The 4th Marines and Soochow Creek
The Legend and the Medal
by F. C. Brown, John Lelle and Roger Sullivan
This work provides a detailed history of the U.S. 4th Marine Regiment from 1914 to 1942, with emphasis on its period of service in China. In addition, the authors have included an amusing sidelight—the story of the (unofficial) Soochow Creek Medal. CLICK TO ORDER

PRISONERS OF THE JAPANESE BY GAVAN DAWS
Gavan Daws combined ten years of documentary research and hundreds of interviews with surviving POWs to write this explosive, first-and-only account of the experiences of the Allied POWs of WWII. Here Daws reveals the survivors' haunting experiences, from the atrocities perpetrated during the Bataan Death March and the building of the Burma-Siam railroad.
 

DEATH MARCH BY DONALD KNOX Excellent oral history of the experiences of the survivors of the surrender of Bataan and Corregidor. POWS detail in their own moving words the starvation, ill-treatment, executions and torture suffered in 3-1/2 years of imprisonment.

 

SOOCHOW & THE 4TH MARINES BY WILLIAM R. EVANS THE true story of a small mongrel dog adopted as a mascot by the 4th Marines in Shanghai, China in 1937. Soochow became a legend in his own time riding around Shanghai in rickshaws, eating sirloin steaks and drinking beer with the other Marines in his own tailor made uniforms. When the 4th was ordered to the Philippines just before Pearl Harbor Private 1st Class Soochow was smuggled aboard ship and went with them. When the Marines were charged with the defense of the island fortress of Corregidor Soochow was also there hitting the foxholes with his buddies and alerting them to incoming Japanese aircraft long before the primitive radar picked them up. And when Corregidor fell to the Japanese in May 1942, Soochow was also taken prisoner, and spent almost three years in Japanese prisoner of war camps with his fellow Marines sharing their meager rations because he was not entitled to one of his own. He survived all this, and upon being liberated by the US Army in 1945, was flown, with one of his Marine buddies, to the States where he became the heroic, pampered, ever aloof mascot at the Marines Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, California, and lived out his days in comfortable, well deserved, military retirement.

ALAMO OF THE PACIFIC BY OTIS H. KING SGT USMC 1939- 1947 The story of the famed "China Marines" on Bataan and Corregidor and what they did to the Enemy as POWs. As historians wrote and re-wrote the events of World War II, they recalled the first six months of the war; recording in detail the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor; the loss of the U.S. Pacific fleet; America's mobilization for war and Hitler's advances in Europe. Ignored to a great extent --- in recounting of those early days of war --- was the story of the siege of Bataan and Corregidor and the horrible fate of the defenders. Much of the history of the men and their fate during the years from December 1941 to August 1945 will never be known. Only in the painful memories of the survivors lies in the events of those years. They are the memories of war. For copies of this book - CLICK HERE    _^_