The Butchers, The Baker: The World War II Memoir of a United States Army Air Corps Soldier Captured by the Japanese in the Philippines

By Victor L. Mapes with Scott A. Mills. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000.

Victor L. Mapes was serving as a baker in the 14th Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, US Army Air Corps at Clark Field in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked on 8 December 1941 and destroyed all sixteen B-17s on the ground refuelling. Mapes and his unit, rather than withdrawing to the Bataan Peninsula and defending against the Japanese onslaught, boarded a steamer on 29 December 1941 and headed south to Mindanao.
On Mindanao, the 14th Squadron supported dwindling American air operations. With supplies basically exhausted and little hope of reinforcement, the survivors of the 14th Squadron were forced on 27 May 1942 to surrender to the overwhelming Japanese, as had their comrades on Bataan the previous month.
Mapes remained in prisoner of war (PoW) camps on Mindanao, generally serving as a cook or a labourer, until 4 September 1944. At that time he and 750 fellow PoWs were packed into the hold of a Japanese freighter, Shinyo Maru, ostensibly bound for the Home Islands. Unaware of its human cargo, the US submarine Paddle had tragically torpedoed and sank the Shinyo Maru three days later. Mapes shattered his leg jumping off the sinking ship and survived Japanese attempts to machinegun the floating survivors. He was rescued by friendly Filipinos and at the end of September was one of 80 (of 83 total) Shinyo Maru survivors picked up by the U.S. submarine Narwhal and delivered to safety. In mid-December 1944, Mapes arrived at Walter Reed Hospital, where his war wounds were treated for three years. Mapes retired from the Air Force in 1959.
This book is an extremely detailed and fascinating account of Mapes’ actions and thoughts, trials and tribulations, of service in the Philippines during World War II. It is punctuated by interesting and frequently amusing vignettes of his life and of his comrades’ as they survived the gruelling ordeal of being a Japanese PoW. Mapes began writing his personal reminiscences while recuperating at Walter Reed; in the 1990s, Scott A. Mills (a naval officer in the Pacific Theatre during the Second World War) helped Mapes complete the memoir, add other information, and place it within its proper historical context. While this book contains numerous quoted conversations, they are reconstructed from Mapes’ memory.
The Butchers, The Baker — the former a reference to Baker Mapes’ occasionally barbaric Japanese captors — is a dramatic story of American courage and determination under adversity and its eventual triumph over evil. The insightful narrative keeps moving briskly, partly through direct and clear prose and partly by the force of events. Mapes’ memoir is highly recommended, especially to those interested in the human element of leadership and soldiering.