A World War II Story of Survival, Love, and Redemption
Episode Stats
Summary
Amid the epic clashes of armies and navies that make war such a fascinating subject, there are the smaller, human interest stories that prove just as compelling. One such story is that of World War II soldier joe johnson jr, which is told by Marcus Brotherton in a newly published book called A Bright and Blinding Sun about a story of survival, love, and redemption.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
00:00:10.900
amidst the epic clashes of armies and navies that make war such a fascinating subject by the smaller
00:00:15.980
human interest stories that prove just as compelling one such story is that of world
00:00:19.820
war ii soldier joe johnson jr which is told by marcus brotherton in a newly published book called
00:00:24.860
a bright and blinding sun a world war ii story of survival love and redemption today on the show
00:00:30.540
marcus shares how joe sought to escape the pressures of the broken family and the great depression by
00:00:34.740
joining the u.s army at age 14 we discuss how joe ended up in the philippines fell in love with a
00:00:39.580
teenage prostitute named perpetua there and helped smuggle her out of her brothel we then get into
00:00:43.660
how joe was captured by the japanese and the harrowing experience he had to endure as a prisoner
00:00:47.360
of war including being locked up in a box smaller than a coffin we end our conversation with a
00:00:52.000
discussion of joe's life after the war and marcus shares what happened to perpetua how joe dealt all
00:00:56.240
the trauma he had experienced when he's really still just a kid and what lessons marcus has taken
00:00:59.800
away from joe's life after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash joe
00:01:04.280
marcus brotherton welcome back to the show thanks brett great to be here so uh here's a little aom
00:01:21.760
podcast trivia you were the very first guest on the aom podcast way back in september 2009
00:01:29.600
where we discussed your book we who are alive and remain it's about the band of brothers
00:01:34.300
that was 13 years ago man 13 years man it seems like uh it seems like just yesterday yeah no and i
00:01:40.900
wouldn't listen to it and i think we did it on the phone i didn't know what i was doing i think we did
00:01:45.920
over the phone my questions weren't that great i also i didn't have any kids now i got a middle
00:01:51.140
schooler i think i mean your kids like how old are your kids now i have three kids yeah my oldest
00:01:57.380
is 19 i've got a 19 year old daughter a 14 year old son and then a nine year old daughter so 10
00:02:02.480
years between the oldest and the youngest so nine so when your daughter when we started your daughter
00:02:06.060
was three or no six six should be six years that's crazy man time flies well you got a new book out
00:02:13.500
about world war ii and it's called a bright and blinding sun and it's this amazing story about
00:02:21.240
the exploits of a teenage boy who ended up fighting the pacific theater his name is joe johnson how do
00:02:28.240
you learn about joe and his story it all started during covid right when covid hit everybody hunkered
00:02:34.960
down including myself and you know we're sort of like figuring out what to do with our spare time so
00:02:40.340
when i hunkered down i had this stack of very obscure world war ii manuscripts to read because
00:02:46.240
you know who doesn't love a good obscure world war ii manuscript and kind of knee deep in the pile there
00:02:51.680
was this independently published manuscript by a guy named joe johnson who had fought in the pacific he
00:02:56.620
was a teenage soldier and i picked that out like first to read just caught my eye initially and read it
00:03:03.200
straight through in probably two nights amazing story and joe had passed away in 2017 age 91 so he
00:03:11.340
was no longer with us but his family kept this kind of very small facebook tribute page maybe 80 people
00:03:18.480
on it so i found this page i reached out to the family it just i wanted to convey my gratitude just
00:03:23.860
you know wow just thanks to your to your grandfather to your to your uncle for what he went through and
00:03:28.560
just i was just so in awe of his story so after i sent that message you know and i i sent it just
00:03:34.360
not expecting anything that was just did i just did it just to say thanks pretty soon after that the
00:03:40.320
executor of joe's estate his nephew reached out to me and said hey saw your message and i recognize your
00:03:46.600
name you know i read some of your books and let's talk because you know as the story goes joe had
00:03:51.880
independently published this manuscript to his memoirs and you know he'd sold a couple hundred copies out of
00:03:57.300
his garage type thing and his story is just so fantastic we want to bring it to a larger audience
00:04:02.080
can you help us can you you know redo a story rewrite it research it whatever you want to do and
00:04:08.060
and present it as your own book so i mulled this over i knew there was literary precedent for doing it
00:04:13.180
laura had done this with louis amperini's book and yeah i jumped at the chance i'd always wanted to
00:04:18.360
tell a story set in the pacific like this and and joe's proved just the uh the excellent vehicle to do
00:04:23.520
that all right so you based this off of joe's manuscript and what you did is you went through
00:04:28.180
and just added research to it you verified because like the story we'll talk about like it's it's like
00:04:32.660
you can't believe that it happened but you verified that all this stuff happened with people that he
00:04:37.900
knew other uh third-party resources as well yeah it's uh i mean it's it's robustly footnoted and
00:04:44.520
whatnot as as readers will see joe had actually written two different manuscripts and this is a
00:04:50.160
fascinating piece of the story as well so he had written the one that i had read and then he had
00:04:54.520
written one before that that was so rare even the estate didn't have it i think three people in the
00:05:00.820
world had a copy of this first manuscript that he had done i was able to track one of those down
00:05:05.820
fortunately and then compare and contrast the kind of various stories that he did in there
00:05:10.300
the interesting piece is that he had written his first manuscript the really really rare one he had
00:05:16.320
written that in a third person voice joe did this he did that and then he'd written the the second
00:05:22.760
one the one that was independently published he'd written that in a first person voice i did this i did
00:05:27.300
that and so it was almost like when he initially sat down to write his story he you know it's just
00:05:32.680
sort of so horrific that he had to detach himself a little bit to first just barf it out just get
00:05:40.460
that story out and then once it was out then he could kind of uh enter into the the trauma again
00:05:47.000
himself so you'll notice in my book there are pieces written in first person and pieces written
00:05:52.920
in third person most of the book is written in third person but i wanted to reflect that dynamic
00:05:57.540
of joe's and in initially getting his story out and the the choices that he chose well let's talk
00:06:03.160
about joe's early childhood because that early childhood influenced how he ended up in the army
00:06:07.840
as a well you know like he was 14 years old when he ended up there he grew up in the depression how
00:06:12.260
did the depression affect joe and his family yeah he's born in 1926 it's the height of the great
00:06:17.020
depression there's a lot of pressure on this young family his parents two more siblings are born after
00:06:23.220
joe his parents are very young they're out of work they move to the big city jobs are scarce money is
00:06:30.360
tight a lot of pressure on the family the father he leaves the home looking for work
00:06:37.220
and he never returns the parents divorce so this is a this is a tough piece of the story right away
00:06:42.980
joe finds himself the man of the family just as a as a kid and he's out there scrounging coals so they
00:06:49.360
can heat their house in the winter he's the one who's hauling government food from the center of the
00:06:55.100
city in his red wagon so the family can eat he's looking after their younger siblings he's the man of
00:07:01.020
the house joe's mother edna she gets lonely and so she takes up with this out of work barkeep by the
00:07:08.400
name of mr jake mr jake ends up moving into their tiny little shotgun shack and the pressure is even
00:07:14.200
more increased mr jake's out of work as well he spends most of his days lounging on the couch
00:07:18.820
and joe as a kid goes oh fantastic one more mouth to feed and he's the responsible guy he's got to do it
00:07:25.700
and there's tension mr jake's biological sons go to the same school that joe goes to and and these
00:07:31.820
biological sons kind of accuse joe and taunt him of breaking up their their parents marriage and so
00:07:37.900
there's just it's tough for this kid and finally he goes i need to find my dad and so he steals out of
00:07:45.080
the house late one night boards this freight car looking for his dad a couple states away he doesn't
00:07:51.600
know where he is all that he wants to do is just find his dad he's 12 years old no that's insane
00:07:57.880
yeah so uh 12 my son's 12 or he's going to be 12 here in a few months i couldn't imagine my my kid
00:08:04.180
like i'm just gonna jump on a freight train and go from tennessee to to san antonio texas yeah it's just
00:08:10.140
it's just crazy what he does at such a young age as well my my son is 14 and and uh to picture my son in
00:08:15.380
that situation i brett i think and this is why why art of manly is just so great joe's story speaks to
00:08:21.260
how much boys need their biological fathers yeah he had that thought like we talked people talk
00:08:26.260
about father hunger he had that father hunger so yeah he he gets takes a freight train he gets there
00:08:31.660
safely he ends up with his dad what was his time like with his father was it everything he thought
00:08:36.440
it would be initially it's great he and his father get along well his father has found work is this kind
00:08:42.020
of itinerant horse trader and uh life is good joe is helping out around the stables he gets this this
00:08:48.900
dog this puppy he names it mippy he's got a friend this other boy his age who's working in the
00:08:54.820
stables he's not going to school you know he's got the seventh grade education but life is good
00:08:59.920
joe and his dad move again from texas to california because his dad's got a line on a different job in
00:09:06.420
california again at a at a stables and once they move to california pressure begins to mount again
00:09:13.160
track officials find out that this boy is living at the track he's really he's supposed to be 16 and
00:09:18.700
he's not and so eventually the track officials go to joe's dad and they say they they you know the
00:09:25.160
the boy's got to go uh he's too young to beat the track so there's a lot of discussions between joe and
00:09:30.660
his dad a lot of them are kind of angry and finally the father gives this ultimatum you can go here here
00:09:37.640
here but you can't live with me what's it going to be so joe in in kind of his frustration in kind
00:09:44.340
of his his hurt he goes fine well maybe i'll just run away and join the army now this is a bluff he
00:09:51.380
has no intention of doing that but he goes to bed that night he sleeps on it the more he begins to
00:09:55.900
sort of think about this idea he's going you know i'm a hard worker um at least i'll be eating three
00:10:00.780
times a day so sure enough the next morning he gets up early he steals across town he finds this
00:10:05.860
recruiter's office open and walks up the front steps intent on joining the army and again he's only
00:10:12.560
14 years old at this point right yeah he he sort of he swears on a stack of bibles that he's 18
00:10:17.880
and uh and you know it's the days before the internet so there's he says yeah i don't have
00:10:23.900
my birth certificate with me and uh you know it's back in memphis where i was born now he actually
00:10:29.680
wasn't born in memphis he was born in louisiana which is part of his ruse he figures by the time that
00:10:34.920
the army catches up with them he'll be you know deep in the system so sure enough the recruiter
00:10:40.280
doesn't the recruiter has his suspicions right he's like i don't really think you're 18 but he
