Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDRs Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors
by By Hornfischer, James D.
Category: History , Military , Naval

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"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 Using journals and letters,  rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals,  and the eyewitness accounts of Houston’s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted  an account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.