Author: Harry Spiller

Harry Spiller is an American oral historian and writer whose work preserves first-person testimony about war, policing, and crime. From Wake Island to Berlin was published by Turner in 1997 as a 264-page collection of accounts from former American prisoners of war. Its chapters follow servicemen captured in widely separated theatres, including Wake Island, Java, the Philippines, the Burma railway, Japan, and Germany. Rather than presenting one continuous memoir, Spiller organizes individual experiences so that captivity is seen through the voices of soldiers who endured different camps and military circumstances. The United States Army Heritage and Education Center lists this title within a bibliography of Second World War prisoner-of-war studies, confirming its documentary place beside broader historical surveys and personal narratives. From Wake Island to Berlin also uses photographs to support those recollections. Spiller’s editorial role is central: he gathers testimony, supplies historical framing, and lets distinct witnesses describe the conditions, movements, and survival strategies that shaped their wartime imprisonment.