00:10:45.220
says look fill out this paperwork and go stand in this line which joe does joe keeps his head down
00:10:52.000
sure enough he gets lost in the shuffle he successfully joins the united states army he is
00:10:56.900
not 18 he is 14 years old um you've done a lot of uh research and writing about world war ii did this
00:11:02.300
happen a lot were there a lot of like teenage boys who were able to sign up for the the army even
00:11:06.420
though they were underage a surprising amount yeah you had to be 18 without a parental signature
00:11:11.840
you could be 17 if you got a note from your parents but there was a lot of guys particularly
00:11:16.860
after pearl harbor who just went i've got to do my job i've got to do my duty i might be 16 but man
00:11:23.500
this is i i've just got to get in this now this is before pearl harbor about a year before pearl harbor
00:11:28.640
joe does it anyway he is not thinking globally he's just thinking very pragmatically i got to go
00:11:34.320
somewhere i don't want to go back and live with my mom and and the the freeloader mr jake so the army
00:11:40.820
provides three hots and a cot i'm gonna do it so thanks to like the bureaucracy he's able to sneak
00:11:46.860
in how did he manage in boot camp he did just fine yeah he's he was a good worker he applies himself
00:11:54.100
well he shoots expert marksmen on on the riflery range he fits in well he's he's made an assistant
00:12:01.360
machine gun loader and eventually he becomes a bugler and army life suits him pretty well did he
00:12:07.920
fit in with the men like the other guys like think man this is just a kid they were they in on it
00:12:11.780
he makes friends with two guys ray and dale and they have their suspicions too but they're good guys
00:12:19.020
they're affable dudes and and they're kind of like yeah you know hang out with us we'll look out for
00:12:23.720
you it's kind of a big brother approach and they they have an idea that joe is younger they don't
00:12:28.900
quite have an idea of how young it really is and the thing too like joe he was able to sort of do
00:12:34.580
like the he did like the alpha move like he was able to like there's some bullies basically and he
00:12:39.080
stood out he held his own with these guys and like beat the crap out of them he had vowed early on in
00:12:44.280
life never to give into fear and so yeah there's this one uh instance in the story where a guy insults
00:12:51.340
him and this is a grown man and uh joe responds to that and and the two get into a fight joe actually
00:12:57.760
beats up the older guy and he's got to be pulled off him so it's it's a traumatic thing i mean imagine
00:13:04.120
being i think he's he's just 15 by the time this fight happens but when you're 15 and you're fighting
00:13:09.340
a 22 23 year old man i mean there can be a big difference between a 15 year old and a 23 year old
00:13:14.580
joe holds his own he's not a big kid by this point he's uh he's five foot seven he weighs 135 pounds
00:13:21.020
but he is scrappy and he's independent and he is not going to back down from a fight
00:13:25.600
all right so he's holding his own his boot camp eventually he gets his assignments he gets shipped
00:13:29.760
off to the philippines how did he end up there yeah it's um he volunteers and and it's kind of
00:13:35.880
on a whim he's like why not i'm in the army i may as well see the world uh keep in mind that america is
00:13:41.700
not in the war at this point and and joe is he's reading the news but pretty sporadically so he's like
00:13:47.280
you know philip hey i'm gonna go there i'm gonna eat some coconuts there's gonna be girls in bikinis i
00:13:52.200
mean it's very much on a lark on a whim let's go to the philippines sure well you know what what
00:13:56.720
could happen that's his attitude so yeah the first thing he does he think of like coconuts girls in
00:14:01.440
bikinis him and his buddies they're these army guys u.s army guys with you know money they can go to
00:14:07.020
go on leave in manila and one of the things they do is they end up at this brothel where joe meets a
00:14:12.720
girl that will change his life can you tell us about perpetua and how she and joe met yes as part of
00:14:20.860
army life joe is being influenced by his sphere of peers right which is what happens to us today as
00:14:27.980
well some of the influence is really positive and good and then other parts of the influence are not
00:14:35.100
that positive and not that good as part of kind of the negative experience here some of the older guys
00:14:41.480
incite joe to go to a brothel now certainly we don't condone this type of activity but it happens
00:14:46.880
and it happened in real life so joe goes to this brothel he meets this girl who's working in the
00:14:53.220
brothel named perpetua the tragic piece of the story is that she is actually a year younger than
00:15:00.920
joe he's 15 by that point and she is 14 so they do constantly the relationship once and only once and
00:15:08.320
then over the next several months joe goes back to visit her several times and the cool thing there is
00:15:14.560
they never consummate the relationship again but they become genuine friends and this genuine empathy
00:15:20.200
begins to develop in joe where he asks questions of her he begins to see himself in her shoes and he
00:15:26.940
learns that she is an orphan and that female orphans who are on the streets just didn't have a whole lot
00:15:32.760
of options if they want to keep eating and so joe begins to devise this plan with her consent to help
00:15:39.500
get her out of there and help get her to a better place of opportunity no that's a you did a good job
00:15:45.060
of pointing that out that joe he didn't have a lot of good positive male influences in his life dad was
00:15:50.860
out of the picture for most of his childhood he had a small experience with him the mr jake guy
00:15:55.760
not that great his army buddies you know they were they were good dudes they looked out for him but they
00:16:01.420
also they had their vices that rubbed off on joe but was interesting joe's managed even though he was in
00:16:07.660
this situation where he was being pressured to do things that were not great somehow he's able to
00:16:14.140
