Maggie Jones

maggie.jones@knoxnews.com

Knoxville author T. Martin Bennett has loved true stories from a young age.

He read biographies in school, and when he saw the film, "The Elephant Man" in 1981, it touched him because it tells the sad, but true tale of Joseph Merrick, who was born with severe deformities.

"It was a very dramatic, sad story, but yet there was a positive streak of light in the middle of it, and I actually watched that film again just three or four years ago just to see if it was as good as I remembered. It was better than I remembered, so I think that there's something about true stories for me in particular," said Bennett.

"I think for people in general if it's a fictional story, we're really glad the guy got the girl, the bad guy went to jail or whatever, but when it's a true story, you kind of walk away going 'whoa this really actually happened,' and there's something about it that's very powerful."

Now, Bennett has gone beyond being a fan of true stories. He writes about them. The second edition of his book, "Wounded Tiger," which tells the story of Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, is available now.

Its release was timed with the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2016. "Wounded Tiger" is available at Knoxville's Barnes & Noble, 8029 Kingston Pike. The book's second edition includes more than 10,000 additional words, more photos and updated maps and names of characters. The first edition was released in 2014.

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At first, Bennett wrote "Wounded Tiger" as a screenplay for a film. He received an offer from a studio with full funding, but they wanted to retain full creative control. Bennett said he wants to tell the story correctly in film, so he declined the studio's offer and began novelizing the book in 2009.

He's currently working to bring his book to life as a film and meeting with film funders and has to secure around $5 million in capital to put the movie into development.

Bennett said he stumbled across the story of Fuchida around 11 years ago.

"I'd never heard anything about it," said Bennett. "I thought it couldn't be very significant because if it was, everyone would know about it. I started researching his life, and my jaw dropped. I thought this is a really really interesting story, and I'd never heard a single word about it."

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Starting in 2005, Bennett spent three years researching Fuchida's life and discovered other characters that became central to the story.

"Fuchida is half of the story of 'Wounded Tiger,'" said Bennett. "Then there's Jacob DeShazer, a young American in his late 20s, who volunteered for the Army Air Corps, ... and then after Pearl Harbor, he went on the Doolittle Raid and ended up becoming a prisoner of war, and the third plotline is the Covell family who are educators, teachers and missionaries in Japan, who fled from Japan to the Philippines."

"Wounded Tiger" tells the stories of Fuchida, DeShazer and the Covell family, mainly Peggy Covell.

In the book, they all search for healing after they experience tragedy in their lives, and eventually, their paths cross.

"They are three separate stories, but they eventually come together in a very powerful and a very rewarding and compelling way, and it's so uncanny," said Bennett. "There's so many coincidences in this story. If this were a fictional story, it simply wouldn't be any good because people would say 'Martin there's a million to one odds of these things happening. They just would never happen.' Except that they did happen, and that's the amazing thing about the story."

During his three years of research, Bennett examined several sources. He used a non-fiction account on Fuchida's life, "God's Samurai: Lead Pilot at Pearl Harbor" by Gordon Prange, as a source. Bennett consulted with Dr. Donald Goldstein, who helped edit and put the book to print.

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"After the Pacific War, the United States had officers who debriefed leading men in the Imperial Japanese Navy to find out what happened and why, and since Fuchida survived the war, and he was the pilot who led the attack on Pearl Harbor, there are just reams and reams of pages of interviews with him. Those interviews were later compiled in the book 'God's Samurai.'"

Bennett found more sources in the book's bibliography. He found family members who looked over the novel. He met with Fuchida's daughter Miyako Fuchida Overturf, Peggy's brother David Covell and DeShazer's daughter Carol Dixon.

Bennett decided on the title "Wounded Tiger" for a number of reasons.

"I would say 'Wounded Tiger' is Fuchida as an individual, Japan as a nation, and in a very broad sense, I would say everyone is a wounded tiger in that all of us have potential for great power and great beauty, and all of us have been hurt by others and wounded by others," said Bennett. "We've been wounded by our own choices, and those wounds limit us to what we can achieve and attain. And until and unless we are healed, we will always be held back, but there is a potential for all people to reach who they're created to be, but there has to be healing from an outside source."