Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her by Maxwell Taylor Ke nnedy (Simon and Schuster, NY, 2008,
Flotilla The Patuxent Naval Campaign in the War of 1812 DONALD G. SHOMETTE foreword by Fred W Hopkins, Jr. "A comprehensive view of the complex nature and incredible impact of the naval war of 1812 as ir was played our on the turb id waters of the Patuxenr River. " -from rhe fo rewo rd $38.00 hardcover
Chesapeake Ferries A Waterborne Tradition, 1636-2000 CLARAANN SIMMONS In rhis engaging and gracefu lly written narrative, Simmons rakes the reader from rhe earliest days of colonial serrlement, when all who journeyed through rhe region crossed rhe waterways, ro rhe age of bridge buildi ng rhar forever changed rhe way people traveled. Maryland Historical Society $34. 00 paperback
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UN I VE RSIT Y PR ESS
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5 15pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, ISBN 978-0-7 432-6080-0 ; $30hc) On 11 May 1945, two inexperienced Japanese pilots, Yas uno ri Seizo and Kiyos hi Ogawa, defied hundreds of guns and tens of tho usands of shells and bullets and successfully crashed their planes in to USS Bunker Hill, an Essex-class ai rcraft carrier participati ng in the attack on Okinawa. The resulting devastation claimed m o re th an 400 American lives and resulted in the removal of the carrier from active battle. Coming in the closing phases of the war, the arrack on the Bunker H ill has attracted far less attention than the incident deserved . Maxwell Taylor Kennedy's In Danger's H our has done the public in the U nited Stares and Japan a genuine service by sensitively retelling these events fro m the perspectives of m en on both sides of the conflict. My late fa ther-in-law served on the Bunker Hill during the attack and never really described the events to his children. Reading Kennedy's acco unt answers the question of why he said so little. Carrier duty d uring this phase of the war was a nearly unending series of near-miss attacks, little sleep, and unrelenting stress. The extent of the dam age that resulted from the Seizo and O gawa attack, in part a result of design flaws in the earliest of the carriers, co upled with its timing and the rem arkable targeting of the pilots, led to a horro r of fire, explosions, trapped m en, painful deaths, and narrow escapes. The book's chief strengths are its clear analysis of the ship's complex design and how it influenced the post-crash events, the integration of the ho nest and often blunt m emories of the m en who survived, and its sensitive portrayal of the Japanese pilots who proved as much victims of circumstances as any man o n the ship. Through interviews with surviving Japanese pilots, their fri ends and their fami lies, Kennedy reveals the tragic plight of the kamikazes. Far from fanatics, the m en who led this attack were well educated bur ill trained warriors who, caught between deep cultural expectations and the crushing real-
ities of an unsuccessful war, paid the price for the imperial ambitions of their superiors. Although repetitive in places, the book is exciting and extremely informative, and reveals aspects of the Naval war in the Pacific little known to the public. JOHN j ENSEN Wakefield, Rh ode Island
When Fortune Frowns by William H . White (Tiller Publishing, St. Michaels, Maryland, 2009, 352pp, autho r's notes, ISBN 978- 1-888671-22-3; $29 .95 hc)
During the 1789 m utiny onboard H MAV Bounty, led by Fletcher C hristian and his mares, Bounty's cap tain, Lieutenant W illiam Bligh , was set adrift in a 23foot boat along with eighteen of his officers and men . Sixteen murineers fo und refuge on Tahiti, while C hristian and nine of his shipmates-feeling too vulnerable to discovery at this well-known locationmade off fo r obscure Pitcairn Island. Those who had stayed in Tahiti lived happily, for a time, am o ng their native wives and friends, but discovery was always a stro ng possibility. In an as tounding feat of seamanship, Bligh and his crew made their way back to Tofula in the Dutch East Indies, traveling 3,6 18 open-ocean miles in forty-e ight days. When it learned of the Bounty mutiny, a shocked British Admiralty was d eterm ined that this heino us crime would n ot go unp unished. U nder the command of Cap tain Edward Edwards, H MS Pandora, an armed frigate with 140
SEA HISTORY 127, SUMMER 2009