there was something in him that said you know what uh i don't need to do this i can i can do something
00:16:19.640
better it's an application to all of us for sure i mean do we make mistakes in life yes all of us make
00:16:27.460
mistakes in life particularly in our youth right i mean you know when you look back on your teenage
00:16:32.360
years you go how many knucklehead things did i do and yet the great thing about joe and the great
00:16:36.880
thing for all of us is that we can learn from our mistakes we can learn how to be wise through them
00:16:41.640
you know we can uh you know to to admit that you made a mistake yesterday is to be that much more
00:16:47.160
wiser today and to go i don't want to go down that road again certainly that's what happens in joe's
00:16:52.120
life and so yeah as you said they consummated the relationship the first time after that it just
00:16:56.260
became this really sweet friendship like joe would just go there so they could talk perpetua would cry
00:17:01.780
he would even cry like and it was it was what was so heart-wrenching about it like these are just two kids
00:17:06.560
these are kids that should be in you know ninth or tenth grade right now but here we are like
00:17:11.300
there's they're in conflict they're in a brothel and it's just it's one of those heart-wrenching
00:17:16.900
things about human existence like sometimes you can end up in this place yeah yeah absolutely she
00:17:21.820
she becomes his only female peer 8 000 miles away from home and the two joe is kind of the only
00:17:28.820
the only guy who treats her well and she says that several times like you are so kind to me what's up
00:17:34.480
with this i just don't experience kindness in my life it's a tragic commentary on on the human
00:17:39.880
existence and yet it does happen so he comes with this plan to break her out of the brothel
00:17:45.000
this was this was he was taking a big risk here like what were the consequences if he would have
00:17:50.040
gotten caught so the brothel is run by a madam and then she answers to basically her pimp who's this
00:17:56.980
thug by the name of manny tang a real life character and and manny tang will slit your throat if you
00:18:02.920
cross him so joe ends up yeah getting perpetua out of there and uh he he well i won't tell the i
00:18:10.080
won't tell the full story you've got to read the book for that but um yeah it gets her to a place
00:18:13.820
of safety and it could have been his life for sure manny tang eventually does come and confront joe's
00:18:19.720
superior officers and but this is part of his ruse joe has made a deal with the guard at the base he's
00:18:25.380
at and and the records line up to his ruse so he's able to uh to confirm his his story so okay so he's
00:18:34.080
able to get perpetua out and we'll he did the story is amazing what he did it was some like uh some tv
00:18:39.200
show stuff going on there after that this is starting to lead the it's starting to get hot in the
00:18:44.220
philippines pearl harbor gets bombed when did the conflict start arriving in the philippines like when
00:18:49.860
did joe first start seeing action yeah pearl harbor december 7th 1941 10 hours later the philippines
00:18:56.120
are attacked joe is thrust in the midst of this horrific battle it takes a while for him to do so
00:19:00.480
only because different units get into battle different times but eventually he's right in the
00:19:05.560
thick of it and uh the u.s troops yeah they they fight courageously for four months five months for
00:19:10.940
some of them on carregidor but they they're outgunned outmanned japanese troops are highly experienced by
00:19:17.420
that point the u.s troops are cut off from being resupplied most of the ships are destroyed back at
00:19:22.960
pearl harbor so it is a slow battle of starvation and being um catching these jungle diseases bari bari
00:19:32.660
and and pellagra and just everything that that a jungle holds and uh the men are gradually starving
00:19:39.160
joe is is machine gun loader during this time um he's also a runner so he's running between
00:19:45.980
headquarters and the front lines some pretty horrific stories i mean he um because the japanese
00:19:51.380
are often behind the front line or ahead of the front line and so joe is traversing enemy territory
00:19:58.000
he does have his first kill during this time he's carrying a rifle and several horrific events
00:20:04.120
happening during this time troops they fight until april 9th 1942 the peninsula of bataan falls that
00:20:11.080
leads to the largest ever surrender of u.s troops the atrocity of the bataan death march joe is
00:20:15.740
actually in corregidor at this time corregidor fights for another month they fall may 6 1942
00:20:21.060
all of the troops in the philippines are surrendered general jonathan wainwright runs up the white flag
00:20:27.260
and it's a horrible situation joe finds himself as a soldier and then he is a pow and it's it is not
00:20:34.640
a good time is this one macarthur like escaped to is that is this am i am i mixing something up there
00:20:41.460
yeah yeah that's a controversial piece of macarthur's story uh he is ordered to go to
00:20:46.720
australia yeah he's macarthur is is leading the troops initially and then he's ordered to go to
00:20:52.400
australia escapes by pt boat and plane and then wainwright is put in charge and it's it's a mixed bag
00:20:59.280
the troops were on the ground doing the fighting some of them understand uh why macarthur goes but any
00:21:04.800
number of the other troops they're like yeah we are abandoned our our leader just left us what gives
00:21:09.780
us so it's it's a controversial piece of u.s history for sure we're gonna take a quick break
00:21:14.960
for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show and how old was joe at this point was he
00:21:22.100
still 15 or is he about to turn 16 yeah 16 yeah 16 all right so still a kid like still a kid and
00:21:28.460
what's crazy so he was a corregidor he he wasn't a part of the baton death march but he got really
00:21:33.200
close to being a part of like he just escaped barely basically got dragged in the water by a boat to get
00:21:38.920
out of to get away from that right yeah the kind of the luck of the draw he's hurt his back while
00:21:44.240
