# Looking for an author interested in a hell of a story
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [June 1, 2015, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312 "2015-06-01T03:21:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Dingbang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dingbang)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2015, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/21 "2015-06-04T18:59:26Z")
Craterlayer,
I was away for a few days but I just sent you an email reply this morning thanking you for sending along the scans. It’s a lot to digest, so it might be another couple of days before I can get back to you with any real feedback. From what I’ve looked at so far, I’m still interested and your account seems accurate.
Btw, the disappointing results for the Unbroken movie are a moot point as far as author like me deciding whether the story is commercially viable. Hillenbrand has sold about 5 million copies of Unbroken, and I’m certain she received a huge chunk of money for the movie rights. She doesn’t care much whether the movie performed well or not, at least not financially. When your book sells 5 million copies, I doubt you lose sleep worrying about the box office returns. She and Unbroken are a huge success no matter how the movie performs.
And it’s misguided to say that the treatment of Japanese POWs has been told already, so that’s that. It’s the story that matters, not just the facts behind it.
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2015, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/22 "2015-06-04T19:17:10Z")
I’ve thought about why I’ve brought this subject now, And I believe it is because of the little German kid I met recently. He came to see the large vegetable garden I planted in my brother’s backyard in the Pocono’s. He loved it, Then started talking about bananas.
He said Americans gave him a bunch of bananas, and even though he he had never even seen one before, he ate the whole bunch. He said his stomach was in pain for a week, but he still went out every morning cause of all the American planes overhead that were dropping food and candy on the kids.
I asked Karl when he was born, he said 1942. I then asked if he lived in Berlin. He said yes.
I had only met this man two weeks before, and he’s a master craftsman. Walking through his yard and his home is like going through a Wonderland. He’s the rare kind of guy you fall in love immediately with, and who does the same to you.
I left my brother’s that afternoon, while driving home it hit me: This little kid, that came here to America, made a success of his life, is now a happy old man who spreads that happiness around, was one of those poorly dressed, hungry little kids on the Soviet side of the fence that our Airmen dropped food and candy to as they were landing.
I remember seeing the pictures of those kids. They reminded me of the painting “Guernica” , but totally the opposite.
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 4, 2015, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/23 "2015-06-04T19:40:49Z")
Thanks for replying, I was concerned. I only care about the story being told.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/24 "2015-06-05T14:57:57Z")
> [@CraterLayer](#):
>
> was one of those poorly dressed, hungry little kids \*\*on the Soviet side of the fence \*\*that our Airmen dropped food and candy to as they were landing.
The Berlin wall construction began in 1961. Your friend would have been 19 at the time. Something about your description doesn’t make sense.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/25 "2015-06-05T15:02:37Z")
> **[Raisin Bombers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raisin_Bombers)**
>
> Raisin Bombers (German: Rosinenbomber) was the colloquial name given by Berliners to the Western Allied (American and British) transport aircraft which brought in supplies by airlift to West Berlin during the Soviet Berlin Blockade in 1948/1949. In American English they were called Candy Bombers.
> The name came from the fact that some pilots started voluntarily to throw sweets and candy (and, presumably, also raisins) on little tinkered parachutes out of the window to children lined up on the ...
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/26 "2015-06-05T16:42:53Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> The Berlin wall construction began in 1961. Your friend would have been 19 at the time. Something about your description doesn’t make sense.
He didn’t say the Berlin Wall, he said a fence. And Templehof Airport was [enclosed by a fence](https://haysvillelibrary.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/47f7019f6f2a47d90691ec8b03-berlin-children.jpg) (even if the fence didn’t separate it from the Soviet Zone). As your link indicates, someone born in 1942 would have been six or seven during the Berlin Airlift.
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/27 "2015-06-05T19:22:58Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> The Berlin wall construction began in 1961. Your friend would have been 19 at the time. Something about your description doesn’t make sense.
The Berlin wall was built in 1961, replacing the barbed wire wall that was there long before.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/28 "2015-06-05T19:45:19Z")
I was more confused by the term **Soviet side**. I was well aware of the _candy droppers_ and I would have expected a fence around the airport. I don’t believe the Soviets cordoned off their section of Berlin until much later after the end of the war.
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/29 "2015-06-05T20:19:18Z")
The Berlin airlift was probably the most humane thing that happened during the past century. Read up on it. It’s not just the little children. When those planes landed with desperately needed supplies, It was old women, young women, girls and boys who worked 24 hours a day to get those planes unloaded, to get them back up into the air as soon as possible to come back full again.
