Accused War Crimina; An American Kempei Tai Survivor
Dallas, TX: Brown Books, 2019. Reprint edition. First Printing [Stated] [Originally published as Accused American War Criminal by Eakin Press, 1997]. Hardcover. xviii, 462 pages. Illustrations (some in color). Appendices. Associated bookmark and business card size publisher's advertising material laid in. Author inscription that reads: "Best Wishes to-my friend-Mark Esper. Fiske Hanley II. 2-29-20 Fox Hole Builder Iwo Jima!!". Mark Thomas Esper (born April 26, 1964) is an American politician and manufacturing executive who served as the 27th United States secretary of defense from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Republican Party, he had previously served as the 23rd U.S. secretary of the Army from November 2017 to July 2019. A West Point graduate, Esper joined the United States Army and saw combat during the Gulf War as an infantry officer with the 101st Airborne Division. Esper subsequently served in the 82nd Airborne Division and the Army National Guard. After leaving military service, he served as chief of staff at the Heritage Foundation; a congressional staffer; a deputy assistant secretary of defense; and a senior executive for the Aerospace Industries Association, the Global Intellectual Property Center, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In 2017, he joined the Trump administration as the 23rd secretary of the Army. In 2019, Esper was named acting defense secretary; he was confirmed shortly afterwards as the 27th defense secretary by the United States Senate with a vote of 90–8. On the morning of May 31, 1943, less than twenty four hours after his graduation ceremony at Texas Technical College, Fiske Hanley's boarded a train and changed his life forever. The train was to take him to Florida to begin his cadet training - he had been drafted by the US army to serve in the Second World War. This is Hanley's powerful account of his experience as a flight engineer on a B-29 bomber squad, and eventually as a POW in Japan in World War II. From his training and commissioning, to his deployment and failed mission, to his imprisonment, all the way through his rescue and recovery, Hanley bravely includes it all. With vibrancy and detailed honesty, this account amazes, humbles, and touches the reader as only stories of this level of heroism can. Hanley's B-29 was shot down over Japan, and he was captured and brutally treated in the Japanese prison camp made famous by the movie Unbroken. Hanley and his copilot were captured during his seventeenth mission. The two jumped out of their burning plane, only to be captured after parachuting into a rice paddy. Hanley, already wounded by gunshots and plane shrapnel, was tortured for five months while he was held in a dungeon in Tokyo. B-29 prisoners were classified as war criminals and treated more harshly than other prisoners, so Hanley was given a small daily food ration of rice and deprived of medical attention. Hanley said his weight dropped from 165 pounds to about 80 pounds, and he faced imminent death on 14 different occasions, including a firing squad. He credited his survival to his faith and his body’s ability to heal his infected wounds. On August 29, 1945, Lieutenant Hanley was liberated by a Navy-Marine task force led by Commander Harold E. Stassen, Deputy Chief of Staff to Admiral Halsey. Hanley returned to the United States. He remained an Air Force reservist and pursued a forty-three-year aeronautical engineering career with Convair/General Dynamics. Hanley checked out the first Air Force crews in the B-36 Peacemaker bomber and helped engineer the B-36, YC-131, B-58, F-111, and the F-16." Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Mark Esper, Prisoner of War, Kempei Tai, Survival, POW, B-29, Rikugun, Aerial Operations, Tinian Island, Kokura, Camp Omori, War Crimes, Geneva Convention, Horse-Stall Cell, Treatment of Prisoners, Liberation, Harold Stassen, Flight Engineer
ISBN: 9781612544274
[Book #88621]
Price: $1,500.00