Tallahassee friends honor a father in new book, 'Brothers Born in Adversity'

On this Memorial Day weekend, the haunting stories of World War II are still hitting home 78 years after the end of the war, especially for Perry Crowell, a Tallahassee resident since 1976.

Close friend and Tallahassee author Larry Dean Reese has recently published a book about Crowell's father, who died in 1982.

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The story of George Crowell's experiences as a POW of the Japanese in the Philippines and Japan during World War II took him three years to research and write. The book, released in March, is titled "Brothers Born of Adversity" ($16.95 paperback) and is available on Amazon.

In the book's preface, Reese explains how the book came to be:

"I have known George Crowell’s son, Perry, for around 30 years. We were colleagues at Florida State University and over the years became close friends. Occasionally, Perry would mention that his father was a prisoner of war during WWII. I love history and believe family history should be preserved and had often encouraged him to research and write a book about his father’s life and war experiences."

Perry Crowell encouraged Reese to write the book.

"With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the need to stay closer to home, it seemed like a good time to take up the project to research and write his father’s story," Reese writes in the preface. "It is my hope that this book will do justice in telling and preserving the story of the horrific events that they and the other POWs experienced."

"The story of my father, George Wyman Crowell, should not go unrecognized or be forgotten. It has taken me over 60 years to come to this conclusion, Perry Crowell acknowledges in the book's forward. He and his dad were not close growing up, and Perry believes his father likely suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"By exploring the factors that shaped my father’s life, and reflecting on my relationship with him, I now have a better understanding of who my father was and appreciate and admire the man who endured years of brutal imprisonment and suffered greatly for our country," Perry Crowell writes in the foreword.

"After starting my research, I realized that it would be difficult to tell George’s story without including the story of George’s close friend, Frank “Max” Maxwell," Reese writes in the preface. "The two men had become close friends while prisoners of the Japanese and learned to rely on each other in the midst of severe adversity; to the point where they became as close as brothers."

Two army nurses, who were sisters of Crowell, volunteered for duty in the Pacific Theater in hopes of finding their brother, even though it put them in harm’s way during the battle of Okinawa.

Perry Crowell said his father spent 44 months as a prisoner of war of the Japanese in the Philippines and Japan. He was captured on Jan. 2, 1942 in Manila. On Dec. 13, 1944, as a result of the Japanese needing laborers in Japan to work in their mines, 1,619 weak and starving POWs began their journey to Japan upon a Japanese cargo ship named the Oryoku Maru.

"Such a trip should have taken a week or 10 days but turned into seven weeks of hell," Perry Crowell explains in an email. "The following day the Oryoku Maru was bombed by US fighter planes and the POWs who were not killed in the attack (approximately 1,300) had to swim to shore," Crowell said.

"Ships that the Japanese used to transport POWs to Japan became known as Hell Ships, because of the terrible overcrowded conditions and treatment of the POWs. It took two more such ships to get my father and the remaining men to Japan to work as slave laborers. It is estimated that only 274 POWs of the initial 1,619 shipped out on the Oryoku Maru actually survived to see liberation," Crowell said.

Perry Crowell said his hope with Reese's book is to honor "the 1,345 POWs who lost their lives for the freedom we enjoy today."

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Tallahassee author's 'Brothers Born in Adversity' details POW horrors