Radioman: An Eyewitness Account of Pearl Harbor and World War II in the Pacific
This worthy addition to the World War II shelves is based on Hipperson’s interviews with Ray Davis, a U.S. Navy radioman and petty officer during the war. Davis joined the navy before the war to get away from the family farm and had already served in the Arctic when the outbreak of war caught him at Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the torpedo bombers of the carrier Yorktown, he was lucky enough to survive the squadron’s strike against the Japanese and the subsequent sinking of his ship. Much of the rest of the war he spent in Alaska, flying missions against the Japanese-held Kuriles and working with Russian pilots sent to assist with the ferrying of lend-lease American aircraft. He also conducted a long-distance courtship of the woman to whom he was still married in 2007. A very readable memoir by a member of the generation that, however great it may have been, definitely did a thankless job well enough to keep things from becoming a great deal worse for the U.S. --Roland Green