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Ship of Ghosts is both smaller and bigger than Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. Hornfisher focuses on the men of the USS Houston, a heavy cruiser assigned to the Asiatic Fleet at the start of the Second World War. Previously President Roosevelt's favorite cruiser, in the dark days of the initial Japanese assaults, the Houston was the lynchpin of the defense of the island of Java.
Part of an ad hoc American-Dutch-British-Australian command, the Houston and the other defenders of Java faced terrible odds against an enemy with absolute air superiority. The Houston dodged bombs and fought a single significant engagement at the Battle of the Java Sea. The Allies didn't have the strength to resist a multipronged Japanese invasion, and in retreating the USS Houston and HMAS Perth sailed right into one of the landing fleets. Houston and Perth gave their best before sinking, but the long ordeal of the survivors had only just begun.
Captured by the Japanese along with the 131st Field Artillery (the Lost Battalion) and the other defenders of Java, the crew of the Houston were shipped to Singapore and an archipelago of Japanese POW camps. The worst of these were along the Railway of Death, a roughly 200 km cut through untracked jungle between Thailand and Burma that would be immortalized (and thoroughly fictionalized) as The Bridge Over The River Kwai. Roughly 20% of the men died of starvation, disease, beatings administered by their captors, and simple hopelessness. Perhaps 200,000 people in total died, mostly native laborers without military discipline to help them maintain field sanitation. Other survivors were dispatched to Japan, and some suffered the supreme misfortune of being killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes, as Japan did not mark their POW transports, one final mark in a litany of Geneva Code violations.
Hornfischer gives his all in commemorating these old veterans, in the years when the WW2 generation passed out of life and into memory. The prose gets a little purple at times, but serves to convey the pride of the pre-War Houston, the desperation of its last battle, and the endurance of its crew in captivity.
Part of an ad hoc American-Dutch-British-Australian command, the Houston and the other defenders of Java faced terrible odds against an enemy with absolute air superiority. The Houston dodged bombs and fought a single significant engagement at the Battle of the Java Sea. The Allies didn't have the strength to resist a multipronged Japanese invasion, and in retreating the USS Houston and HMAS Perth sailed right into one of the landing fleets. Houston and Perth gave their best before sinking, but the long ordeal of the survivors had only just begun.
Captured by the Japanese along with the 131st Field Artillery (the Lost Battalion) and the other defenders of Java, the crew of the Houston were shipped to Singapore and an archipelago of Japanese POW camps. The worst of these were along the Railway of Death, a roughly 200 km cut through untracked jungle between Thailand and Burma that would be immortalized (and thoroughly fictionalized) as The Bridge Over The River Kwai. Roughly 20% of the men died of starvation, disease, beatings administered by their captors, and simple hopelessness. Perhaps 200,000 people in total died, mostly native laborers without military discipline to help them maintain field sanitation. Other survivors were dispatched to Japan, and some suffered the supreme misfortune of being killed by Allied bombs and torpedoes, as Japan did not mark their POW transports, one final mark in a litany of Geneva Code violations.
Hornfischer gives his all in commemorating these old veterans, in the years when the WW2 generation passed out of life and into memory. The prose gets a little purple at times, but serves to convey the pride of the pre-War Houston, the desperation of its last battle, and the endurance of its crew in captivity.