Mission. New York. Doubleday. 2001
The Ghosts of Bataan Hampton Sides succeeded in representing the missing, forgotten, unheard, and often misinterpreted stories of some of World War II”s most dramatic missions. The goal of Ghost Soldiers was to bring together the scattered tales both horrific and heroic aspects of the conflict from a historically factual and unbiased point of view. The situation of the Americans, Japanese, and Filipinos following the outbreak of WWII in the pacific in 1941, all come into play. Thus they must be represented as factually and clearly as possible. Right from the start, Sides begins to separate the multiple cultures, ideologies, backgrounds, and motives. He does this in order to step back and truly analyze the involved characters both in contrast and in comparison to get a complete foundation of understanding. Numerous approaches were used to produce the depth that many stories that writers tell just utterly lack. Biographies are used throughout the whole novel to introduce key places, people, and background information which helps connect human reasoning to every action enacted. As soon as these plots are initiated, it commences to even greater of roots of the history of racial and social prejudice that keep reiterating similar errors attributed to mere human nature. As an example, in the past Filipinos were always bearing the brunt as the minority recurrent times and as the Japanese and Americans battle into the picture, the restoration of pride and revenge is fulfilled. Finally this leads it down to the main point of the military histories through major battles, events, and missions that is attempted in the Philippines during World War II. Every single soldier, leader, piece of machinery, goal, and tactic can decide the outcome of the battle, or even the war, for that matter. But in this situation the bar raises due to the large number of