Book description
" When the Japanese Imperial Forces invaded the Philippine Islands
at the onset of World War II, they quickly rounded up Allied citizens on
Luzon and imprisoned them as enemy aliens. These captured civilians were
treated inhumanely from the start, and news of the atrocities committed
by the enemy soon spread to the more remote islands to the south.
Hearing this, many of the expatriates living there refused to surrender
as their islands were occupied. Fugitives , based on the memoir of
Jordan A. Hamner, tells the true story of a young civilian mining
engineer trapped on the islands during the Japanese invasion. Instead of
surrendering, he and two American co-workers volunteered their services
to the Allied armed forces engaged in the futile effort to stave off the
enemy onslaught. When the overwhelmed defenders surrendered to the
invaders, the three men fled farther into the disease-ridden mountainous
jungle. After nearly a year of nomadic wandering, they found a derelict,
twenty-one foot long lifeboat in a secluded coastal bay. Hoping to sail
to freedom in Australia, the trio converted the craft into a sailboat,
and called it the “Or Else.” They would make it to Australia-or else.
With only a National Geographic magazine map of the Malacca Islands for
navigation, Hamner, his two compatriots, and two Filipino crewmen sailed
their unseaworthy craft fifteen hundred nautical miles over seas
controlled by the Japanese navy, touching land only briefly to replenish
meager rations or evade enemy vessels. After thirty perilous days at
sea, marked by nearly disastrous encounters with hostile islanders,
imminent starvation, and tropical storms, the desperate fugitives
reached the welcome shores of Australia.
