Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 940.547252095995 EAN: 9780380700950 ISBN: 0380700956 Label: Avon Books Manufacturer: Avon Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 192 Publication Date: 1986-05 Publisher: Avon Books Studio: Avon Books
Editorial Reviews:
In this extraordinary story of World War II, the author's father, who enlisted in the army at age 16, describes the experiences that would affect the course of his life. Douglas Valentine tells of his capture by the Japanese in the fetid jungle of New Guinea, as well as his internment with Australian and British prisoners-of-war in the Hotel Tacloban — a place where no mercy was shown or expected, and from which few came home alive. A celebration of camaraderie and a testament to "the soldier's faith", this is a story of murder, mutiny and an incredible military cover-up.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: An Insult to Genuine ex-POWs Comment: Until recently, I thought that this book could be safely ignored as a pathetic, misleading blot on the broad canvas of POW history.
As other reviewers have noted, the Publisher (Angus & Robertson) has added a disclaimer that, "...it has not been possible to prove that the events did occur". Actually, A&R only added this inadequate note (in small type) after an eminent Australian history professor warned them that the book was packed with historical errors and was undoubtedly fiction.
However, right now in 2008, one can see many Internet sites where Douglas Valentine is still presenting his Tacloban fiction as if it was history. Even more worryingly, these websites are being used to vilify the record of a genuine Prisoner of War, presidential candidate John McCain. In response, I'd like Amazon readers to be clear on how much of "Hotel Tacloban" they should accept as historical truth. The answer is ZERO percent.
I'm an Australian. I've worked in the Philippines and personally hiked in the battlefields of New Guinea that Valentine purports to describe. I've researched extensively on POW history and I've also had an academic article published in the USA describing the detection of historical fraud. I'm very familiar with the archival material that can be used to check works such as "Hotel Tacloban".
Other reviewers are correct that this book "reads well". - Yes, exactly like polished fictional prose, not oral history! The landscapes described in Northern Papua are quite wrong. The grassy and swampy coastal plains are portrayed as "mountains" with "rainforest". The vicious siege of the Japanese at Buna in November 1942 is described as some sort of minor patrol action. Valentine obviously didn't bother to properly read the history books that he lists in his bibliography, which accurately describe this country and these battles, where the Australian Army and the US Army fought and died. Valentine's laxity is disrespectful in itself.
Valentine describes his father walking for "days" after captivity (but the Japanese pocket was only a few hundred yards deep!) and then being calmly loaded into a Japanese freighter. No Japanese freighters were anywhere near the Buna siege area in November 1942. The Allies dominated the sky. So every aspect of the purported capture and evacuation of Valentine's father is quite impossible.
It just doesn't ring true that Valentine or his father have ever set foot in Papua. (At one point Valentine lets slip that his father's record says he was in the 375th Harbor Craft Company. This unit actually departed the USA in 1944 and briefly transited through Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea before moving to - surprise, surprise - Tacloban in the Philippines, after the US Leyte landings. In 1944, Valentine Snr. would have been at the legal enlistment age of 18, rather than Valentine's implausible "16" in 1942. (The photo of Valentine's dad on the paperback cover of "Hotel Tacloban" shows him in front of a 1944-pattern US tent, but looking fit and still in possession of the front teeth that the Japanese had supposedly knocked out!)
More dire narrative problems emerge when the book re-locates to the purported Tacloban POW camp in the Philippines and its "interesting" Australian occupants. Unfortunately for Valentine, The Australian War Memorial clearly states that no Australian POWs were held in the Philippines! The names of Valentine's key characters *cannot* be found in Australia's Veterans Affairs database. The US NARA database also shows no released US POW named "Douglas VALENTINE", and no US military POWs liberated anywhere on the island of Leyte. There is no evidence that Valentine Snr. ever experienced captivity in the hands of the Japanese at all.
The depictions of the Australians in the POW camp are laughably divorced from reality. Valentine certainly has never lived with any Australians. Instead we get ridiculous sheep-shagging caricatures! The dialogue sounds wrong. The nicknames sound wrong. The descriptions of life in Australia sound dead wrong.
