** spoiler alert ** I found this book hard to read because of the things the POW's had to endure, but hard to put down. Just as the subtitle says, it's a great story of the resilience of the human spirit and forgiveness and redemption -

Quotes from the book:
(telling of the 3 men in the raft on the Pacific Ocean): Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him, and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling." p.148

"Sergeant Francis McNamara had begun his last journey with a panicked act, consuming the rafts' precious food stores, and in doing so, he had placed himself and his raftmates in the deepest jeopardy. But in the last days of his life, in the struggle against the deflating raft and the jumping sharks, he had given all he had left. It wasn't enough to save him--it may have hastened his death--but it may have made the difference between life and death for Phil and Louie. . . .In his dying days, Mac had redeemed himself." p. 165

After being in the midst of the Pacific Ocean on a raft for 30-some days, the men still found joy and gratitude. One day, they awoke to a perfect stillness and beauty, described in detail on p. 166, but here is Louie's conclusion: "Such beauty. . . was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil."

"The crash of the Green Hornet has left Louie and Phil in the most desperate physical extremity, without food, water, or shelter. But on Kwajalein, the guards sought to deprive them of something that had sustained them even as all else had been lost: dignity. This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the sour, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind. . . Louie and Phil learned a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty." pp 182-183

After describing one guard's kindness: "The prisoners understood almost nothing of what Kawamura said, but his goodwill needed no translation. Kawamura could do nothing to improve the physical conditions in which the captives lived, but his kindness was lifesaving." p.185

"The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird." p. 366