I bought it for a buck on line, used and decided on it to compare it to the movie Steve McQueen was in back in the day.
The guy that wrote it, McKenna, had served in China in the 30s so he had a pretty good idea of what he was talking about.
The book had a lot more in it than they could cram into a movie and the movie was a complete rewrite.
I met an old guy back in the 70s that had been a China Sailor and he had retired there and (like most sailors that retired there) opened a bar. He married a Chinese woman and had a couple of kids by the time the Japanese came in and he managed to escape with his family.
It took him quite a while to get to the States and he had a hard time getting his wife and kids into the country but finagled it somehow. He was accepted back into service and worked in a shipyard for the duration. His wife also worked in a defense plant of some sort for the duration. Interesting couple.
He had been a brown water Navy man on a gunboat in China.
Anyway, the book was a pretty good read.
Interested in reading it? Let me know somehow.
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