A tribute to courage and determination of the men who endured it...I ate the book up, and was disappointed to come to the end so fast, and this hasn’t happened to me in a long time.” —Otto Schwarz, Burma Railway survivor and founder, USS Houston Survivors’ Association. ”Linda Goetz Holmes has focused on a most interesting, and somewhat neglected, period of the Allied POW experience — the hiatus between the end of the war and the return home... A useful addition to the growing body of literature on the Allied POW experience in Asia.”—Tim Bowden, Australian author and documentary producer. During the early days of World War II, Cecil Dickson and much of the 2/2 Australian Pioneer Battalion were forced to surrender to the Japanese. This group of POWs, along with captured American National Guard soldiers from Texas and California, and survivors from the sunk USS Houston, were shipped to Burma and Thailand to construct the infamous “Railway of Death” immortalized in the film Bridge Over the River Kwai. 16,000 Allied POWs would die toiling on the railway, and those who lived endured over three years of harsh slave labor until they were released to journey home. Respected military historian Linda Goetz Holmes tells Dickson’s story of his experiences in Japanese labor camps and his determined plan to survive and return to a normal life. Amazing photographs, taken secretly by other prisoners, and personal letters help chronicle this dark chapter in the history of Allied troops in the Pacific.

In the years before the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, Guam was a paradise for the Navy, Marine and civilian employees of Pan American Airways, who found themselves stationed on the island. However their apprehension about the fate of the island increased as they anticipated a Japanese attack in the fall of 1941. Shortly after attack on Pearl Harbor, Guam was bombed and the Japanese invasion soon followed. Since Guam was not heavily fortified it soon fell to the invading Japanese. In the takeover of the island, the Japanese practiced a swift brutality against the captive Americans as well as native population, and then immediately removed the American military and civilian personnel to Japan. Only a lucky few escaped, including five Navy nurses and dependent Ruby Hellmers and her baby Charlene, who were transported back to America aboard the Swedish ship Gripsholm in mid-1942. In Captured, Mansell tells the story of the captives from Guam, whose story until now has largely been forgotten. Drawing upon interviews with survivors, diaries and archival records, Mansell documents the movements of American military and civilian men as they went from one Japanese POW camp to another, slowly starving as they performed slave labor for Japanese companies. Meanwhile, he describes the brutal horrors suffered by Guamian natives during Japan’s occupation of the island, especially as the Japanese prepared for American forces to re-take this U.S. possession in 1945. Moving stories of liberation, transportation home, and the aftermath of these horrific experiences are narrated as the book draws to a close. Mansell concludes that America’s lack of military preparation, disbelief in Japan’s ambitions in the Pacific, and focus on Europe all contributed to the captivity of more than three years of suffering for the forgotten Americans from Guam as the Pacific War raged around them. Captured was completed by historian Linda Goetz Holmes after the death of Roger Mansell.