Scattered Far and Wide

This work tells the story of the Naval Academy's Class of 1938 and their eventful service during the Second World War. These young men were scattered across Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. They struggled for survival as part of the Navy's Asiatic Fleet attempting to stem the Imperial Japanese Navy's onslaught in the war's early months; were captured and shipped to brutal prisoner of war camps; took to the air off aircraft carriers as members of torpedo, bomber, and fighter squadrons during the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway; and served on submarines in the conflict's latter stages, enduring some of the most legendary war patrols in the history of the Silent Service. Of the 438 men who graduated with this class, 421 served in the war, and 42 were killed in combat. This book, framed in three parts to cover the contributions of these Naval Academy graduates in the Pacific Theater from the Sea, in the Air, and below the Surface - shares the experiences of a group of men who fought the full scope of the war against Japan. Opening with their lives on the Yard, chapters quickly follow the graduates to their first postings as the United States enters the war in December of '41. Offering personal perspectives but on a monumental scale of events, readers are taken from Pearl Harbor to the Coral Sea and Midway, to the Japanese home islands.