100 books like When We Had Wings

I loved this enchanting WWII story about two heroic women: Tess, an orphan turned US Army nurse, and Flor, a Filipina university student living in glamorous Manila where Tess is stationed. These resilient women face unimaginable challenges with hope and humility. Hooper’s storytelling amazed me from the moment I started reading.

Hooper’s Angels of the Pacific spoke to my heart like the music of great composers, revealing an unforgettable and little-known chapter of WWII history, inspired by the true story of 78 American nurses who were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese in Bataan. Hooper masterfully brings to life this awe-inspiring tale of sisterhood, bravery, sacrifice, and love.

I highly recommend this book!

The land war in the South Pacific was brutal.

Japanese conduct was unfathomable to the GIs and Marines who confronted them in battle: The enemy would almost never surrender, engaged in suicidal charges, and often feigned death when wounded in an attempt to kill at least one American before expiring. As the Japanese asked no quarter, they also rarely offered it, and those taken prisoner by the Emperor’s soldiers were often murdered and their bodies mutilated. 

Then there was the land itself: jungles and marshes of debilitating heat and humidity from which sprang deadly diseases such as malaria, typhus, and cholera which caused multiples of the numbers of casualties suffered in battle. 

Touched With Fire chronicles this hellish battlefield as the Japanese advance was slowed, halted, and then reversed over the course of 1942-45.

Bennett has produced an outstanding tour-de-force integrating the military history of the Central and Southwest Pacific with the new field of war and environment studies. Bennett goes beyond the immediate impact of combat to consider the military use of natural resources, the effect of bases on islands that never saw fighting, the movement of people, plants and diseases, and the politics of how Islander people and places were used in the war. From how foreign imaginations about the tropical environment affected military planning, to the conflict’s real long-term effects on lands and seas, this book adds essential depth to our view of the war years in this region.

The author recreated as a novel the adventures of a handful of Navy officers whose tiny Patrol Torpedo Boats more than held their own against the full might of the Japanese Navy during the fall of the Philippines. Told in the first person by three of the principal characters, we meet Douglas MacArthur, seasick and soaking wet, as he flees Manila in an overloaded PT Boat, and eventually reaches a smaller island from which he is flown to safety in Australia. And we see and are in awe, of these young naval officers. In 1951, when I was ten and perched on my father's shoulders, I saw MacArthur from just a few feet away as he passed during a Chicago parade. I became fascinated with the man and his legend, and here he is presented as a very human creature.

This is evidence of the enduring appeal of the Santo Tomas story. More than half a century after the events that it describes, Cogan makes good use of interviews and printed sources. The Japanese Internment of American Civilians in the Philippines is especially valuable for its scholarly tone and comprehensive nature. It described the lives of internees in several camps.

The Philippine resistance of WWII was, in my opinion, the most admirable resistance organization of the war, whether European or Pacific. In fact, resistance among the Philippine people was so widespread, that the Japanese occupiers were almost correct in assuming any civilian they encountered was a resister on some level. Carlos Romulo, a Philippine aide de camp to General MacArthur and a hero to his countrymen, gives his personal account of the war in this excellent memoir.

The Hero of Bataan is an excellent book that tells the story not of General Douglas MacArthur, but General Jonathan Wainwright, the real hero of Bataan and Corregidor. It covers the battle of the Philippines at the outset of the U.S. involvement in World War II, the fall of the Philippines, and Wainwright’s experiences as a Japanese-held POW for the rest of the war. It describes that even as the senior U.S. POW in Japanese hands, Wainwright was treated as poorly as any other POW, as were other Allied general officers listed in the book. I find this an excellent, interesting, must-read to understand what really occurred in the Philippines during the early stages of the war and to those who survived the battles.

Written by MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo after World War II, these are detailed, beautiful, in-depth volumes of maneuvers, battles, advances, and retreats. While a useful reference, they may also be the most outrageous piece of sycophancy ever produced at taxpayer expense.

Reports present the conflict as MacArthur wanted you to learn it: a great cataclysm where he worked against time to prepare the Philippines for war, and then fought heroically in the islands for as long as possible before making a daring escape to Australia.

Upon arrival there he famously promised, “I will return”, and launched a crusade in which he led swelling armies across thousands of miles back to redemption in a liberated Manila before becoming the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in a prostrate Japan.

Florence Finch’s story is astonishing—in part for what this woman did to help save American prisoners of war in the Philippines during World War II. Finch received the Medal of Freedom, our highest civilian award, and has had a Coast Guard headquarters building named for her. Still, had it not been for Mrazek who discovered her story and wrote this book, relying in part on her actual correspondence, her family’s memories, and the historical accounts of the Massacre of Manila, we would not know Finch.

This Is the World War II memoir of Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger, one of our nation’s most aggressive and effective field commanders.

MacArthur ordered him forward again and again to salvage battles that were tilting in favor of the Japanese. Eichelberger often lived at the front with his men in New Guinea and the Philippines and shared their hardships as he led them to victory at nearly forgotten battlefields such as Buna, Los Negros, Hollandia, Biak, and Batangas.  

Despite his success and promotion to command of the Eighth Army, few have heard of Eichelberger. The primary reason was his superior’s need to hog the limelight…or else. Check out this highly readable first-hand report of the advance to Tokyo that Eichelberger called, “The Hard Way Back.”