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An American Sailor's Firsthand Account of Pearl Harbor
William Morrow
December 2016
On Sale: November 22, 2016
320 pages
ISBN: 0062645358
EAN: 9780062645357
Kindle: B01ER6OKOO
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Memoir | Non-Fiction History
THE FIRST MEMOIR BY A USS ARIZONA SURVIVOR: Donald Stratton,
one of the battleship's five living heroes, delivers an
"epic,"* "powerful,"** and "intimate"** eyewitness account
of Pearl Harbor and his unforgettable return to the fight At 8:06 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald
Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of
explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard
the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan’s
surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near
death and burned across two thirds of his body, Don, a
nineteen-year-old Nebraskan who had been steeled by the
Great Depression and Dust Bowl, summoned the will to haul
himself hand over hand across a rope tethered to a
neighboring vessel. Forty-five feet below, the harbor’s
flaming, oil-slick water boiled with enemy bullets; all
around him the world tore itself apart. In this extraordinary never-before-told eyewitness account
of the Pearl Harbor attack—the only memoir ever written by a
survivor of the USS Arizona—ninety-four-year-old veteran
Donald Stratton finally shares his unforgettable personal
tale of bravery and survival on December 7, 1941, his
harrowing recovery, and his inspiring determination to
return to the fight. Don and four other sailors made it safely across the same
line that morning, a small miracle on a day that claimed the
lives of 1,177 of their Arizona shipmates—approximately half
the American fatalities at Pearl Harbor. Sent to military
hospitals for a year, Don refused doctors’ advice to
amputate his limbs and battled to relearn how to walk. The
U.S. Navy gave him a medical discharge, believing he would
never again be fit for service, but Don had unfinished
business. In June 1944, he sailed back into the teeth of the
Pacific War on a destroyer, destined for combat in the
crucial battles of Leyte Gulf, Luzon, and Okinawa, thus
earning the distinction of having been present for the
opening shots and the final major battle of America’s Second
World War. As the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack
approaches, Don, a great-grandfather of five and one of five
living survivors of the Arizona, offers an unprecedentedly
intimate reflection on the tragedy that drew America into
the greatest armed conflict in history. All the Gallant Men
is a book for the ages, one of the most remarkable—and
remarkably inspiring—memoirs of any kind to appear in recent
years.
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