Bücher von Robert Livingston

On May 3, 1945 a swarm of Japanese suicide planes attacked an American ship, the USS Aaron Ward during the fierce struggle for Okinawa. The ship was all but destroyed and forty-two sailors died in the 52-minute battle. One of those killed was Laverne Schroeder, only two months before his eighteenth birthday. After the war an anchor from the ship was placed in the military section of the Bluff City Cemetery in Illinois. There the anchor remains, a silent reminder of kamikaze pilots who wanted to die and young sailors who wanted to live. This is the story of the Aaron Ward's gallant fight, a brave young man, and a reporter's quest to honor the ship's legacy.

In the last years of World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army launched 9,000 balloons bombs in a last ditch effort to attack the American mainland. Each balloon carried one high explosive bomb and a number of incendiaries. In theory, these weapons would cause forest fires on the West Coast, and, if used to carry biological agents, create panic. Traveling in the easterly jet stream many of the balloons did reach the United States and detonate as planned. Many, however, simply disappeared into the forests of the northwest, armed and dangerous. This is the story of one missing balloon bomb that set off a terrifying forest fire near the California-Oregon border, and of three men who were inexplicably linked by time and history to the to the resulting inferno. In a moment of truth, when the fire crowned and torched the land, and survival depended on "e;tasting the wind,"e; these men did.

The North Atlantic, February 3, 1943. A German submarine, the U-223 torpedoes the USAT Dorchester. The ship sinks within a few minutes with the loss of over 700 lives. The official Naval Records indicate that four Army chaplains aboard the ship gave their lifejackets to frightened soldiers. Praying together the chaplains stayed on the sinking ship. They are known today as the Four Immortal Chaplains, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and two Protestant ministers. There is evidence that a Fifth Chaplain, a Black sailor in the Coast Guard, also saved many lives that terrible night. His story, lost in history, should also be honored for his courage and sacrifice at a time when racism was endemic in the Navy.