Reviews of "Horyo"

From Gavin Daws, author of "Prisoners of the Japanese."

    "Richard Gordon has written a brutally honest book.  Horyo is the product of his three and a half years as a POW of the Japanese and fifty years of meditation on the experience.  Gordon takes an unflinching and unsparing look at the human toll exacted by captivity, slave labor, starvation, and torture."
 

From John W. Whitman, author of "Bataan, Our Last Ditch."

    "Richard M. Gordon offers his prisoner of war experiences and introduces a new, and depressingly accurate, term to POW life: ‘Predators.’

    Too many books and recollections describe comradely resistance to Japanese guards and heroic, self-sacrifice in support of one’s fellows.  Gordon, however, brings a piercing eye undimmed by age to the terrible results of captivity.  There were to few heroes, and too many predators.

     Poorly trained American junior officers and enlisted men captured in the Philippines entered the Japanese POW system.  Under brutal, bestial Japanese treatment, these Americans swiftly reverted to survival of the fittest.  Gordon’s book is worth reading just to remind us, and particularly the professional military, the cost that untrained, undisciplined troops pay on the battlefield and in captivity.  Gordon applauds the military bearing and discipline of British POW’s imprisoned with him and laments the poor prewar training and discipline that left his fellow Americans unprepared for POW life.

     Most disturbing is Gordon’s myth-breaking, yet honest, labeling of numerous fellow POW’s as predators.  Predators of all ranks lived at the expense of their comrades.  They stole food and medicine, sold it to men with money, and ate while others died.  They cheated for precious water, bullied weaker prisoners, ignored the few attempts by seniors to maintain order, and proved that there are few depths to which human nature can not descend.  Survival by any means was paramount.  Predation was the survival technique, fellow POW’s the prey.

     Certainly, the most disappointing message of the book concerns the predators.  Gordon contends the even today, these predators, often socializing as "professional prisoners of war," portray a demeanor of warm fellowship toward the very men they victimized.  Even the men, while suffered by these predators, have chosen to forgive and forget.  Gordon has not forgotten."

From Scott Harrison, a historian of Pre-war and WW II, in the Philippines.

     "Richard Gordon’s ‘Horyo’ was written bravely from the heart and not without a little lingering animosity.  His backdrop of childhood poverty in Depression-era New York City and the acquisition of a nurturing family, in the pre-war Army, set the stage, magnificently for the brutality of experience at the hands of the wartime Japanese and a few unscrupulous Americans.

     I believe Gordon further captures the Raj-like existence of the peacetime Army in the Philippines.  Moreover, when one reads Gordon’s description of POW camp life, one can not help but remember James Clavell’s powerful POW novel, ‘King Rat’ and Gavin Daw’s historical masterpiece, ‘Prisoners of the Japanese.’

     Gordon pulls few punches about his wartime trauma as a POW.  Not many veterans have had the courage to talk honestly about the lack of leadership in many interned officers or the "predatory" nature of more than a few rank and file POW’s.  Ill feelings between some POW’s of Bataan and Corregidor are also surfaced.  The definitive story of Americans betraying Americans in camps probably remains to be written, but Gordon’s book is provocative and will no doubt stimulate further debate."
 

For an authographed copy, send $30.00 to the address below.  The price includes postage.   Maj. Gordon is donating his share of the proceeds from the sale of the book to the "Camp O'Donnell Memorial Project."