fighting on batan and so he and a buddy are they're fighting independently by that point because they've
00:21:49.920
been separated from their their outfit and they're they are given a choice by a random commanding
00:21:56.480
officer you can join us as we go into the hills and try and fight as gorillas or you can you know try
00:22:03.460
and find a boat and escape to this little island off the coast of batan called corregidor and because
00:22:08.800
joe's back is so bad they go man i don't think i don't think we can make it across the mountains
00:22:14.140
let's try and catch a boat so they do find a boat the boat is overloaded they can't take any more
00:22:19.340
guys on board so the the guys on board just throw joe and his buddy a line and they get dragged through
00:22:25.480
the water several hours cold frigid water over to the island of corregidor and that's uh and that's
00:22:31.820
where they make their last stand yeah and they eventually get captured and he's you know even
00:22:35.640
though he escaped the batan death march which was we all know is awful as a prisoner of war joe still
00:22:41.900
didn't have a great experience like what was his experience like as a pow joe soon finds out that
00:22:47.780
he's he shuttled from one camp to another and he discovers that all the camps are bad but some of the
00:22:54.920
camps are slightly better than others so for a while he's in this camp called bilibit prison
00:22:59.640
bilibit prison relatively speaking is one of the better places to be a pow the guys are eating
00:23:05.720
at least twice a day they're working they're being forced to work work is brisk but it's not
00:23:11.720
backbreaking there are some american surgeons and doctors and medics who are in bilibit they're still
00:23:18.540
allowed to practice now they don't have any supplies hardly at all but there's a little bit of medical
00:23:22.840
care that can be given bilibit is not too bad so from bilibit and i and i i say that very carefully
00:23:28.900
bilibit is is incarceration it's it's not it's not it's horrible but relatively speaking it's one of
00:23:35.040
the better camps to be in from bilibit joe gets shuffled around a couple times he eventually lands
00:23:39.680
at this camp called nickels field now by contrast nickels field is one of the worst places to be
00:23:45.620
it is dawn to dusk backbreaking labor in the broiling sun the prisoners are being ordered to build
00:23:51.500
this airstrip or actually extend this airstrip by hand so it's picking shovel work they're loading
00:23:56.780
boxcars with dirt and rocks and the pressure has been upped by then by the japanese commanders we've
00:24:03.620
got to get this airstrip finished and finished quickly and so the japanese commandant of nickels
00:24:10.140
field is feeling that and he is just whipping these prisoners to a frenzy guys are getting killed right
00:24:16.220
and left beheaded shot you name it joe at this point he's been in in this system for quite a while
00:24:22.880
he's still a teen but he is he's not doing well physically he's got several diseases he's running
00:24:29.360
this constant fever from malaria every day every night he's got open sores on his legs keep in mind
00:24:36.260
that he is still a growing boy so he starts the war at five seven 135 pounds eventually he gets to six
00:24:42.600
foot four hundred and nine pounds he's not doing well one day he commits this small infraction of
00:24:48.580
the rules the rules are arbitrary there's a lot of rules and for that infraction he gets beaten
00:24:53.700
pretty savagely he survives the beating but he begins to realize i'm not going to survive nickels
00:24:59.660
field i have got to get out of nickels field i've got to get out of here if i can just get sent back
00:25:04.120
to billiwood prison maybe i'll stand a chance of surviving this thing so he begins to think and he's
00:25:11.660
like okay back at billiwood there was this ward that housed mentally insane prisoners maybe i can
00:25:18.720
i can fake insanity and maybe the the japanese will just go oh whatever send him back to billiwood to
00:25:25.160
that to that uh you know mental health unit so he's got just a few possessions with him in his
00:25:31.860
canteen kit he's got this spoon he begins to sharpen the spoon on a stone in the latrine every time he
00:25:37.880
goes to the bathroom he sharpens the spoon eventually it's razor sharp and then his his kind
00:25:43.360
of his big day comes his big act he takes his spoon he runs into this group of guards he slices his arms
00:25:50.740
until they're bleeding he takes the blood with his hands and he smears it on his face and this all
00:25:56.220
happens pretty quickly and he begins to just shout that he's gone crazy so the guards are kind of
00:26:01.700
unnerved at this site and they hogtie him uh he's at the work site they they leave him hogtied in the
00:26:08.740
dirt in the sun and and he's bleeding all day long and then they march him back to the pesay schoolhouse
00:26:15.380
where where the troops are are staying while they're working at at nickels field uh but instead of putting
00:26:21.640
him in his barracks and this is the tough part of this story they put him in what's called an iso
00:26:25.920
an iso is a small slatted wooden container it's smaller than a coffin a man can't stand a man can't
00:26:33.900
sit upright joe is stripped naked he's put in this he's got a huddle in a fetal position he's bleeding
00:26:39.260
still fairly profusely they don't give him any food and most importantly they don't give him any water
00:26:45.620
now you can survive i don't know 45 50 days maybe without food but just maybe three days four days at
00:26:51.060
most without any water so joe knows he's got to have water and he also knows and this is the the
00:26:57.800
troubling thing he knows that uh nobody that he knows has ever survived the iso experience
00:27:03.280
so life is really difficult to hear and a couple days go by and the troops are taking sticks and
00:27:10.220
they're prodding him through this iso joe is not a person of faith at this point in his life at all
00:27:15.160
but this is where joe begins to to pray and he's learned this kind of a snippet of a of a
00:27:20.280
a methodist prayer back as a boy god have mercy and one of the cool pieces of the story is that
00:27:25.920
