Linda Goetz Holmes, Historian
Linda Goetz Holmes has been interviewing, writing and
publishing works about World War II prisoners in the Pacific for the
past 30 years. She was the first Pacific War historian appointed to the
U.S. Government Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government
Records Interagency Working Group (IWG), under the aegis of the National
Archives, tasked with locating and declassifying material about World
War II war crimes. The IWG presented its final report to Congress in
April 2007. Her 1994 book, 4000 Bowls of Rice: A Prisoner of War Comes
Home, about Allied prisoners of war forced to build the infamous Burma
Railway during World War II, was selected for inclusion in the John E.
Taylor Collection of Military History and Intelligence at The National
Archives in College Park, MD. It was re-issued in a new, updated soft
cover edition in September 2007 by Brick Tower Press in New York. Her
2001 book, Unjust Enrichment, naming the Japanese companies which used
our prisoners of war for slave labor, was published in a new, updated
edition in Spring 2008 by Konecky Associates. Ms. Holmes was the first
to connect the dots showing that our POWs were working on Japanese
company property, and that their death rate in Japanese captivity was
nearly 40% (military prisoners in Nazi captivity had just 1% death
rate).
Ms. Holmes has presented her findings before
audiences at the National Security Agency Center for Cryptologic History; the
Admiral Nimitz National Museum of the Pacific War; the Commonwealth Club
in San Francisco; and numerous veteran's groups, civic
associations,symposia, libraries and classrooms throughout the country. She
has been interviewed by national and local TV and radio stations and print
media, and has appeared in documentaries on the History Channel, Fox News,
and ABC 20/20, among others.
Ms. Holmes is currently working on her third
book about American prisoners of the Japanese in its largest camp, operated
by Mitsubishiin Mukden, Manchuria, scheduled for publication in March
2010. Ms. Holmes, a lifelong journalist and editor, is a graduate
of Wellesley College. She is a former editor at the CBS
Television network; a U.S. correspondent for the Australian, and served
as president of the Society of the Silurians, the nation's oldest
press club from 2004-2006. She is a member of the board of directors of
the Overseas Press Club Foundation. She recently received a
Distinguished Alumni Award from her alma mater, Scarsdale NY High School.Ms.
Holmes lives in her 1775 house on Shelter Island, NY. She is active in
civic affairs, and serves on the Suffolk County Planning Commission.
Books by Linda Goetz Holmes
| Unjust Enrichment | 4000 Bowls of Rice | Coming: Book on Mukden |
