Of rice and men: the story of Americans under the rising sun. . . [Illustrations by Lt. Col. Eugene C. Jacobs and G.G. Estill, Photographs by Major John E. Lester, The Cabanatuan Combine and the U.S. Army Signal Corps]. by [WORLD WAR II -- PHILIPPINES]. CHUNN, Major Calvin Ellsworth (Ed.) - 1947].

[Los Angeles, CA & Tulsa, OK: Veterans’ Publishing Co., 1947]. 8vo. [8], ii, 230 pp. Illust. title, photo frontisp., numerous photo plates, text illustrations. Salmon-coloured publisher’s cloth, Prison Camp No. 1 Cabanatuan, P.I. maps on endpapers (minor shelfwear, light rubbing head & foot of spine), w/ d.j. cover art by Estill (minor chipping head & foot of spine, shelfwear, rubbing), still VG/VG- copy, w/ Typed Letter laid-in detailing errors in the book by a former American POW. First edition, 3rd printing, of this gripping anthology of memoirs from former American POW’s following the fall of Corregidor and the Bataan death march. Of particular interest is the unsigned Typed Letter laid in from a former American POW detailing a number of errors in the book he was sending to his father as a Christmas Present. He noted on Page 8 that the photo of the American flag being taken down was propaganda, and that it was “actually lowered by Colonel Bunker and Lt. Col. Edison prior to the arrival of the Japs,” along with other similar observations. Perhaps the most disturbing detail in the letter refers to page 127 from a diary kept by Captain Guyton who was on Honshu at Camp O-Mena-Machi with the letter writer who notes “I have no love for this particular officer. He was of the same frame of mind that most officers were. Hurrah for me, I’ll look after myself. . . .” He notes how these American officers often traded for rations through intermediaries, and then punished the American POW’s who did so, resulting in the fact that “while the rest of the enlisted men presented a very thin and undernourished appearance, Guyton and his fellow officers managed to keep . . . well groomed and well fed.”