The Purple Heart of wartime propaganda that had a stereotypical portrayal of the Japanese (usually by actors of non-Japanese origin) as sadistic tyrants trying to wrest the secret of their aircraft carrier's location during torture sessions. The 16 air crews did arrive over Japan from the USS Hornet (CV-8). President Franklin D. Roosevelt said the crews came from Shangri-La, a fictional place described in the 1933 novel "Lost Horizon" by British author James Hilton. The USS Shangri-La (CV-38) was commissioned in 1944. "The Purple Heart" was based on the real-life story of eight Doolittle Raiders who were captured from two different crews: Lieutenants
Oh What a Paradise It Seems themes, including love, lust, life in suburbia, and a sense of displacement. Writing in the "New York Times", John Leonard called the novella "perfect Cheever; it is perfect, period." John Updike, a friend of Cheever, preferred it to Cheever's novel "Falconer", and remarked on the theme of ice skating, which he called his "Wordsworthian hike" and his "connection with elemental purity and the awesome depths above and below". Oh What a Paradise It Seems Oh What a Paradise It Seems is a 1982 novella by John Cheever. It is Cheever's last work of fiction, published shortly before his death from