Cassie DePeckel

Dorothy shifts her weight on her feet, waiting for the guards to leave so she can try to help him.

But Kanishi yells to his guards, thrusting his hands, pantomiming a stabbing motion.

The guards near the vendor hesitate, which only enrages Kanishi more.

He drops his bottle of sake into the dirt, grabs the guard's rifle, and stabs the man in the gut with a bayonet.

The vendor bellows in pain.

Dorothy flinches at the sound.

Kaneshi strides off, bottle in hand.

The guards untie the man from the tree and haul him away.

Dorothy feels dizzy and nauseous.

She still doesn't know why this man has been punished so severely, but she realizes that's the point.

Kanishi wants them to know that anyone can be beaten at any time, for any reason at all.

From Audible Originals, I'm Cassie DePeckel, and this is Against the Odds.

In the early days of World War II, a group of American Navy nurses serving in Manila learned that Japan had taken control of the Philippines.

They were jailed in a Japanese POW camp called Santo Tomas and had no idea when or if they'd be rescued by American forces.

By 1943, a year into their imprisonment, the conditions at Santo Tomas had grown more and more difficult.

The camp was overcrowded and rations were cut, and the commandant subjected the prisoners to increasingly harsh punishments.

Desperate to get out, the nurses made a risky gamble, but they soon realized that they may have made a grave error.

This is episode three, The Devil You Known.

Nurse Mary Rose Harrington flips through a book while picking at her lunch.

It's the same lunch as it is every day in Santo Tomas prison camp, a bowl of rice gruel.