approximately 300,000 Japanese: Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, 23.
“The hapless civilian … fate of a soldier”: Benjamin, Eye Witness by Members of the Overseas Press Club of America, 7.
January, 28, 1932: Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II: 1937–1945, 63–64; Rees, Horror in the East, 23–23.
“Go to work”: Smith and Bogart, The Wars of Peggy Hull: The Life and Times of a War Correspondent, 189.
“In company with other Americans”: Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1932, quoted on page 190 of Wars of Peggy Hull and 151 of Colman, Adventurous Women: Eight True Stories About Women Who Made a Difference.
“If you are ever”: Smith and Bogart, Wars of Peggy Hull, 191.
“His body shook”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 4.
“Increasing, deadly resolve”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 5.
“Hands began to twist”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 6.
”Like Sasha”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 6–7.
“In the briefest”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 11.
“You are lost?”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 12.
“You know”: Benjamin, Eye Witness, 13.
14,000 Chinese: Mitter, Forgotten Ally, 64.
“The mangled bodies of boys”: Smith and Bogart, Wars of Peggy Hull, 241.
“We are not fighting”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 9, 1944, quoted in Smith and Bogart, Wars of Peggy Hull, 248.
“They were sent”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 14, 1945, quoted in Smith and Bogart, Wars of Peggy Hull, 250.
“Are we to”: Diary entry, August 14, 1937.
“If Japan only”: Diary entry, September 26, 1937.
“Our fate at”: Diary entry, December 13, 1937.
“They wanted every”: Diary entry, December 16, 1937.
“Trust Our Japanese Army”: Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, 120.
“Our officers told us … many Chinese”: Ken Wright, Island of Death, Military History Online, www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/islandofdeath.aspx.
“A stream of weary”: Diary entry, December 17, 1937.
“with a dagger”: Diary entry, December 18, 1937.
“with horror written”: Diary entry, December 18, 1937.
“the only thing”: Diary entry, December 18, 1937.
“In my wrath”: Diary entry, December 19, 1937.
“There is no need … at the end”: Hu, American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin, 100.
“Women do not”: Diary entry, February 1, 1938.
“Living Goddess”: Hu, American Goddess, 106.
“When they played”: Diary entry, February 8, 1938.
“At a time when”: Hu, American Goddess, 138.
All Minnie Vautrin diary quotes are reprinted by permission of Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library, Minnie Vautrin papers, film Ms62, Diary of Wilhelmina Vautrin, 1937–1940.
“if you can”: Aylward, The Little Woman, 82.
“Whether you leave … price on your head”: Burgess, The Small Woman: The Heroic Story of Gladys Aylward, 199.
“You are just saying”: Aylward, Little Woman, 84.
“Any person giving”: Aylward, Little Woman, 84.
“After being stopped”: Aylward, Little Woman, 28.
“The Inn of the Eight Happinesses”: Burgess, Small Woman, 56.
“Well, if she”: Aylward, Little Woman, 50.
they’d never seen: Burgess, Small Woman, 125.
“Will you help … conscience will allow”: Burgess, Small Woman, 166.
“sometimes leading Nationalist”: Burgess, Small Woman, 186.
“had despoiled our”: Aylward, Little Woman, 69.
“Flee ye”: Aylward, Little Woman, 85.
“No mule will”: Aylward, Little Woman, 85.
“I would not”: Aylward, Little Woman, 92.
“Then why does not … will be answered”: Burgess, Small Woman, 224.
“Ai-weh-deh, here’s a … is a battlefield”: Burgess, Small Woman, 226.
“Madam … across those mountains”: Aylward, Little Woman, 95.
“For days”: Aylward, Little Woman, 98.
beheading of 200: Aylward, Little Woman, 131–134.
“The islands are under attack … real McCoy”: Bob Bergen, OSS Under-cover Girl: Elizabeth P. McIntosh, an Interview (Banana Tree, 2012), Kindle edition, chapter 2.
“a formation … rooftop fly into the air”: McIntosh, “Honolulu After Pearl Harbor: A Report Published for the First Time, 71 Years Later,” Washington Post, December 6, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/honolulu-after-pearl-harbor-a-report-published-for-the-first-time-71-years-later/2012/12/06/e9029986-3d69-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html.
“that numb terror”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“The peace of . . . in peril”: Hotta, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy, 10.