night the the sky opens up and it begins to rain and joe is able to stick his mouth between the
00:27:32.380
slats of the board and drink and drink his fell on this rainwater keeps him alive eventually sure
00:27:37.720
enough he's thrown in the back of the truck and he makes it back to bill but his his audacious plan
00:27:42.580
eventually does work and he's able to survive that just horrific experience and during this time too so
00:27:47.340
you know he's he's a prisoner of war but joe besides getting you know the crap beat out of
00:27:51.220
him and almost dying he's losing his friends and that's that's hard for anybody but i imagine it
00:27:57.060
was really hard for him as a kid yeah it is yeah two of his close friends ray and dale eventually
00:28:04.240
don't survive the experience and then joe has no idea where perpetua is by this point of the war
00:28:09.760
and so he is isolated he's all alone and troops are being shuffled around so they don't they don't have
00:28:15.780
the same group of guys all the time this point of the story i think really got me because it's joe
00:28:21.580
makes this decision he's been hurt so many times by other people he makes this conscious decision not
00:28:28.120
to not to befriend anybody basically he just goes into himself and that's something he comes to
00:28:33.260
reevaluate later in his life you know he comes to realize when he's older and it's after the war
00:28:39.040
that he does need other people in his life so at this time joe gets put back into the not so bad
00:28:45.860
prison camp and then he gets kind of shuffled around again when was he finally liberated yeah
00:28:51.900
right at the end of the war he is he's actually he sent to japan at one point on one of one of
00:28:57.280
they call them hell ships which is another just horrific story where its conditions are really really bad
00:29:02.800
and about a third of the troops actually survive that experience joe does he's sent to work in the
00:29:08.260
mines in in japan he gets in an accident there and his leg is pretty badly mangled so he's he's in
00:29:14.660
the infirmary at the end of the war and not doing well at all at all and that's one of the big questions
00:29:20.520
is is can he make it to medical care before his his time runs out but he eventually gets to medical
00:29:26.880
care but this it was a long and slow road to recovery like i mean what was the state of his health
00:29:32.080
like when he finally got to the hospital and how long did it take him to recover physically
00:29:35.840
yeah he's just about dead and again by that point six foot four hundred and nine pounds
00:29:41.880
badly mangled leg he's got several tropical diseases severe malnutrition so he's in the hospital for
00:29:49.680
several months before he's finally shipped stateside and and then after that he's in the hospital for
00:29:54.560
some more and then really begins this fascinating story of what happens what happens when you've been
00:30:01.280
through all this trauma i mean the body keeps the score right and and joe has got to it really
00:30:08.420
becomes this lifelong journey of figuring out how to how to deal with all the anger that's inside him
00:30:14.140
how to deal with all this hate how to deal with all this horror and trouble that he's seen well yeah so
00:30:19.560
he he gets he gets back to the states and then but what he does doesn't he signs up again like he
00:30:25.000
uh he he's back in the military right he does yeah he reenlists he sent to korea he actually
00:30:31.300
reenlists because he wants just to play baseball and he's promised that he can play baseball for the
00:30:35.480
for the regiment team which he does for a while and then korea breaks out and then he's uh he's
00:30:40.820
promptly sent to korea where he's almost immediately shot in the stomach and he kind of jokes in later
00:30:45.960
life i was able to to view uh videotapes of him and audio tapes and whatnot and joe jokes in several
00:30:51.640
places he just goes yeah my my war in korea lasts like half an hour and then i was done
00:30:55.620
but he's upset at that too because he didn't want to he never wanted to return to combat that
00:31:01.280
certainly was never his plan but post world war ii yeah he's in a hard place he struggles in a couple
00:31:07.420
marriages he struggles to hold a job he the whole korea thing happens and he is one angry hurt guy
00:31:14.740
for many many years how did the ptsd manifest itself in his life yeah yeah back then they called it
00:31:21.220
combat fatigue many of the veterans yeah i've interviewed veterans for a number of years now
00:31:26.140
and many of them talk about how when they first came back from world war ii nobody was really
00:31:31.600
encouraged to talk about the hard things that went on there was kind of this spirit in america of
00:31:37.120
well we've just won the war and now let's get on with our lives so it's time to you know it's happy
00:31:43.020
days it's let's buy that house and get married and settle down and buy a new refrigerator and get that
00:31:48.580
chevy we've always been dreaming of and you know good times are here and yet many of the guys were
00:31:54.180
really really hurting so joe is experiencing nightmares tons of anger which comes out in any
00:32:00.800
number of ways he is struggling to relate to people he's not a very good father at first he's kind of a
00:32:06.900
horrible husband even though he he deeply loves his the first wife he barely knows the second wife he
00:32:12.520
deeply loves her they actually get married and divorced and then they remarry for a while and then and they
00:32:17.360
divorce again they just can't make it work joe eventually goes on to a third marriage and the
00:32:21.540
third marriage does work fortunately to maryland and she's a pretty compassionate person who who
00:32:27.120
goes through a lot with joe as well so how did joe start coming to peace with what happened when he was
00:32:33.720
a boy in the philippines it gets darker before it gets lighter and in joe's case his his anger and his
00:32:42.940
rage comes to a boiling point in his kind of his middle age to the point where he is he checks
00:32:49.720
himself into a mental health unit in a psychiatric hospital in california it actually proves to be one
00:32:55.520
of the best things that he does the counselors and psychiatrists there are really good and they
