The inadequacy of the records dealing with operations in the Philippines, and the absence of message files, map overlays, and other after action reports would have made it impossible to write a detailed account of the campaign had it not been for a wide variety of unofficial records.
Fortunately, many officers who commanded subordinate units felt the compulsion to leave a record of their experiences. During their years in prison these men had discussed and compared their operations endlessly with their fellow prisoners and jotted down in cheap Japanese notebooks or on scraps of paper all they could remember and had learned. So scarce was writing material that the men covered every inch of space in the notebooks and wrote in characters so small as to be scarcely legible.
Surrendered into the custody of the Japanese, it was all they could do just to stay alive. Yet among them, there were those who would risk their lives, one more time, to record the experiences of their comrades in arms. These histories are accompanied by images from the scrapbook of Andrew Lagonick, to help evoke the period prior to the descent into Hell