“Bombs were still dropping … charred bodies of children”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“The blood-soaked drivers”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“laid on slabs”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“blood and the fear”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“The all-night horror … wrapped in fear”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“In the nightmare of … Poison in your food!”: McIntosh, “Honolulu.”
“Definitely not”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 4.
“Fill them out”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 4.
“the art of influencing”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 2.
“Even the best”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 3.
“Out of twenty”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 8.
“rare, strange personalities”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 9.
“Why can’t they be mailed”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 80.
“It’s so sad … for a lost cause”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 81.
“As the Burma campaign”: MacDonald, Undercover Girl, 97.
Quotations from Honolulu: A Report and Undercover Girl published by permission of Elizabeth P. McIntosh.
420 operations: Williams, To the Angels, 57.
while Denny was bathing: Williams, To the Angels, 51.
“You are well aware … advised to surrender”: Williams, To the Angels, 54.
“until the bayonet”: Williams, To the Angels, 54.
“Help is on the way … will be destroyed”: Norman, We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese, 36–37.
“There are times”: Lukacs, Escape From Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Break of the Pacific War, 33.
“We’re the battling”: Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009), 128.
While listening to: Lukacs, Escape from Davao, 32.
“We were expendable”: Williams, To the Angels, 66.
“I came through and I shall return”: “MacArthur’s Speeches: ‘I Shall Return,’” American Experience, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/filmmore/reference/primary/macspeech02.html.
“We have the honor … any action whatsoever”: Norman, We Band of Angels, 75.
”Most of us”: Williams, To the Angels, 71.
“The battle was now”: Williams, To the Angels, 71–72.
“We’re leaving … it’s inevitable”: Williams, To the Angels, 76–77.
“by blocking out”: Williams, To the Angels, 88.
“no nurse voiced”: Williams, To the Angels, 95.
“Compared to Bataan”: Williams, To the Angels, 97.
“the Japanese were”: Williams, To the Angels, 114.
“Denny, Denny are you … cut off”: Williams, To the Angels, 117–118.
“You’re the first”: Williams, To the Angels, 220.
“The men of Corregidor”: Utinsky, Miss U: Angel of the Underground, 10.
Statistics for the Bataan Death March: Bill Sloan. Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 183; John C. Shively, Profiles in Survival: The Experiences of American POWs in the Philippines during World War II (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society Press, 2012), 396.
“the hike”: Lukacs, Escape From Davao: The Forgotten Story of the Most Daring Prison Break of the Pacific War, 73.
“I knew that”: Utinsky, Miss U, 20.
“Risks did not”: Utinsky, Miss U, 47.
“Dear Miss U”: Utinsky, Miss U, 64.
“If he could have”: Utinsky, Miss U, 64.
“Where is your gun?”: Binkowski, Code Name: High Pockets; True Story of Claire Phillips, an American Mata Hari and the WWII Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 134.
“There are four”: Binkowski, High Pockets, 137.
“You will come”: Utinsky, Miss U, 91.
“We to whom”: Panlilio, The Crucible: An Autobiography by Colonel Yay, Filipina American Guerrilla, 13.
“the Major”: Panlilio, Crucible, 17.
“War was our marriage”: Panlilio, Crucible, 26.
“After the march”: Binkowski, Code Name: High Pockets; True Story of Claire Phillips, an American Mata Hari and the WWII Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 42–43.
“The Marking Guerillas’ Creed”: Panlilio, Crucible, 3.
“You are the brain”: Panlilio, Crucible, 23.
“We’ll kill him … I love you”: Panlilio, Crucible, 37.
“scarred by their own brutalities”: Panlilio, Crucible, 50.
“I was a one-woman … fight to the end”: Panlilio, Crucible, 61–62.
“To leave them”: Panlilio, Crucible, 135.
“I don’t need to be”: Panlilio, Crucible, 155.
“Authorization means … relay the orders”: Panlilio, Crucible, 155–156.
“wrenched … to every possible”: Robert Lapham and Bernard Norling, Lapham’s Raiders. Lapham’s Raiders: Guerillas in the Philippines (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 194.
“Whereas, this organization”: Panlilio, Crucible, 305.
“While 18,000 such claims”: “Filipino World War II Veterans,” White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, sites .ed.gov/aapi/filipino-world-war-ii-veterans/.
“Our new show … High Pockets”: Claire and Goldsmith, Manila Espionage, 105.
“So why don’t … one by one”: Binkowski, Code Name: High Pockets; True Story of Claire Phillips, an American Mata Hari and the WWII Resistance Movement in the Philippines, 30.