00:33:01.720
begin to counsel him that he's got to learn how to forgive or at least extend forgiveness you got to
00:33:07.320
leave leave that trouble behind you if you're not forgiving if you're sort of mad and storming
00:33:12.980
around all the time then that only keeps hurting you and joe realizes that he's like yeah i'm not
00:33:18.720
going to spend the rest of my life filled with rage so he he decides yeah i'm not going to harbor hate
00:33:24.860
it's it's this deliberate choice to set down the hurt and joe talks about how he's he's got to set
00:33:30.740
down that hurt and set it down and set it down again it's it's it takes more than one choice to learn
00:33:35.800
how to forgive it becomes a way of life however for joe where he's like i am i am that war is behind
00:33:44.040
us and certainly there was wrongs done but i'm not going to hold it against my former enemy
00:33:49.180
and it works it works for joe and joe says in his vernacular yeah those doctors they got a hold of my
00:33:56.060
brain and they straighten my butt out and um joe later in life in fact he would never he would he would
00:34:03.280
always use the term japanese to describe the enemy he would never refer to them in the derogatory term
00:34:07.980
and that was just one indication that he had truly learned to forgive his enemies
00:34:11.260
what happened with his relationship with perpetua because during this time he would always think
00:34:15.720
about her after the war he was thinking about her i mean she was like his first love but that can
00:34:20.840
have a that had a big impact on him and that she was very connected to his experience with the war
00:34:24.780
so what was he able to find her again would they they have a connection after the war
00:34:28.800
yeah it's a fascinating piece of this story and toward the end of the book there are some
00:34:33.620
interactions between them again which uh i'll let your viewers and readers read joe never never does
00:34:40.140
forget his first love he eventually goes he returns to the philippines in the 1970s with the blessing of
00:34:47.320
his third wife marilyn and he goes looking for perpetua and and her family and joe has some
00:34:54.860
suspicions that part of her family may be part of his he does not find her he he finds her grave
00:35:02.020
and finds this this gravestone where he just weeps and and and kind of kicks himself that he had not
00:35:08.600
gone back to look for her earlier it's believed that she died in the in the marcos regime which was kind
00:35:14.660
of a horrific situation as well but joe's able to track down a priest who knew her and he does discover
00:35:20.900
that her life was indeed lifted she got out of the brothel things went well she was able to have a
00:35:26.720
baby because she was pregnant at the time she became a nurse and and trained in this in this you know
00:35:32.860
obviously better occupation and the priest describes how she was a caring and benevolent person and really
00:35:39.120
just uh turned out to be an upstanding person all around well you mentioned joe perpetua they had
00:35:44.540
some interactions after the war and how they ended up meeting again while joe was still in the
00:35:49.400
philippines is a another amazing story in the book and people got to read that to see that story but
00:35:55.100
when they're talking they they really did consider maybe being together you know maybe getting married
00:35:59.820
and then after joe went back to the united states and went their separate ways again they kept writing
00:36:04.400
each other but then eventually joe stopped getting letters from perpetua and so he thought okay well i mean
00:36:11.800
i guess she's moved on but then joe found out later that she had kept writing him but his mom
00:36:19.280
had been hiding the letters from him what do you think was going on there why did joe's mom do that
00:36:24.820
yeah his mother is really an interesting person and i've had readers actually write to me about the
00:36:31.860
mother and some are pretty upset they're like man that mom just didn't care for her kid and what was
00:36:36.660
she thinking and and people are genuinely angry toward her and then others are like wow that was
00:36:41.880
some some weird stuff that went on but i get why his mother did it the the mother describes how joe came
00:36:48.820
back from the war and here he is writing this this girl in the philippines and you know at the time
00:36:54.300
race relations are just different in america and joe's mother believes that it's going to be really
00:36:59.960
difficult if joe does indeed take this war bride if he does return to the philippines and marry perpetua
00:37:05.760
and so joe is using his mom's address to get all his mail and joe's mom intercepts the mail and she
00:37:13.820
hides the mail and joe doesn't know this he just concludes that perpetua has lost interest in him
00:37:19.900
or maybe she's found some other guy or maybe she doesn't want to get involved with a with his former
00:37:24.180
pow or you know what's the deal hey i gotta get on with the life it's it's happy days i gotta buy that
00:37:29.400
refrigerator so that's when he he gets married to his this this american girl who he doesn't really
00:37:34.320
know that well but he does just he does describe in later in life how and i think this is real for
00:37:39.800
all of us it's like you never forget your first love whoever that person is and you know it's okay
00:37:44.780
it's like you don't have to marry that girl but she's a piece of your life and and hopefully a warm
00:37:48.900
piece of your life and and a good and positive memory in the sense that she helped form you
00:37:52.900
you helped form her and maryland is aware of this his his third wife and yeah joe always describes
00:37:59.940
perpetua warmly in how he in how he talks about her when he went back to the philippines uh and he
00:38:07.560
found out that perpetua died how did that influence his you know trying to come to terms with what
00:38:12.600
happened to him in the philippines did he go did it help did it like take him to a dark place again and
00:38:17.300
and he had to deal with that and on top of the other stuff yeah he's really kicking himself for
00:38:23.880
a lot of reasons really beating himself up and finally as the story goes maryland sits him down
