Belly of the Beast: A POW's Story of Faith, Courage and Survival Aboard a WWII Hell Ship

UPDATED VERSION IN RECOGNITION OF THE 80th ANNIVERSARY OF THE DECEMBER 7, 1941, ATTACKS!\nOn December 13, 1944, POW Estel Myers was herded aboard the Japanese prison ship, the Oryoku Maru, with more than 1,600 other American captives. More than 1,100 of them would be dead by journey’s end. Belly of the Beast is their collective story.
The son of a Kentucky sharecropper and an enlistee in the Navy’s medical corps, Myers arrived in Manilla shortly before the bombings of Pearl Harbor and the other six targets of the Imperial Japanese military. While he and his fellow corpsmen tended to the bloody tide of allied soldiers pouring into their once peaceful Naval hospital, the Imperial military overwhelmed the Pacific islands (having dismantled the nation’s civilian government), and captured 78,000 POWs by April 1942. Myers was one of the first taken.
After a brutal three-year encampment, Myers and his fellow POWs were forced onto an enemy hell ship bound for Japan. Suffocation, malnutrition, disease, dehydration, infestation, madness, and simple despair claimed the lives of nearly three quarters of those who boarded “the beast.”
Myers survived.
A compelling account of a rarely recorded event in military history, this is more than Estel Myers’ true story. It is a compilation of the many stories of the men with him every step of the way. It is also an important history lesson. A small group of rogue military officers overtook a nation. Understanding that can help ensure against its repetition.
Re-published twenty years after its initial release by Penguin Putnam, this new edition features an updated forward, preface and epilogue.
Called “[A] searing tribute,” by the late Senator John McCain, and “An inspiring look at one of World War II’s darkest hours,” by best selling author James Bradley, Belly of the Beast is an homage to the unfailing courage of men at war, an inspiring chronicle of self-sacrifice and endurance, and a tribute to the power of faith, the strength of the soul, and the triumph of the human spirit.\nThis edition's release is timed to the 80th anniversary year of the December 1941 bombings that drew the U.S. into war. It is a must-read for anyone intrigued by WWII history.