There is no "Major R. L. Cumyns" (Valentine's murder victim) buried in any Commonwealth war grave anywhere in the world, let alone the Philippines. If Valentine was going to make up a key character name like this, then he shouldn't have chosen one that's so easy to disprove! (And Cumyns sounds like a caricature straight out of the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai".)
Valentine's description of the POW camp itself is also hokey - the local geography sounds wrong; he gets the wet season five months out in timing; and the buildings are too small, with the wrong construction for a former Philippine Army camp. Also, in contrast to every other POW memoir that I've ever read, "Hotel Tacloban" almost ignores the captors, the Japanese. There is no mention of Japanese-language commands or essential camp procedures such as bowing, which were life-and-death matters for POWs. It's pathetic that Valentine couldn't make a better job of creating a fictional POW camp, when his bibliography lists six excellent POW memoirs. He simply can't have read them..
And don't get me started on "The Enforcer" and his devilish five-minute torture sessions! (On the positive side, the wild inaccuracies of this book at least show that Valentine is not a plagiarist!)
Finally, some choice quotes from Douglas Valentine himself:
"... when I write, it is too hard to write the truth..." Frontispiece quotation page xv.
" ...Fooling an audience into believing the most preposterous, the most blatant of fictions, through an elaborate fabrication of plausible half-truths and downright deceptions, was a Digger's highest level of achievement..." p39.
"... at the risk of being called anti-Asiatic or racist by enlightened people, I must confess that for many years I secretly wished that more bombs had been dropped on Japan..." p69.
Customer Rating: Summary: Absolute FICTION Comment: As an historian who had devoted some 15,000 hours researching and documention the Pacific POWs, I can say, unequivacably, the the story is PURE fiction.
Valentine conflates numerous actual events to this make believe story about a POW. No record exists, any where, that his father was on such a patrol, that such a POW camp existed or that any of the named POWs existed.
It is a good "yarn" but don't ever call it history. It demeans tha valor and honor of thousand of American and allied POWS who suffered and died for your freedom. To even infer it is true is disgraceful Customer Rating: Summary: Better than I thought it would be Comment: Looking at other Amazon reviews this book has reviews from very good to very bad. I was expecting to be somewhere in the middle but it turned out to be quite a bit better than I expected. I would say it is worth reading if you come across it. Customer Rating: Summary: this book is not out of print Comment: Amazon.com is wrong when it says my book is out of print and that a picture of the dust jacket is not available. The Hotel Tacloban is published by iUniverse.com as an Author's Guild Backinprint book. You can get it by going to my website and clicking on the dust jacket for the Hotel Tacloban, which will take you directly to iUniverse.com, where you can order the book. Customer Rating: Summary: Truly a good story...but true? Comment: The Hotel Tacloban is a fascinating read. The book flows well, reads easily, and keeps pulling you along to the next chapter - a marvelous peice of literary craftsmanship. The only downside is the nagging thought that it might just be a made-up story.
That would be easy to accept if the author said outright that it was fiction. It would also be easy to accept if we had independent confirmation of the events. What is hard to accept is that the story has the ring of authnticity - we do know that many things just like this happened - and the author claims that it is true, but we have no way of proving or disproving those assertions.
A war veteran myself, I can testify that things like the events related in this book are unfortunatly normal occurences in many circles throughout the world, even today. Further, the types of actions purported to have been carried out by the US Army at the end of the book have in fact been done before, another well-documented fact. More importantly, perhaps, is this - the words of the author ring with the tone of truth. A wise VA counselor once remarked to me, when we were discussing whether or not specific events had occured to a mutual aquaintance, that even if we could never establish the exact sequence or total sum of events, it was obvious that SOMETHING had happened to him. I get the same feeling from this book. Whether it is the story given here or something else entirely, there seems to be some dark chapter in the life of the man protrayed. Thus, while I will never quote from this book as history, I believe that it does bequeth an adequate portrayal of what life was like for some people during the war. I look at it more as historical novel than historical fact, which allows me great luxury in finding a place for it in my library.
Read it for what it is, though we can never know for sure. Is it eyewitness to history, a fascinatingly and cunningly crafted fictional masterpiece, or the dark broodings of a man with deep psychological problems of some sort? It is a remarkable example of whichever one of those it is, and it is also a reminder (no matter what the truth is) of the dark side of the largest war ever fought on this planet.
