What did you do in the war, Daddy? It's a question sons are said to ask their fathers; fathers, that is, who have been in a war, and sons who are old enough to realize it. I never asked my father directly, but I must have been about four years old when I understood that my father had served in World War II and learned, also, that he had been an American prisoner of war in Japan. That was another question entirely, and the answer was wrapped in secrecy as carefully as my father's Navy uniform was packed in mothballs in a government issue footlocker that I rarely saw open.

My father spoke about his war years only from time to time when I was young. When he did, my brother, sister, and I used to hang on to his every word—harrowing tales that held out the same promise of adventure as one of Conrad's yarns—how he had battled malaria, weathered typhoons, been forced to skin and eat a cat ("gamey as hell," he said) in dire need of food. But every once in a while, as I grew older, I glimpsed another side of those stories—from official war photographs showing him with his fellow POWs, news clippings listing him as MIA, and his strangely stoical attitude toward death.