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a missing naval officer in the Pacific and his family's quest to bring him home
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.
xiv, 588 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm.
They are three brothers, all navy men, who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of World War II's most crucial moments. Bill is tapped by Franklin D. Roosevelt to run the first Map Room in Washington. Benny is the gunnery and antiaircraft officer on the USS Enterprise, one of the only ships to escape Pearl Harbor and, by the end of 1942, the last aircraft carrier left in the Pacific to defend against the Japanese. Barton, the youngest, gets a plum commission in the Navy Supply Corps because his mother wants him out of harm's way. But this protection plan backfires when Barton is sent to the Philippines and listed as missing-in-action after a Japanese attack. Now it is up to Bill and Benny to rescue him. Based on ten years of research drawn from archives around the world, interviews with fellow shipmates and POWs, and letters half-forgotten in basements, The Jersey Brothers whisks readers from America's front porches to Roosevelt's White House, from Pearl Harbor to Midway and Bataan and from the Pacific battlefronts to the stately home of a fierce New Jersey mother. At its heart, The Jersey Brothers is a family story, written by one of its own in intimate, novelistic detail. It is a remarkable tale of agony and triumph, of an ordinary young man who shows extraordinary courage as the enemy does everything short of killing him and of brotherly love tested under the tortures of war.
April 1942, Luzon, the Philippines -- Benny -- Helen -- Bill -- Cabanatuan, Spring 1942 -- White House Map Room, April 1942 -- "This force is bound for Tokyo" -- Barton, 1930-1941 -- The perils of escape-and a little baseball -- A brother's burden: the search -- Midway -- Under siege: JN-25 -- To Davao: en avant! -- And then there was one: USS Enterprise vs. Japan -- The other war: Army-Navy football -- Happy days at the penal colony -- Winter's grief -- Escape: crime and punishment -- Farewell to the White House -- A tale of atrocities -- August 1943: Allied War Summit, Quebec, Canada -- Revenge on the innocent and a covert plan -- Secrets inside the oxygen tent -- Hero of Bataan vs. the War Department -- Bad tidings -- Politics in Brisbane -- "Proceed to Kwajalein" -- The best-laid plans -- Initiation at Saipan -- Decampment -- September 1944, Lilac Hedges -- Hopes dashed -- Setbacks -- Through a prism: MacArthur's return -- What Benny knew -- The Oryoko Maru -- End game in the Pacific -- A sailor's nightmare -- In the end, a question of casualties -- and sea power -- No peace at Lilac Hedges -- Final hours.
Includes bibliographical references and index.