“But I beg”: Claire and Goldsmith, Manila Espionage, 104.
“You should have … repairs on submarines”: Binkowski, High Pockets, 118.
“Heart sank … on their legs”: Claire and Goldsmith, Manila Espionage, 125.
Repairmen, milkmen, meter readers: Binkowski, High Pockets, 99.
“Jitto shita cri! … High Pockets”: Claire and Goldsmith, Manila Espionage, 172.
“I don’t know”: Binkowski, High Pockets, 161.
“They should be”: Henson, Comfort Woman: A Filipina’s Story of Prostitution and Slavery Under the Japanese Military, 34.
“I am one”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 34.
“We looked at … kill us instantly”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 35.
“I walked to”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 36.
“hell”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 36.
approximately 200,000: Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, 91–94.
Statistics on Filipina comfort women were taken from Henson, Comfort Woman, xii–xiii.
“At the end”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 37.
“I cried every night”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 41.
“He could do”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 44.
“Don’t be ashamed … dirty and repulsive”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 83.
“I felt like”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 85.
“There were others”: Henson, Comfort Woman, 86.
a total of 168: Obituary of Maria Rosa Henson, New York Times, August 17, 1997.
“learned to remember … will feel humiliated”: Obituary.
Excerpts from Henson, Comfort Woman, reprinted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield.
“Have you heard”: Kathigasu, No Dram of Mercy, 15.
“It’s the guerillas”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 60.
“I could not approve”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 60.
“Very well, Bil”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 70.
“What are these for”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 75.
“We cannot avoid”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 94.
“there is comfort in that”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 105.
“Speak!”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 180.
“Don’t tell, Mummy … Now I know that it is true”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 181.
“Long live Malaya”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 182.
“The Japanese capitulated”: Kathigasu, No Dram, 231.
All Elizabeth Choy quotations taken from her oral history interview, accession no. 597, used with permission from the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore, www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/search-result?search-type=advanced&accessionNo=000597.
Elizabeth Choy … was never interested in politics: Zhou Mei, Elizabeth Choy: More than a War Heroine, (Singapore: Landmark Books, 1995), 58.
The worst disaster … advance planning: Rees, Horror in the East, 72.
Description of Singapore on February 12 comes from Betty Jeffrey, White Coolies (London: Angus and Robertson, 1954), 4.
“Take cover!”: Manners, Bullwinkel: The True Story of Vivian Bullwinkel, a Young Army Nursing Sister Who Was the Sole Survivor of a World War Two Massacre by the Japanese, 66.
“These are the people”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 79.
“Bully … it’s true then”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 80.
“in a strange and”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 81.
“Chin up, girls”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 81.
“So this is what”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 81.
“I’m not dead”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 81.
“Where have you been”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 84.
“Please, just a”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 92.
“If it comes to”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 93.
“I want you to know … determined to be like you”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 99.
“All these fine”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 101.
Statistics on the Burma Railway come from The Thai-Burma Railway and Hellfire Pass, http://hellfire-pass.commemoration.gov.au/building-hellfire-pass/.
“They’re all dead”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 103.
“Sister … a little while longer”: Manners, Bullwinkel, 109.
Excerpts from Bullwinkel, © 2008 Norman Manners, used by permission.
Helen’s musings while grave digging are taken from Colijn, Song of Survival: Women Interned, 165–166.
An elderly Chinese man: Manners, Bullwinkel: The True Story of Vivian Bullwinkel, a Young Army Nursing Sister Who Was the Sole Survivor of a World War Two Massacre by the Japanese, 129–30.
“If this goes on for long”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 128.
“Father, in captivity”: Excerpts from The Captives Hymn used by permission of Betty Pryce-Jones.
“Everyone knows already … if you take the trouble”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 132.
“Enjoy our surprise”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 129.
“You must be going to that concert”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 130–31.
“This evening”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 135.
“The music soared”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 136.
“Huu, huu”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 136.
“looked oddly alone”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 138.
“they had never seen”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 190.
“never let a false”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 146.
“When I sang that”: Colijn, Song of Survival, 146.
Excerpts from Colijn, Song of Survival (White Cloud Press, 1995), used by permission of the publisher.
“had a bad feeling”: Jane Kendeigh Cheverton family papers.
“Don’t worry”: Cheverton family papers.
“There’s Iwo”: DeWitt, The First Navy Flight Nurse on a Pacific Battlefield: A Picture Story of a Flight to Iwo Jima, n.p.
