No Ordinary Joes

August 1, 2010

Four survivors of a World War II Japanese prison camp are the subjects of this gripping story.

Colton (Counting Coup: A Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn, 2000) picks up his subjects at a young age. While they came from different parts of the country and different backgrounds, they had in common impoverished childhoods and were hit hard as the Depression took its toll on their families. Chuck Vervalin, from upstate New York, dreamed of becoming a harness race driver; Bob Palmer, from Oregon, joined the Navy when his girlfriend dropped him after she entered college; Texan Tim McCoy figured the Navy would be easier than the four jobs he was working to support his mother; Canadian-born Gordy Cox, growing up in Washington State, dropped out of school because the work was too hard. All ended up on the U.S.S. Grenadier, a submarine patrolling off Malaya early in the war. Bombed by a Japanese plane, its captain and crew were taken prisoner in April 1943. From then until the end of the war, more than two years later, they were imprisoned, beaten, tortured, starved and forced to work in Japanese factories. Colton tells their stories in unflinching detail, looking at their different survival stragegies. McCoy played the tough guy, even taking on one of the guards in a wrestling match; Cox tried to fade into invisibility. Liberated after the Japanese surrender, they returned to their lives in the United States, looking for a new, normal life. The author follows them for a short time, then jumps to the present day, wrapping up their stories in a final epilogue chapter for each man. All showed signs of what in more recent veterans would have been diagnosed as PTSD, though they would have rejected that term. All had marital troubles, and all were at one point heavily dependent on alcohol. But each of them made it into their 80s with full mental acuity, and Colton has given them a fine last chance to tell their stories.

A compelling glimpse into forgotten World War II history.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2010

Four friends joined the Navy shortly before war broke out. In 1943, their submarine was sunk, and the crew was captured and sent to Japanese labor camps. After more than two years of starvation and torture the four were released yet had to find their way in an America much changed and in the face of a population unwilling to reflect on their problems. Skipping back and forth from sailor to sailor and examining their family struggles both before and after their service, this book will be of most interest to veterans' communities and World War II buffs.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2010
This meticulously researched and thoroughly well-written book adds much to the literature of the WWII generation. The four menGordon Cox, Tim McCoy, Bob Palmer, and Chuck Vervalinall survived growing up in the Depression. Joining the navy, they all survived the loss of the submarine Grenadier and two and a half years as POWs in Japanese hands. (Their experiences in the camps are told with great balance, if sometimes horrific detail.) Returning home, they lived out somewhat checkered lives, with as many failures as successesdivorces, financial reversals, and alienated or dead children among the latter. The author is frank about their personal quirks, tooall had drinking problems at one time or anotherand pays tribute to the women whose support frequently stood between them and disaster. This is the greatest generation, but with warts, wives, wobbling, and all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)