Ch.

29
1) What do we find out at the beginning of Ch. 29 (what has the Japanese extra scared? Who
shows up at Naoetsu?)
- A B-29 circles over the village, and bombs some parts of the island but they miss the
prisoners.
2) What is the Bird’s nickname at Mitsushima?
- Mutsuhiro Wantanabe
3) What did the Mitsushima POWs plan to do to the Bird? Which part actually worked?
- Murder squads were created, they planned on drowning him or hurling him off a cliff,
prisoners also made plans to poison him with doses of atropine and morphine.
- Whitfield devised a plan to make a bottle with saline solution and glucose and he mixed
it with stool samples infected with amoebic and bacillary dysentery, the bird didn't get
sick the first time so they mixed samples from 6 infected POW’s and it worked.
4) What happened to the POW officers after the guard noticed fish was stolen from the galley?
- Each enlisted man would punch each officer and thief in the face, as hard as possible,
the Bird studied their blows and if he was not satisfied he hit them and beat them with clubs
and made them do it again.
5) In what ways is Louie feeling demoralized?
- He was daydreaming about the Olympics and yearned for being able to compete, he
also was surrounded by death and started to feel numb, he hoped for rescue but had
no faith in it.
6) What became obvious to the POWs when it came to the Japanese civilians and the war in
Japan overall?
- If a massively destructive air war would not win surrender, invasion seemed the only
possibility
7) What happened at Borneo’s Batu Lintang camp?
- Allied fighters circled the camp every day,
8) How did the Japanese camps prepare for the kill-all order?
- Machine guns and barrels of accelerant were brought in, metal dog tags were confiscated,
prisoners were ordered to dig tunnels and caverns

Ch. 30
1) After the goat died and Louie went to the doctor (w/o permission), what does the Bird make
him do? How does this event end and how long does the whole thing last?
- Louie was told to hold a 6ft wooden beam over his head and if he moved his arms he
was to be beaten a gun
- The event lasted 37 minutes, Watanabe hit Louie in the stomach and he dropped the
plank on his head and passed out
2) What happened to the village of Nagaoka?
- The citizens thought it was raining but it was actually napalm
3) What did Louie and the POWs plan to do to the Bird after they just could not take his
punishments anymore?
 - They would leap onto the Bird and pull him to the top floor of the barracks and push him
out the window into the water to drown
4) Who was Paul Tibbets and what was his job?
- He was a veteran bomber pilot and his job was to drop the atomic bomb on hiroshima.

Ch. 31
1) What 1 word did the POWs hear that they did not know/understand but would change the
course of the war and life in general afterward?
- Atomic bomb
2) What 2 cities were hit by the Americans?
- Nagasaki and Hiroshima
3) Why did the POWs consider themselves “fish in a barrel”?
- Their camp was corned against the sea and two rivers
4) What arrived that made Louie fight harder to stay alive?
- He received 5 letters from his family
5) What happened on August 20 th? Where were the POWs sent? What appeared overhead to
cause them to celebrate?
- They were told to assemble outside and were sent down to the river, they had been told that
the war had come to a point of cessation, they saw an american torpedo bomber overhead
6) What was stored in the dropped pants?
- An american magazine detailing the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the abrupt
end to the war
7) What happened to the Bird?
- He had taken off his uniform, picked up a sack of rice, and vanished off