Lost in Shangri-la Quotes

“Fear is something I don’t think you experience unless you have a choice. If you have a choice, then you’re liable to be afraid. But without a choice, what is there to be afraid of? You just go along doing what has to be done.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II

“Despite shared language, ethnicity, and culture, alliances nurtured deep, long-standing hostilities toward one another, the original source of which was often unknown. They had always been enemies, and so they remained enemies. Indeed, hostility between alliances defined the natives’ lives. If covered by a glass roof, the valley would’ve been a terrarium of human conflict, an ecosystem fueled by sunshine, river water, pigs, sweet potatoes, and war among neighbors. Their ancestors told them that waging war was a moral obligation and a necessity of life. Men said, “If there is no war, we will die.” War’s permanence was even part of the language. If a man said “our war,” he structured the phrase the same way he’d describe an irrevocable fact. If he spoke of a possession such as “our wood,” he used different parts of speech. The meaning was clear: ownership of wood might change, but wars were forever. When compared with the causes of World War II, the motives underlying native wars were difficult for outsiders to grasp. They didn’t fight for land, wealth, or power. Neither side sought to repel or conquer a foreign people, to protect a way of life, or to change their enemies’ beliefs, which both sides already shared. Neither side considered war a necessary evil, a failure of diplomacy, or an interruption of a desired peace. Peace wasn’t waiting on the far side of war. There was no far side. War moved through different phases in the valley. It ebbed and flowed. But it never ended. A lifetime of war was an inheritance every child could count on.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“fear is something i don't you experience unless you have a choice. If you have a choice, you're liable to be afraid. But without a choice, what is there to be afraid of? You just go along and do what has to be done.".,”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II

“Albert Einstein once said, “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“By 1945, New Guinea was home to more missing airplanes than any country on earth.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“When we saw them, we thought they were coming down on a vine from the sky,” said Lisaniak Mabel, who witnessed the paratroopers’ arrival as a boy.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“The roots of the tangled relationship between Filipinos and Americans dated back nearly fifty years, to 1898 and the Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the Spanish-American War. The treaty gave the United States control over the Philippines, much to the chagrin of the Filipino people, who ached for independence after three centuries under Spanish rule.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“whether a C-47, pulling a loaded glider in thin air, had the horsepower to climb to roughly ten thousand feet quickly enough to make it through the pass that led out of the valley. In addition, the pilots of both aircraft would have to contend with”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“At two o’clock in the afternoon it was time to go. As the passengers lined up outside the Gremlin Special, Prossen told them to expect the tour to last three hours.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II

“In every immediate way, the natives had the upper hand. They outnumbered the survivors by more than ten to one. They were healthy and well fed. None suffered burns, head injuries, or gangrene.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“Shangri-La.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“Changes in the valley during the ensuing decades have been dramatic, but whether for better or worse is a matter of debate.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“It would take a few years, but just as the legend had prophesied, the spirits’ return indeed marked the beginning of the end of the lives they’d always known.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“They wanted revenge for the Bataan Death March of 1942, during which Japanese troops killed or brutalized thousands of captured Filipino and American soldiers along a forced hundred-mile march to a prison camp.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“For girls, war meant having the upper halves of one or more fingers chopped off each time a close relative was killed, to satisfy the dead person’s ghost.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“where nothing seemed to change, war animated communities and bound people to one another. It satisfied a basic human need for festival.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“Thirty-eight U.S. military women who died were members of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the WAFS, and the Women Airforce Service Pilots, the WASPs, who flew military aircraft on noncombat missions to keep male pilots fresh and available for battle.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“the natives “were puzzled as to why the light-skinned men, who must really be ghosts or spirits, had no women with them.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“The death toll had reached twenty-one. The survivors of the Gremlin Special were down to three: John McCollom, a stoic twenty-six-year-old first lieutenant from the Midwest who’d just lost his twin brother; Kenneth Decker, a tech sergeant from the Northwest with awful head wounds who’d just celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday; and Margaret Hastings, an adventure-seeking thirty-year-old WAC corporal from the Northeast who’d missed her date for an ocean swim on the New Guinea coast.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“The jungle had no predatory mammals, but rodents and small marsupials scurried in the underbrush.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“By eight o’clock Margaret was due at her post, a metal desk with a clackety typewriter where daily she proved that war wasn’t just hell, it was hell with paperwork.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“planners hauled out their”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“God damn it, let’s take our pants down,” Walter told his men, “and show them that we’re men, not women. I’m tired of this.” Walter stripped off his shirt, pants, and underwear. His men followed suit. They walked around nude for the next several hours while the natives wandered among them, more modestly attired in penis gourds.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“If you’ve got to go into combat, don’t go by glider. Walk, crawl, parachute, swim, float—anything. But don’t go by glider!”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la

“Eventually, more than 150,000 women served as WACs during World War II, making them the first women other than nurses to join the U.S. Army.”
― Mitchell Zuckoff, Lost in Shangri-la