Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GI's Secret from Postwar Japan

by Terese Svoboda

After her Uncle's suicide, Terese Svoboda investigates his stunning claim that MPs may have executed their own men during the occupation of Japan after World war II

[Our captain] commended us for being good soldiers and doing our job well and having a minimum of problems. Then he dropped a bomb. He said the prison was getting overcrowded, terribly overcrowded.

As a child Terese Svoboda thought of her uncle as Superman, with "Black Clark Kent glasses, grapefruit-sized biceps." At eighty, he could still boast a washboard stomach, but in March 2004, he became seriously depressed. Svoboda investigates his terrifying story of what happened during his time as an MP, interviewing dozens of elderly ex-GIs and visiting Japan to try to discover the truth.

In Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Svoboda offers a striking and carefully wrought personal account of an often painful search for information. She intersperses excerpts of her uncle's recordings and letters to his wife with her own research, and shows how the vagaries of military justice can allow the worst to happen and then be buried by time and protocol

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Memoir, World War II

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 22, 2008

About the author

Terese Svoboda has published 19 books of fiction, poetry, memoir and biography. Svoboda's writing has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, BOMB, Columbia, Yale Review, and the Paris Review. She lives in New York.

Reviews

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest and well written, this personal investigation uncovers/unravels layers of family (and a shameful chapter in US history) mythology while creating an unblinking and decent portrait of an individual at war with his depression due to a haunting chapter from his past that was reopened as a result of the US occupation of Iraq and the reported atrocities from Abu Ghraib.

[Jeremie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The secret is never discovered. It's more about the writer's journey of researching something buried by the military

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished, because I'm stubborn.

This felt like a book that was created because the author spent too much time doing the research to not write a book, but then didn't have anything to say.

There's no real bomb, no scandal. Just a confusing mishmash of poorly filed records that could constitute a scandal, if you put them together in the right way.

Svoboda's uncle sounds like a real character, though.

[Kathleen Hulser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraordinary insight into the peculiar position of US troops in postwar Japan. Svoboda has a generous vision, that cedes no ground to her penetrating questions into a baffling incident involving her uncle. The darkly evocative language distinguishes this from any military memoir I have ever encountered.

[Tbfrank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but lacking resolution, ultimately unsatisfying. The portrait of a man tortured by memories of past events was compelling. Ms Svoboda has produced a story of great personal value and national and international interest. May she not give up searching for answers.

[Terese Svoboda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey, I think it's good!

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't want to give away the ending of this - so I'll simply say that I swore a lot when I reached the last page. Absolutely worth reading, intriguing, fascinating..

[Cynthia Reeser]

Review here: http://www.prickofthespindle.com/revi...