Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara

When I heard of this I bought a copy for Kindle, figuring that my Better Half would find it useful in putting together her father's memoirs (submarine quartermaster in WWII). As is often the case in our clan(*), somebody else wound up reading the book first. This time it was me.

Hara rewrote the book on torpedo attacks for the Japanese Navy, and as the blurb says, became a very successful destroyer captain. As the war wore on, successful came to mean surviving more than it meant actually accomplishing the official mission.

He is quite frank in his judgments. He tries hard to explain what went on during naval battles (which this novice found quite helpful). And he tries to explain how he managed to survive "a hundred sorties."

If you have any interest in the Pacific war, read it.

---

(*) Christmas afternoon has often been a quiet time, with everybody perusing everybody else's book haul. If you have to drive back to Wisconsin the next day, you have to read in a hurry.