Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of...

Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of her Survivors | James Hornfischer | Great Book

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Ship of Ghosts: Th...

	Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of her Survivors James Hornfischer Bantam, 2007 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Son, we?re going to Hell."

The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR?s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn?t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death.

Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, the deadly rain of fire from Japanese bombers, and the almost superhuman effort of the crew as they miraculously escaped disaster again and again?until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner. For more than three years their fate would be a mystery to families waiting at home.

In the brutal privation of jungle POW camps dubiously immortalized in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, the war continued for the men of the Houston?a life-and-death struggle to survive forced labor, starvation, disease, and psychological torture. Here is the gritty, unvarnished story of the infamous Burma?Thailand Death Railway glamorized by Hollywood, but which in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals, who fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, will?power?and the undying faith that their country would prevail.

Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of Houston?s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it?s easy to forget that every single word is true.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Interested in naval warfare?

If you like books on ww2 or simply a novel that will keep you up all night.Read Ship of ghost's and The last stand of the tin can sailor's.I am a voracious reader especially of military book's and James d.Hornfischer I wish would write a novel every month I would buy it!Seriously I cannot recommend this author more highly!

Great Book

I dont like to write long reviews. This book is a great story about men surviving thru a time of horror and a the fellowship they had with each other. A good read with a good story. Pick it up if you like war stories.

Ship of Ghosts

An amazing and thorough story of a sometimes forgotten part of WWII. Carefully researched with written and spoken words from victims and survivors. I hope he is preparing another book to accompany this and Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.

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Excellent Work, But Mostly Aftermath

Author James Hornfischer definitely knows how to write books, and on the writing, research, and presentation this book would be normally rated by me at five stars plus. Unfortunately, the book is over 500 pages long including useful notes and appendices, whereas the Houston slides beneath the waves on page 145. In short, this book is mostly about the survivors and their experience in Japanese captivity -- a very worthwile story, but not one having to do with the Houston. The buyer needs to beware of this, and if one's interest only extends to the saga of the Houston itself, page 145 is the end of the book.

That being said, the Houston's saga is thrilling as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Allied cooperation and inter-Allied command. As Hornfischer points out with devastating clarity, cooperative commands like that of the ABDA didn't work -- they just got everyone killed. The Dutch leadership was ineffective, and often at odds with the American. This is a good lesson for those who are in favor of United Nations control of international peace-keeping forces that tend to be helpless when confronted by a resolute enemy.

The politics are fascinating particularly since the Dutch empire was indefensible, and one wonders if sacrificing good American ships and men was worth attempting to shore up another European nation's imperialism in the name of solidarity. Both men and ships would have been much more useful if they had been saved for the Solomons campaign later in the year, particularly since there is no evidence that they slowed the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia by a single day. The Battle of Sunda Strait took place because the Perth and Houston blundered into the Japanese invasion force, which continued on schedule despite receiving a minor scare. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Houston and her men were wasted. One also wonders how high Captain Rooks would have rised in World War II had he not been written off with his ship.

The book also discloses the lack of effective training in the American Navy at the time, particularly with respect to fighting at night. Although Rooks went further than almost all other captains during this period, her ship remained below the standards for the Japanese in combat efficiency. This is not meant to denigrate the American sailors and officers, but training at the time avoided dangerous exercises that might cause casualties in order to placate an uninformed public and their muckraking politicians searching for headlines (and indeed, that continues to the present day). Instead of following the German dictum that "sweat saves blood", American forces at the time trained leisurely to avoid that sweat and paid later in higher casualties.

A very minor criticism -- I would have enjoyed reading about Admiral Hart's subsequent career and life as one of the major players putting the Houston into the situation she found herself in 1942.

Regarding the second two-thirds of the book, the litany of Japanese atrocities is important, but almost tiresome. The author does extremely well in holding the reader's interest and dispelling myths about prisoner life (as compared with that presented by Hollywood).

Even more compelling are the actions by both the US and Japanese governments after the war. Houston survivors received nothing from the Japanese, and an insulting $2.50 per day from the US (only because they were maltreated -- otherwise it would have been $1.50 per day). As everyone knows, the government that paid the greatest reparations after the war was the US (for holding persons of Japanese ancestry in detention camps and the Marshall Plan). The Soviet Union acquired great swaths of territory (1/3 of Poland, for example) in Europe as well as acquiring Sakalin and the Kuriles, but that was agreed at Yalta to remake the map rather than as war reparations. Even worse is that American citizens were/are prohibited from seeking damages from the Japanese by our State Department, even for their time as slave laborers. As always, American servicemen were ridden hard and put away wet by our government. Where was the Marshall Plan to repay the Houston survivors for their sacrifices? Ah, but I digress.....

Anyway, this is a very fine work, but the reader should know what it really covers before deciding on a purchase.

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Not All its Made Out to Be

As a lover of military history, and WWII in particular, I was eager to read another great sea story, so highly rated. The title, Ship of Ghosts, was most intriguing, suggesting the story of a warship that kept up a fight while out of all communications. Unfortunately, the title turned out to be misleading. The USS Houston was sunk rather quickly, in its second battle of the war, so the bulk of the book describes how the American POWs survived a brutal Japanese imprisonment. An interesting read in itself, but not what it represents to be. I note that out of 420 pages, only 80 are about the sea battles. Hornfischer is a fabulous writer (maybe too good - once in a while the prose seems to get in the way of the storyline)and the story moves along, so "Ship of Ghosts" is worth reading, but readers should expect a story of survival, less so of battle and tactics.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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