Billings artist Ben Steele at center of new book, Tears in the Darkness

Published: November 2, 2009

For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino and Japanese soldiers fought what was America’s first major land battle of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history.

The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in their powerful new book.

From then until the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, the prisoners of war suffered an ordeal of unparalleled cruelty and savagery: 41 months of captivity, starvation rations, dehydration, hard labor, deadly disease, and torture.

The Normans bring to the story remarkable feats of reportage and literary empathy. Their protagonist, Ben Steele, is a figure out of Hemingway: a young cowboy-turned-sketch-artist from Montana who joined the army to see the world. Juxtaposed against Steele’s story and the sobering tale of the Death March and its aftermath is the story of a number of Japanese soldiers.

Tears In The Darkness has scores of characters, but Steele, a Montana cowboy before the war and professor of art after, is the central figure. Very much like a protagonist in a novel, his individual story holds all the other stories together.

He is the only American veteran, out of the 200 interviewed by the authors, who experienced almost every aspect of the battle – the surrender, the death march and its aftermath. “He emerged from the experience with his sense of humor, and perspective, intact – a man of remarkable insight and grace, and the ‘star’ of our video book,” say the writers.

“He was 81 years old when we first met him in 1999,” write the Normans. “The more we talked, the more we could see that he had thought deeply about what had happened to him. His reflections had led him to a profound understanding of what war does to those swept up in it.

“Most of all, we were taken with his philosophy of life. He is a man determined to make every day, every moment, count.”

Many books have examined World War II in the Philippines," writes the Christian Science Monitor. … But none of them pack the punch of, or are as beautifully written as this compelling volume. This is can't-put-it-down history."

For more information, visit tearsinthedarkness.com.