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The Emperor's Angry Guest

by Ralph M. Knox

272 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0510; ISBN 1-55369-697-2; US$23.50, C$27.50, EUR19.50, £13.50

Caught between General MacArthur and the Emperor of Japan, Ralph M. Knox began the fight of his life on December 8, 1941 as a prisoner of war captured by the Japanese when the Philippines fell.

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about the book      praise for The Emperor's Angry Guest      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book Knox has been angry for over 50 years about the American surrender of the Philippines in 1942. As Knox explains, "We became prisoners of the Rising Sun because of the bickering, blundering, and deceit on the part of American leaders. They left us holding the bag, to be sacrificed." Knox corrects historians such as William Manchester about General Douglas MacArthur's escape from the Philippines. He was an eyewitness to the actual event. The book details the harsh treatment Knox and other Americans received as POWs of the Japanese, and outlines how difficult it was to cope after his return to the U.S. at the end of the war. Knox concludes by detailing the unfairness of the United States government and other organizations for not assisting former POWs to receive compensation for their slave labor.

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Praise for The Emperor's Angry Guest

The Emperor's Angry Guest...is a chilling reminder that war is man's most uncivilizing undertaking.

-Richard G. Lugar, United States Senator

Knox pulls no punches in naming names and in placing blame, as he saw it, for America's greatest military debacle.

-Edgar D. Whitcomb, author of "Escape from Corrigidor"; Governor of Indiana, 1969-1973

The Emperor's Angry Guest is a moving, vivid account of one man's fight for survival.... (Knox) tells his story with honesty and directness.

-Lee H. Hamilton, former member of congress; drirector of The Center on Congress

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About the Author Ralph M. Knox was a crew chief for a B-17 bomber at Clark Field in the Philippines. At 19, Knox was one of the youngest prisoners of war captured by the Japanese when the Philippines fell. He was transported on a ship in deplorable conditions and spent 40 months as a slave laborer in Japan. He was able to use his anger to succeed after the war: "I just wanted to push and drive myself to be a better man than those I served under in the Philippines."

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Sample Excerpt

My Story

I am an ex-POW. I was imprisoned by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II and, although it happened more than 55 years ago, I'm still angry about it. The commender of the Kawasaki prison camp near Tokyo welcomed my group of starving, mistreated men with words I will never forget: "You are not prisoners of war. You are guests of the emperor." He was a lying son of a bitch! I was a prisoner in every sense of the word, and so were thousands of other American soldiers stationed in the Philippine Islands in the 1940s.

Abandonned in a foreign land by our government, we had been surrendered to the enemy by our military leaders in the Philippines. We were sacrifieced to the Japanese because we were considered less important than Americans fighting in other parts of the world. For years, we suffered at the hands of the Japanese. The guards beat us viciously, fed us only a small amount of rice each day, worked us like dogs in Japan's steel mills, mines and railway construction projects. Prisoners who became ill or were severely injured, as I was, received barbaric medical treatment.

I'm angry about that, and I'm angry at those American leaders who allowed it to happen. It was wrong to desert us. I wrote this book at the encouragement, even insistence, of my sister Alice. She assumed the process of writing my story would purge the anger from my soul, but it hasn't. The anger is still sharp within my gut. It boils and struggles to flare up nearly every day, as it has since May 10, 1942, the day I was captured.

In this books, I will tell what happened to me before and after I enlisted in the Army in 1940 at the age of 18. And for those who have forgotten, or perhaps have never know the realities of war, I will recount the painful and harrowing experiences that befell the thousands of other young men who fought for our country in the Philippines nearly six decades ago.

In this book, too, I will attempt to dispel heroes, to remind Americans with short memories about our morally weak, militarily inept, and disgustingly callous leaders in the Pacific War. Many of these leaders are remembered today as heroes, but time has been too kind to them. I contend they were ill-prepared, incompetent bastards whose many goals were self-argandizement and living the good life. Lies, gross miscalculations of the enemy's power, egregarious tactical errors and bickering among themselves caused pain and suffering to millions of Americans in the 1940s.

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Catalogue Information

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