Judith M. Heiman, 2007, The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II.

Judith M. Heiman, 2007, The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II. Judith M. Heiman, 2007, The Airmen and the Headhunters: A TrueStory of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue ofWorld War II. New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Harcourt, Inc., 289 pp. Judith Heimann is known to most of us from her earlier work on thelife of Tom Harrisson Not to be confused with Tom Harrison.Tom Harrisson (1911-1976) was a British polymath (although often described as an anthropologist his degree studies at Cambridge were in ecology before he left to live in Oxford). . In this work, she follows up on stories which shediscovered in her research into Tom's months of Borneo war againstthe Japanese. The book details the experiences of two American aircrewswhose B24 Liberators crashed in Borneo following missions over BruneiBay Brunei Bay is the gateway to Brunei and Borneo.Coordinates: (in November 1944 and January 1945, respectively). The story followsthe struggle to survive as these young men found themselves suddenly inthe vast interior of north-central Borneo. A great deal of the bookdescribes their experiences with the Lun Dayeh of the Kemaloh region ofwhat was then the Mentarang District of Japanese-occupied Dutch Borneo.Many of these villagers had been converted to Christianity a decadeearlier by Christian and Missionary Alliance The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) is an Evangelical Protestant denomination within Christianity.Founded by Rev. Albert Benjamin Simpson in 1887, the Christian & Missionary Alliance did not start off as a denomination, but rather began as two distinct parachurch missionaries ErnestPresswood (Canadian) and John Willfinger (American). By the time theairmen arrived, Rev. Presswood was in a prison camp on Sulawesi and Rev.Willfinger, who surrendered to the Japanese to protect those he had cometo serve, had been executed in Tarakan on Christmas Eve 1942. This is a story that took a great deal of careful work over manyyears to put together. Heimann conducted interviews in Borneo and theUnited States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. with many of the survivors or their families. She gatheredmaterial from archives in the United States, Great Britain Great Britain,officially United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, constitutional monarchy (2005 est. pop. 60,441,000), 94,226 sq mi (244,044 sq km), on the British Isles, off W Europe. The country is often referred to simply as Britain. andAustralia. With these and especially the diaries and stories written bysome of the participants, Heimann gives us a very close-up view of theyoung airmen's courage, comradeship com��rade?n.1. A person who shares one's interests or activities; a friend or companion.2. often Comrade A fellow member of a group, especially a fellow member of the Communist Party. and, most especially, the manyacts of kindness of the Makanahap family and their Lun Dayeh hosts. Thenumerous characters and locations lend a Lord of the Rings quality tothe story and the addition of two very useful maps, a glossary, indexand extensive notes on sources greatly add to the utility of the bookfor both general readers and Borneo scholars. A central character in this drama is William Makahanap, a Christianfrom the Sangi and Talaud islands Ta��la��ud Islands? or Ta��laur IslandsA group of islands of northeast Indonesia northeast of Sulawesi. The islands first came under Dutch control in 1677. in the Celebes. He was the DistrictOfficer in Long Berang, serving under the Japanese. He took theAmericans under his care and arranged with Lun Dayeh villagers to havethem fed and hidden from the Japanese. We learn of his leadership inorganizing a war against the Japanese with the assistance of localChinese shopkeepers and, of course, the Lun Dayeh. Long before thearrival of the SEMUT SEMUT SEnter for Milj?- og UtviklingsTudier (Centre for Environment and Development Studies; Norway)teams from Harrisson's operations in the Plainof Bah bah?interj.Used to express impatient rejection or contempt.bahinterjan expression of contempt or disgust , Makahanap's Lun Dayeh allies were clearing the Mentarang ofthe Japanese. The various tellers of these tales are not always clear from thetext, but to have attributed or quoted each source would haveunreasonably encumbered EncumberedA property owned by one party on which a second party reserves the right to make a valid claim, e.g., a bank's holding of a home mortgage encumbers property. both the writer and reader. All in all, Heimannhas done a superb job of weaving these recollections and observationstogether in a manner which renders both the situations and theperspectives of the various personae meaningful. That being said, otherthan Mentarang District Officer Makahanap's dictated recollectionsand the memories of the surviving Lun Dayeh participants (or at leastthe children of these), this is a tale, as the title correctly credits,about the airmen and their experiences told from their perspectives. Thedescriptions of events that come directly from the diaries, especiallythose of Phil Corrin, are the real gems of the tale. These convey thestate of mind of young Americans who are confronted with a place and apeople totally foreign to their experience. A minor correction aboutthese experiences concerns the Navy airmen's story on pp. 169-170about meeting with Tagal in Long Pa' Sia'. There were no Tagalin Long Pa' Sia' at that time; the people there were LunDayeh. The Tagal were in Meligan, lburu and Ulu Mio. Also, it shouldnoted that the people shown on the back cover are Kenyah, not Lun Dayeh. For scholars of Borneo history this is an important tale about aregion that underwent profound transformations in the aftermath of thewar and the end of Dutch rule. Following the closing of Chinese shops inLong Berang, the Lun Dayeh of the Kemaloh River and its tributariesmigrated south into the Mentarang areas around Malinau or west into theKrayan plateau (Long Umong, for example) or via Long Pa' Sia'into the Mengalong River region of Sabah. In 1968, I heard some of thesestories from villagers in Mendulong and Ranau. In 1971, I flew tosouthern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, and interviewed Maj. Dan lllerich, who gave me acopy of Phil Coffin's diary, entitled "Borneo Log." Inever got around to following up on all this and 1 am grateful to JudithHeimann for putting together these scattered stories in such a carefuland useful way. I am confident that many others will agree with thesesentiments. (Jay Crain, Department of Anthropology, California StateUniversity, Sacramento California State University, Sacramento, more commonly referred to as Sacramento State or Sac State, is a public university located in the city of Sacramento, California, USA. It is part of the California State University system. )