00:38:29.400
and just says you know look life throws curves at everybody and you know it's it's a it's a it's not
00:38:35.920
a it's not a great thing what happened to this to this woman that you cared about and yet at the
00:38:40.280
same time the good thing is that you were in each other's lives you were able to help each other
00:38:45.960
and uh just imagine where perpetua would have been if you hadn't been in the story like you
00:38:52.360
you helped her get out of a really bad situation and in that there's some consolation and from here
00:38:58.860
on out get on with life and quit beating yourself up and and yes you made mistakes but those mistakes
00:39:04.940
are behind you and you're a wiser person because of them have you personally taken away any life
00:39:10.800
lessons from joe's story he's a fascinating character in in so many levels and i i did find
00:39:17.380
myself identifying with him in the sense that yeah we all make mistakes in our youth and yet we've got
00:39:23.160
we've got to learn from them and and grow and and keep going forward i think joe's resolve he makes it
00:39:29.580
pretty early on in life never never to give in to fear i think that's something we can all learn from
00:39:34.500
as well like yeah life throws us any number of difficult and challenging situations and fear
00:39:42.780
often holds us back you know when i started writing books about world war ii i had been trained as a
00:39:48.740
journalist and and i had a lot of training i'd done my master's degree and worked in a newspaper for a
00:39:52.960
number of years i really didn't know anything about world war ii and yet this opportunity came
00:39:59.300
literally fell into my lap do you want to work with lieutenant buck compton from the band of brothers i
00:40:03.680
jumped at that chance mostly because my agent knew buck and then i was like in a quieter moment
00:40:09.200
my goodness what have i done i don't know anything about world war ii and i'm trying to compete against
00:40:13.040
books here that are written by just masters in the profession and if i had let fear hold me back from
00:40:19.380
that decision so many years would would have been affected by that unfortunately i didn't i went forward
00:40:25.280
i threw myself into the work i read books by the dozen i talked to every veteran i could i talked to
00:40:31.060
guys in the military i immersed myself in the subject and yes books plural have come from that
00:40:37.540
one decision not to give into fear i think it's encouragement for all of us as as uh as man today
00:40:43.920
do what you fear the most and you know for me personally i think the big takeaway is you know how
00:40:49.600
joe dealt with the after effects of the war so i mean if any guys go he's got some demons whatever
00:40:56.240
they are it might feel like it's hopeless like this is never going to get better but joe says no it's
00:41:01.920
possible it might take till you're in your 70s or 80s but you don't give up like you just you keep
00:41:07.420
trying to get better yeah absolutely yeah joe describes how the adversity that we go through
00:41:14.180
actually can help form our lives in really good ways if we so work with it and allow it to
00:41:20.920
and we we learn more from adversity than we do from ease so as you said you've written multiple
00:41:27.920
books about world war ii what continues to draw you to that event in time period you know some guys i
00:41:34.460
think who read world war ii are very interested in um facts and figures and sort of this army position
00:41:41.640
on this flank and very technical things you know i like that because i am kind of a history nerd
00:41:47.100
but what really intrigues me is the humanity you take these ordinary guys and you throw them into
00:41:54.140
these extraordinary events and if it it prompts this big question what would i do in a similar
00:42:01.860
situation i think that's the that's the real intrigue for readers today what would i do if i was thrown
00:42:09.360
into a horrific situation would i have the fortitude to overcome that or what would it take to develop
00:42:16.100
the fortitude that's probably the better question because we we all encounter fearful and challenging
00:42:22.240
situations and yet it's rising above that it's overcoming that really separates us and it keeps
00:42:29.220
us going forward and helps us find that better life well mark this has been a great conversation
00:42:33.760
where can people go to learn more about the book and your work yeah my website marcusbrotherton.com
00:42:39.500
the book is available in many bookstores it's on amazon on barnes and noble if you want to get it
00:42:44.560
online it's called a bright and blinding sun fantastic well marcus brotherton thanks for your
00:42:49.500
time it's been a pleasure thanks brett always always great to connect with you my guest today
00:42:54.240
was marcus brotherton he's the author of the book a bright and blinding sun it's available on amazon.com
00:42:58.320
and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about his work at his website marcusbrotherton.com
00:43:02.460
also check out our show notes at awim.is slash joe where you can find links to resources
00:43:06.260
we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast make sure to
00:43:17.540
check out our website at art of manliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as
00:43:20.980
thousands of articles written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of and
00:43:24.060
if you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the a1 podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over
00:43:27.380
to stitcher premium.com sign up use code manliness to check out for a free month trial once you're
00:43:31.200
signed up download the stitcher app on android ios you can start enjoying ad free episodes of the a1
00:43:34.700
podcast and if you haven't done so already i'd appreciate if you take one minute to get
00:43:37.680
reviewed up a podcast or spotify helps out a lot if you've done that already thank you please
00:43:41.500
consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think we get something out of it
00:43:44.720
as always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay
00:43:47.460
remind you not listening on podcast but put what you've heard into action