They Can’t Take That away from M: The Odyssey of an American POW

Ralph Rentz grew up in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, with one dream: to be a professional musician. Playing clarinet, saxophone, and flute in 1930s big bands, Rentz wanted no part of the looming shadow of war. At age twenty- one, he joined the National Guard to avoid being drafted. Ten days later, he was called up for active duty. Fearful of friendly fire, Rentz then signed up with the Army Air Corps, where he trained to be a radio operator. While on a secret mission in the Pacific, Rentz’s B- 17 was shot down over Malang, Java, where he and the rest of the crew became Japanese POWs. Surviving dysentery, pleurisy, dry beri-beri, tuberculosis, and slave labor, Rentz held on to his dreams of returning to music and waited for a U.S. invasion that never came.

They Can’t Take That Away From Me recounts not only Rentz’s devastating three-and-a-half years of captivity, but also his involvement in a secret government mission that has never been revealed. Rich with the music of his youth, the book conjures up the losses, longing, sacrifices, and stolen dreams of Rentz’s imprisonment and his return to the United States. Bittersweet and evocative, They Can’t Take That Away From Me explores the irony of human resilience amidst the atrocity of war, and in that survival the unconquerable loss of a man’s most cherished dream.