The Soviets, on the other hand, tried to put up huge poles to block our planes from landing
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/30 "2015-06-05T21:14:23Z")
An unsullied Worker’s Paradise.
Of course, after their losses in The Great Patriotic War, Stalin may have wanted to starve as many Germans as possible. He was a rather nasty guy.
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### Author:  [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/31 "2015-06-05T21:15:27Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> As I said earlier, I’m not discounting the personal nature and interest of the OP regarding this story…I just don’t see it being commercial. WRT, exposing the Japanese treatment of POW’s that’s been done and not that revealing.
For what it’s worth, _Flyboys_, by James Bradley, was a national bestseller in the U.S. about ten years ago. It detailed torture, beheadings, and cannibalism of Navy pilots by Japanese forces on Chichi Jima. (For all I know, **Dingbang** is Bradley.)
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 5, 2015, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/32 "2015-06-05T22:00:59Z")
That book sounds exactly the opposite of what i hope Dingbang will produce.
I never read that book, but if that’s all you recall from it, then it must have been a bad book.
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2015, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/33 "2015-06-06T03:10:34Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#):
>
> An unsullied Worker’s Paradise.
>
> Of course, after their losses in The Great Patriotic War, Stalin may have wanted to starve as many Germans as possible. He was a rather nasty guy.
West Berlin was more of a territorial and political thing for him. It was deep in East German territory, but the freedoms and relative economic recovery there were a big pimple on his ass. He had already starved the Germans under his control, had stripped them of any machinery or manufacturing capability left there after the war, and was still holding well over a million German soldiers as prisoners.
Despite the barbed wire fences, thousands were making it to the Western side weekly. His way to stop this was to blockade West Berlin.
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### Author:  [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2015, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/34 "2015-06-06T13:04:00Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#):
>
> Unbroken was actually considered somewhat of a failure, even though it grossed $116 million, it was expected to do much more than that given all of the promotion money spent by the studio.
>
> It only garnered 3 Oscar nominations for technical things like sound and cinematography and didn’t win.
>
> It only has a Rotten Tomato score of 51%.
>
> I highly doubt other Hollywood studios are rushing to do WWII POW dramas such as this anytime soon.
It made $165M worldwide on a budget of $65M, so it did well enough financially.
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### Author:  [@Sauron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sauron)
#### Post date: [June 6, 2015, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/35 "2015-06-06T23:21:22Z")
> [@CraterLayer](#):
>
> That book sounds exactly the opposite of what i hope Dingbang will produce.
>
> I never read that book, but if that’s all you recall from it, then it must have been a bad book.
Well, no … I was responding to Omar Little’s point about the subject matter not being commercially viable. Flyboys was a very nuanced book; it delved into the backstories of the men (boys, really) who were shot down over Chichi Jima, how Japan became a world power in the first place, the perversion of the samurai code of bushido, and why Chichi Jima (and Iwo Jima) were so important in the first place. It also detailed the results of the firebombing campaign over Japan.
Essentially, it was a treatise on the importance of naval air power in defeating Japan, but the core story was about the boys who were shot down and what happened to them. I would strongly recommend it if you’re interested in WWII non-fiction.
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2015, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/36 "2015-06-07T04:40:15Z")
Thank you Sauron, it sounds like the kind of book I should read, and I promise I will.
i should
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2015, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/37 "2015-06-07T05:04:33Z")
Dingbang, thanks , but I believe that it’s best that I pursue other avenues to get this story told. It appears that you don’t have the time nor the interest for this project.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/38 "2015-06-07T15:33:40Z")
Yeah Dingbang, it’s been a week already. Shouldn’t you have a first draft done already?
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### Author:  [@CraterLayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CraterLayer)
#### Post date: [June 7, 2015, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/39 "2015-06-07T16:13:58Z")
I was at least looking for some feedback.
However, I had a bad day yesterday. I think I may have taken out my frustrations in the wrong direction. Dingbang, please ignore that post. I look forward to further communications.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [June 9, 2015, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/looking-for-an-author-interested-in-a-hell-of-a-story/721312/40 "2015-06-09T08:04:26Z")
As a long-term resident of Osaka I would like to know more about this story. I wonder where the mass grave was located?
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