Assigned to Zama, an Army hospital in Japan in September 1968, Glasser
arrived as a pediatrician in the U.S. Army Medical Corps to care for the
children of officers and high-ranking government officials. The
hospital's main mission, however, was to support the war and care for
the wounded. "They all came through the hospitals of Japan ... the
chopper pilots and the RTO's, the forward observers, the cooks, the
medics and the sergeants... the heroes and the ones under military
arrest, the drug addicts and the killers." At Zama, an average of six to
eight thousand patients were attended to per month, and the death and
suffering were staggering. The soldiers counted their days by the length
of their tour--one year, or 365 days--and they knew, down to the day,
how much time they had left. Glasser tells their stories--of lives
shockingly interrupted by the tragedies of war--with moving, humane
eloquence.