Synopses & Reviews
Review
"In 1941 When Japanese forces invaded the Philippine Islands, American civilian workers were caught there by the invasion. Some aided the American forces until resistance became hopeless. Unwilling to spend the war in Japanese prison camps, Jordan A. Hamner, a young mining engineer and two other American civilians, fled into the jungle after the defeat of the American troops. For almost a year they moved south to keep ahead of the Japanese troops Realizing that they only salvation lay in leaving the islands, they found a lifeboat which they outfitted and supplied for a voyage south to Australia. With two Filipino men as crew they sailed for over 1,500 nautical miles until they reached Australia. They encountered hostile islanders, storms which capsized their vessel, and a shortage of food and water. When they finally reached Australia, they became the first Americans to succeed in escaping from the Philippine Islands. The exciting account, based on Hamner's
unpublished memoir, was written by Bob Stahl, a World War II agent for the Philippine Regional Section of the Allied Intelligence Bureau." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
" When the Japanese Imperial Forces invaded the Philippine Islands at the onset of World War II, they quickly rounded up Allied citizens on Luzon and imprisoned them as enemy aliens. These captured civilians were treated inhumanely from the start, and news of the atrocities committed by the enemy soon spread to the more remote islands to the south. Hearing this, many of the expatriates living there refused to surrender as their islands were occupied. Fugitives, based on the memoir of Jordan A. Hamner, tells the true story of a young civilian mining engineer trapped on the islands during the Japanese invasion. Instead of surrendering, he and two American co-workers volunteered their services to the Allied armed forces engaged in the futile effort to stave off the enemy onslaught. When the overwhelmed defenders surrendered to the invaders, the three men fled farther into the disease-ridden mountainous jungle. After nearly a year of nomadic wandering, they found a derelict, twenty-one foot long lifeboat in a secluded coastal bay. Hoping to sail to freedom in Australia, the trio converted the craft into a sailboat, and called it the "Or Else." They would make it to Australia-or else. With only a National Geographic magazine map of the Malacca Islands for navigation, Hamner, his two compatriots, and two Filipino crewmen sailed their unseaworthy craft fifteen hundred nautical miles over seas controlled by the Japanese navy, touching land only briefly to replenish meager rations or evade enemy vessels. After thirty perilous days at sea, marked by nearly disastrous encounters with hostile islanders, imminent starvation, and tropical storms, the desperate fugitives reached the welcome shores of Australia.