Prisoner of War: A Novel of World War II

This book is about a boy whose mom died in a car crash during World War II and his dad got angry and blamed him. His name was Henry Forrest and he was fifteen years old. After a while he got so fed up with his dad mistreating him that he ran away. He found a recruit station for the Marines and decided to lie about his age and join. That was a big mistake. After he joined, he got sent off to an island in the Philippines where he learned how to shoot a gun. Shortly after his training, the Japanese attacked the island. They barely survived the assault. Henry’s sergeant, Gunny they called him, said that it had just been a scout mission to see their forces, and he said they would come back with more troops. Sure enough, the Japanese attacked a second time with more effort. The American forces were almost killed. So the general of the island surrendered to the Japanese. Now the Japanese did not take surrender lightly. They considered it being less than human. The enemy would rather die than surrender to the American forces. The Japanese took them to a prison farther north up the island. After being treated inhumanely for months, they were finally taken to the mainland of Japan where they were rescued by the Americans. I admired the characters in this story because the soldiers were extremely brave. This book was written very well. Definitely read this book because it was so intense I could barely put it down.