“bursting shells … Fourth of July”: DeWitt, First Navy Flight Nurse, n.p.
“anxious”: Sutter, “Angel of Mercy Kept Wings: WWII Nurse Still Dotes on Patients,” San Diego Union, March 24, 1985.
“Were you frightened … breath came short”: Page Cooper, Navy Nurse, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), 174.
“You live on … through that”: Sutter, “Angel of Mercy.”
“Perhaps you’re wondering”: Sutter, “Angel of Mercy.”
“It was so unexpected”: Sutter, “Angel of Mercy.”
“I had never seen”: Rees, Horror in the East, 113.
“Now you just … hasn’t changed a bit”: Cheverton family papers.
“Are you a writer”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here? A Reporter’s Report on Herself, 64.
“Just be sure”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 63.
“You can’t be both”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 65.
“Never heard of one”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 65
“There was not … Corps after this”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 66.
“I was certain … on Iwo Jima”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 66–67.
“Incomplete casualty reports”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 67.
“Poetic, isn’t he”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 67.
“An unconfirmed rumor”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 68.
It has been”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 68.
“Now that I”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 68.
“A Japanese bomber”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 72.
“Shapeless dirty bloody”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 77.
“I—feel—lucky … guy feel lucky”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 78.
“After that, I”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 79.
“The situation was … Okay, okay—move!” Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 84–85.
“We had a”: Hastings, Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944–1945, 253.
“You don’t have … about you now.” Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 89–90.
“Far forward as”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here? 91.
“Tell me every … were not wasps”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 95.
“No experience in”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 123.
“Anybody would know”: Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 115.
“How can he … never been reached.” Chapelle, What’s a Woman Doing Here?, 116–117.
“The wounded looked”: Ostroff, Fire in the Wind: The Life of Dickey Chapelle, 124.
“passed like wildfire”: Meg Jones, “Legendary War Photographer Dickey Chapelle Back in Focus,” October 17, 2014, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/legendary-war-photographer-dickey-chapelle-back-in-focus-b99371912z1-279644882.html.
“she was one of us”: Ostroff, Fire in the Wind, 390.
“be careful … with the marines”: Ostroff, Fire in the Wind, 390.
Excerpts from What’s a Woman Doing Here? © 1962 Dickey Chapelle, used by permission of the Meyer family.
70,000 Okinawan civilians: Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan, 540.
over 300,000 Japanese civilians: Conversation with Robert Messer, professor emeritus, 20th-century history, University of Illinois at Chicago.
American code breakers … fight to the death: Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, 108; Spector, Eagle, 549.
Survivors of the fierce fighting: Various written testimony and the author’s personal conversations with WWII veterans.
now included teenagers and old men: Hastings, Retribution, 439; 438, McCullough, Truman.
thousands of additional Purple Hearts: Allen and Polmar, Codename Downfall, 292; D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore, “Half a Million Purple Hearts,” American Heritage, 51, no. 8 (2000): 81.
would total 250,000: Frank, Downfall, 338, 340; McCullough, Truman, 437.
1,600,000 Soviet troops: Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945, 986.
“prompt and utter destruction”: Potsdam Declaration, Atomic Archive, www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Potsdam.shtml.
“an iron curtain”: Winston S. Churchill, “Iron Curtain Speech,” Fordham University, legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/churchill-iron.asp.
43,000 Japanese soldiers: Frank, Downfall, 263.
21,000 and 40,000: John R. Bruning, Bombs Away! The World War II Bombing Campaigns over Europe, (Minneapolis: Zenith, 2011), 275.
Truman quote issued on the day of the Hiroshima attack, taken from Harry S. Truman Library and Museum website, paper no. 93, “Statement by the President Announcing the Use of the A-Bomb at Hiroshima,” http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=100.
world opinion: Frank, Downfall, 270.
“There is really no … odds against us!”: Toland, Rising Sun, 1000.
“only had to endure … like a monster”: Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, 384–386.
“I cannot bear … bear the unbearable”: Toland, The Rising Sun, 1005–1006.
“out of Our … human civilization”: Cook, Japan at War, 401.
natural disaster: Cook, Japan at War, 406.
Approximately 1,000 war criminals: John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 447; Kazuko Tsurumi, Social Change and the Individual (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 139; Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (New York: Random House, 2010), 335.
approximately six million: R. J. Rummel, “Statistics of Japanese Demo-cide Estimates, Calculations, and Sources,” www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM.