Vices and virtues: ethical dilemmas of a disappearing manWhen Sidney Stewart was released in Manchuria in 1945 after 3 years of imprisonment by the Japanese , the 6'3 American weighed 65 pounds. (Goldstein). Stewart was an Army soldier stationed in Manila in 1942 when they were overpowered by the Japanese. The 21-year-old was not the type to kill. Sure, he killed when necessary, but he wasn't a murderer. He had been sent to Luzon, on the Bataan Peninsula, after the Japanese invasion and was quickly captured after his group surrendered. The deaths started immediately: surrender was not an option for the Japanese who told them: “you are not honorable prisoners of war. You are captives and you will be treated as captives” (Stewart, 84). The treatment was horrific starting with the death march, in which Stewart and 75,000 others marched 65 miles for 6 days with almost no food or water from Mariveles, south of the Bataan Peninsula, San Fernando , to the north (History). Those who tried to reach the water or were too weak to follow the group were brutally murdered (History). Stewart arrived at Camp O'Donnell, a Japanese prison camp. In Give Us This Day by Sidney Stewart, Stewart shared the ethical dilemmas that challenged him during his 3 years of captivity by the Japanese during World War II. Stewart was not a killer and faced an ethical dilemma when he was forced to kill. Before surrendering, during a battle on Bataan, Stewart and a Japanese soldier both dove into the same hole to avoid a falling mortar shell. Stewart was able to reach his weapon before his opponent who then surrendered. During the battle, Stewart knew it would not be possible to take a prisoner. But, he writes, he could not force himself to hate him (Stewart, 52). “I have... middle of paper... yeah, it's not a typical WWII experience or even a typical POW experience. There was no “shame” (Hynes, 233) or “adventure” (Hynes, 236) as Hynes mentions in The Soldiers' Tale. And the conditions were certainly not “surprisingly comfortable” (Hynes, 237). Hynes wrote that "there was not much room for heroism in a Japanese prison" (Hynes, 256) but Stewart's ethos was a heroic representation of the righteousness of humanity. Works Cited Goldstein, Richard. Sidney Stewart died at 78; Survivor of the Bataan Death March. The New York Times. April 5, 1998. the web. April 06, 2014. History.com Staff. Bataan Death March. History.com. Internet. April 6, 2013.Hynes, Samues. The Soldiers' Story: Bearing Witness to Modern Warfare. Adult Viking. Print. April 1, 1997.Stewart, Sidney. Give us this day. WW Norton & Company; Revised edition. Print. April 17 1999.