On April 4, 1943, ten American prisoners of war and two Filipino convicts executed a daring escape from one of Japan's most notorious prison camps. The prisoners were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and the Fall of Corregidor, and the prison from which they escaped was surrounded by an impenetrable swamp and reputedly escape-proof. Theirs was the only successful group escape from a Japanese POW camp during the Pacific war. Escape from Davao is the story of one of the most remarkable incidents in the Second World War and of what happened when the Americans returned home to tell the world what they had witnessed. Davao Penal Colony, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, was a prison plantation where thousands of American POWs toiled alongside Filipino criminals and suffered from tropical diseases and malnutrition, as well as the cruelty of their captors. The American servicemen were rotting in a hellhole from which escape was considered impossible, but ten of them, realizing that inaction meant certain death, planned to escape. Their bold plan succeeded with the help of Filipino allies, both patriots and the guerrillas who fought the Japanese sent to recapture them. Their trek to freedom repeatedly put the Americans in jeopardy, yet they eventually succeeded in returning home to the United States to fulfill their self-appointed mission: to tell Americans about Japanese atrocities and to rally the country to the plight of their comrades still in captivity. But the government and the military had a different timetable for the liberation of the Philippines and ordered the men to remain silent. Their testimony, when it finally emerged, galvanized the nation behind the Pacific war effort and made the men celebrities.   Over the decades this remarkable story, called the "greatest story of the war in the Pacific" by the War Department in 1944, has faded away. Because of wartime censorship, the full story has never been told until now. John D. Lukacs spent years researching this heroic event, interviewing survivors, reading their letters, searching archival documents, and traveling to the decaying prison camp and its surroundings. His dramatic, gripping account of the escape brings this remarkable tale back to life, where a new generation can admire the resourcefulness and patriotism of the men who fought the Pacific war. Lukacs’ contribution to WWII POW literature reconstructs an escape by Americans from the Japanese-occupied Philippines. From biographical introductions of the dozen Americans involved, dramas of their captures at Bataan and Corregidor, and ordeals of imprisonment and maltreatment, Lukacs launches into their breakout scheme and the nail-biting danger of putting it in motion. Ably declaiming the ensuing intrepid events, Lukacs readily evokes the high tension and strenuous travails of the fugitives’ evasion of enemy patrols en route to evacuations by American submarines. But, as Lukacs recounts, their stories of Japanese atrocities (which included revelation of the Bataan Death March), in which their heroic saga was wrapped, were too hot for officialdom to handle. Fearful of endangering remaining POWs, but also tempted by the opportunity to put to use the inevitable intensification of popular anger against the Japanese, FDR expressly delayed release of the news until it coincided with a war-bond sales drive. Built from every available research source, Lukacs’ diligent, impassioned history will aid and abet the ever-growing interest in the WWII fighting experience. --Gilbert Taylor "Like the event it covers, Escape from Davao is unique. You are holding in your hands the story of the only successful American group escape from a Japanese camp." —James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers, Flyboys, and The Imperial Cruise “Escape From Davao is a remarkable story that explores the heights of human courage and compassion even as it reveals the depths of brutality that one set of human beings is capable of inflicting on another. Exhaustively researched and superbly written, the book incorporates many elements of a well-crafted suspense novel. Indeed, readers may wish at times that it were fiction, rather than cruel, distressing fact.” —Bill Sloan, author of Brotherhood of Heroes, The Ultimate Battle and The Darkest Summer “John Lukacs has justifiably brought attention to one of the Pacific War’s most overlooked stories in his riveting book about the escape from Davao. Lukacs so breathes life into the tale that readers feel the drama and suspense as if they were present.” —John Wukovits, author of Admiral “Bull” Halsey: The Life and Wars of the Navy’s Most Controversial Commander “Escape from Davao is an extraordinary book for at least two reasons. One is the quality of the author’s storytelling; the other is the richness of his research. His reconstruction of this almost entirely unknown episode of World War II is formed into a superb and inspiring narrative. And more than c