War Stories New Book Salutes People Who Survived World War Ii In Remarkable Ways

There was a moment in the oil-slicked burning water around the sinking prison ship when Jack Donohoe - stripped, emaciated and with his Japanese captors still shooting at him - felt only jubilation.

“I was free. Away from them. And if I died, I died free,” said Donohoe.

A day later, still in the water and barely conscious, the prisoner of war was rescued by Filipino guerrillas who harbored him until a rendezvous with a U.S. submarine finally set him free.

Coming across Donohoe in Charles Grizzle’s book “Riding the Bomb” is like sitting down at a restaurant and realizing the man next to you is Gen. Colin Powell. It’s unbelievable, he seems so ordinary and yet somehow, you know that history is sitting right there.

All through “Riding the Bomb,” you feel like the ultimate eavesdropper, uncovering scoop after scoop about Spokane people.

Donohoe is a retired electrical engineer at Kaiser Aluminum. From the Bataan Death March to more than two years in death camps to his escape from a torpedoed prison ship, you keep thinking “unbelievable.”

That’s what Spokane author Charles Grizzle thought, too, when he heard these stories. Stories from his old friend Bob Greene, a retired insurance agent, who as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne made more than a dozen jumps during the war, usually into combat.

“I could not fathom this kindly old gentleman had this kind of background,” Grizzle said.

From those conversations and a widening realization that there were amazing stories all around him, Grizzle began working on a World War II book that would take three years and lead him to eight Spokane heroes. Greene and Donohoe join:

Sam Grashio, famed pilot who escaped from the notorious Japanese prisoner of war camp Davao.

Don Falk, a B-17 co-pilot who survived the explosion of his plane over Belgium and terrible injuries as a German prisoner of war.

Bob Blasen, former commander of an engineering unit who survived his Jeep hitting a landmine.

Fred Shiosaki, a Japanese-American who served in the famed 442nd Combat Team, one of the most decorated units in military history.

Bob Ashback, a gunnery sergeant who witnessed an accidental bombing.

Brigitte Bogner Janke, who, as a 9-year-old German refugee fleeing the Russian advance, rode to freedom on a truck loaded with explosives.

Janke’s “Riding the Bomb” became a working description of how Grizzle’s subjects, most of them under age 20, survived the war.

“They all did not mount and ride an actual bomb,” Grizzle writes. “Their predicaments were, nonetheless, explosive, life-threatening and terrifying as if they were juggling nitroglycerin while skipping rope.”

As an Army veteran who served between Korea and Vietnam, Grizzle was transfixed by the recollections of World War II and how fast they were disappearing.

“People don’t know these stories; young people don’t know these stories. I had to tell these stories because they are too good to lose,” Grizzle said.

An Indiana native turned Hollywood publicist, Grizzle left a career at Disney 15 years ago for family life in Spokane. Despite Spokane’s military background, he was surprised at the breadth of stories in the area.

If the tales sound like those told in restaurant booths over bottomless cups of coffee, it’s because often they were.

Grizzle first learned of Janke’s refugee flight after a casual remark made at a family dinner. (One of her sons is married to Grizzle’s daughter.) Janke survived the war, married and immigrated to Spokane, where she raised three sons.

Grizzle’s research took him to an ex-prisoner of war reunion in Spokane where he discovered “a professional degree of modesty” among survivors.

Pressing ahead, he learned stories that people had never shared, uncovered nightmares never discussed and backed away from survivors who preferred to forget.

He wrestled with telling the stories in the language of the time (using the words Krauts and Japs, for instance) and decided it was more important to reflect personal recollections than to be politically correct.

A total of 12 Northwest people are featured in the book. Only one account takes place outside the World War II years, that of a young sailor lined up with the dead on the decks of the battleship Wyoming during an influenza epidemic during World War I.

A passerby realized the sailor was breathing and saved him. That man was Charles Grizzle’s father, and the account and book is dedicated to him.

Grizzle, who worked in advertising in Spokane, is retired and planning a second book.

He spent a frustrating year dealing with publishers for “Riding the Bomb” (he felt he was too late for their 50th anniversary of the war’s end deadlines) before creating Plateau Productions and publishing the hard-cover book himself.

After a quiet winter release, the book has just been picked up by the two largest book distributors in the country. It is available through the Army-Air Force Exchange Service, at the Spokane Library and in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene bookstores ($22.95).

The book includes photos and brief epilogues that reveal some of what happened to the subjects. How they married, had children and survived.

There was not room for everything. Focusing in on amazing episodes forced Grizzle to leave out such stories as that of Janke’s husband, Edwin, who as a child refugee also survived the war and division of Germany.

You won’t read how Donohoe’s three years of captivity left him with recurring skin cancer, heart disease (linked to beriberi) and a parasite that entered his feet as he slaved in rice paddies.

Or how the soft-spoken engineer suffers constant ringing in his ears from the ship explosion. Or how his wife Fern helped him survive. Or how a weekly ex-POW support group at the Veterans Medical Center and a monthly one for wives has helped him and his family heal. Or how it allowed him finally to speak of his experiences.

“Riding the Bomb” doesn’t tell you everything about Jack Donohoe and the others. But it does give you a deep and humbling look at people you might meet over a Spokane church pew or grocery cart.

And it gives you the chance to shake their hand.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos