On graduating from West Point in 1940, Lieutenant John Wright was assigned to Corregidor, Philippine Islands. Captured there by the Japanese, he endured three and a half years of POW conditions described in subsequent war crimes trials as the worst of World War II. This book is built around a diary he smuggled through countless inspections during his imprisonment. A detailed account of the voyage of the 'hellships' carrying prisoners from Manila to Japan; the disease, the hunger, and the different ways prisoners coped - or failed to cope - with their ordeal.