FIRST INTO NAGASAKI The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War

The suffering and death of American prisoners held by the Japanese during WWII fill what may be the most depressing audiobook yet published. George Weller, the first American reporter to enter Nagasaki after the atomic bomb exploded there, wrote reports of the terrible aftermath, including personal histories of captive American servicemen. Stefan Rudniki's deep, resonant voice aptly imitates the British accents and the accented English spoken by the Japanese. He sets apart the words of many soldiers expressed in brief paragraphs by making the narration sound more stilted than his own. Multiple narrators, however, would have better differentiated among the author's words, GIs' memories, the forward by Walter Cronkite, and long additions by the editor—the author's son. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 07]