Pearl Harbor Survivors: An Oral History of 24 Servicemen Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I bought this short paperback at the Arizona Memorial bookstore for $35 and it must be the worst value I have ever received from a book. It reads like a rough draft and appears not to have benefited from any editing at all. Further, the subtitle is misleading. This cannot be an oral history unless the author is totally incompetent when conducting an interview. It appears to be compiled from written remembrances, and some of the stories are too valuable to have been treated so superficially. It appears the author didn't bother trying to learn more than was offered. There are many extraneous facts such as the number of residents in a sailor's home town, and not nearly enough context presented based on his life before and during the war. There are errors on almost every page both factual and editorial. Some are the result of an obvious reliance on spell-checker software instead of the human eye: "...we saw their mob bay doors open and bombs coming down." Finally, the presentation is confusing and disorganized with random "points of interest" scattered among the accounts for no apparent reason. Too bad this book was not written by another man from Illinois, Studs Terkel. Then we would have learned what it really was like.

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On December 7, 1941, Japan waged a surprise attack on the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. It was a major victory for the Japanese Navy, which in less than two hours destroyed 188 American planes, damaged another 159, and sunk or seriously damaged 18 U.S. warships. The battleships Arizona and Oklahoma were sunk. The battleships California, West Virginia and Tennessee were badly damaged and would not rejoin the United States fleet for months. Over 2,400 American military personnel were killed and 1,178 were wounded. The Japanese lost 29 planes and pilots, five midget submarines and one large sub with their crews.Here are 24 personal accounts of servicemen who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. These accounts cover in detail the location of each man and his experience during and after the actual attack. Also included is general information about Pearl Harbor.