Book Reviews
Books break the silence of war's horror and humor

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Book Critic

U.S. soldiers storm toward the beach-sweeping fire of Nazi defenders in the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Three new books provide different looks at the war. Advertiser library photo

The three works reviewed here illustrate the contrasts between these men and succeeding generations.

Like their sons and grandsons who fought in Korea and Vietnam, World War II vets didn't talk about the fighting when they came home, leaving many of us to assume that the second world war was somehow neither as bloody nor as troubling to its fighting men as the later conflicts.

Most shut a mental door on the blood and the cold (or heat) and the loss and instead chose to celebrate the comic moments and the camaraderie in their "war stories," increasing the misunderstanding and the gulf between the generations. They gathered in VFW clubs, wore caps, saluted the flag and preached patriotism. But their children, having literally watched the war in Vietnam on TV every night, weren't buying it.

Today, finally, after "Saving Private Ryan," and with "Band of Brothers" spooling out on HBO, both generations appear to be maturing in their understanding of each other. By telling their real "war stories," some of our elders have at least tacitly acknowledged our need to know, and the toll that it took on them to keep us innocent of their suffering. And some boomers are awakening, shamefully late, to the price that was paid to assure our survival as an independent nation.

It's clear in reading the memoirs of the World War II veterans that the war was often the defining experience in their lives, even though many of the books maintain a determinedly cheery tone and almost skip over the battlegrounds.

It is still difficult to comprehend a generation so much less cynical, so much more optimistic than us boomers, Xs and Ys. But, with a better understanding of their history comes a greater willingness to accept.

"The Souvenir" by Louise Steinman. Algonquin Press, hardcover, $23.95: The subtitle is "A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War." Steinman's need to better understand the tight-lipped, distant man who was her father, and the extraordinary lengths to which she goes to make that happen, will resonate with many children of World War II veterans.

In clean, uncluttered prose that is poignant in its restraint and occasionally its naivete, Steinman, a writer who is also cultural programs director for the Los Angeles Public Library, tells her story: After her parents' death, she discovers a metal ammo box full of her father's war-time letters, 474 of them, each numbered by her mother. In one envelope, she finds a delicate silk flag with Japanese writing scribbled on it, the "souvenir" of the book's title.

This fragile artifact sends her on a decade-long quest: to retrace her father's wartime steps with the 25th Tropic Lighting Division, First Battalion, Twenty-seventh Infantry Regiment, the "Wolfhounds," in New Zealand, New Caledonia and the Philippines, and to find the family of the Japanese soldier from whom he had gotten the flag.

Steinman succeeds in visiting the three surviving sisters of Japanese infantryman Yoshio Shimizu, whose good luck banner her father had sent home. It is a meeting made all the more odd and poignant because no one knows how the flag came into the American soldier's possession. Did Norman Steinman kill Yoshio Shimizu? Or did he merely pick up the banner on a Philippines battlefield?

Steinman here makes not only a personal journey but ventures far into the conflicts and complexities that war engenders, and learns from her encounters lessons that inform us all, and offer both hope and resolution. A well-written, compelling and important book. Available on Amazon.com if it can't be found in local bookstores.

"The Saga of Sailor Jack" Jack M. Feliz, Writers Club Press, paper, $22.95: Jack M. Feliz is a tough-talkin' character who's been to hell and back and flirted with most of the girls along the way (though he's very happily married now to Marie, his wife of 45 years). Feliz, who is 90 and lives in Honolulu, grew up in California, joined the Navy and was a member of the famous lost crew of the USS Houston, sunk in the Java Sea. After treading water

for 10à hours, Feliz made it ashore only to be taken prisoner, enduring forced labor for 3à years, in Java, Singapore and finally Japan. These experiences make up just a few chapters in the book — by far the most dramatic ones. But Feliz does his best here to shrug off the horror and focus on the humor: the contraband radio a prisoner rigged up, the truck they dismantled when their guards weren't looking, the Japanese workers who were kind to him (and the women who spied on him to see how American men were built).

This book borders on crude at times and Felix uses the "J" word without self-consciousness. Like many inexperienced writers, he doesn't differentiate very well between what's of interest and what could be condensed or left out; the self-published book began as unedited oral history and reads that way. In this regard, the memoir points up what is both endearing and troubling about this generation — the stubbornness and grit that got them through the war, but also sometimes made them unwilling to change. Available through iUniverse.com, (877) 288-4737, Ext. 6.

"Now That's Livin' " by Capt. Alex W. Kane, Wandering Stock, paper, $25, Alex Kane has a zest for life that speaks throughout this memoir, composed of a series of sometimes disjointed essays that take him from a tiny flat in Scotland, to a hardscrabble upbringing on a New Zealand farm, through World War II when he trained pilots in England, and on through a pair of careers — as an airline pilot and as an import-expert executive here in Honolulu.

Though much of the book will be of interest primarily to Kane's family and large circle of friends, those with a love of aviation will share his fascination with flight, from his first outing in a little yellow Tiger Month biplane to his days as a commercial jet pilot. And there are rather beautiful romances.

The book concludes with a delightful anecdote about his most recent piloting experience, at age 80, in a DC3 in Hawaiian skies. The book's sales are a benefit for his old flying school and for the Rotary, of which Kane is a longtime member. To order: Capt. Alex Kane Foundation, Private Mail Box 148, 4224 Wai'alae, HI 96816-5307.