Three years and four months as a Japanese prisoner of war. Frank Hoeffer came home and wrote it all down from memory. Nobody wanted to publish it.

Frank Hoeffer was a Navy mess cook aboard the USS Oahu when Corregidor fell in 1942. What followed was three years and four months in Japanese prison camps — forced labor, systematic starvation, beatings, disease, and death at close range. He survived. He came home. He wrote it all down.

This memoir was reconstructed from Frank's personal account by his grandson, Richard Lowe, who first heard these stories as a teenager sitting on an uncomfortable folding chair while the rest of the family kept their distance. Frank's account covers his time on the Yangtze River Patrol in Shanghai, the siege and fall of Corregidor, the march through Manila, transport on hell ships, imprisonment in Japan, and liberation by US forces in 1945.

Publishers rejected the manuscript. They said the world had seen enough war books. Frank did not care. He was determined that his experiences would be recorded.

CONTENT WARNING: This audiobook contains descriptions of torture, starvation, physical abuse, and death. Documented honestly, not sensationalized.