The Hike into the Sun: Memoir of an American Soldier Captured on Bataan in 1942 and Imprisoned by the Japanese until 1945

Sergeant Bernard T. FitzPatrick endured the long and deadly hike to Japanese prisoner of war camps known as the Bataan Death March. In Japan he was forced to work at the Yawata Steel Works at Kokura--the original target of the Allies’ second atomic bomb.

FitzPatrick’s service at Clark Field in the Philippines, the brutal fighting on Bataan, and the harrowing details of his time as a Japanese POW are detailed. Interspersed are his thoughts on U.S. preparations for the Pacific war, his Japanese captors, and the American, Filipino and Japanese men and women who risked their lives to ease the harsh conditions in the camps.

The late Bernard T. FitzPatrick, a former insurance executive, lived in St. Paul, Minnesota. The late John A. Sweetser III, a teacher and writer, lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota.