Books – Recommended Reading

	Unit Robby by Charles S. Robinson
	The experience of an American in China in World War II
	Price: $36.93 – New (Amazon)
	“Days of Infamy” by John Costello
	Based on declassified American and British top-secret documents, the author reveals how major strategic and diplomatic miscalculations by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill together with the military blunders committed by General MacArthur set the stage for Japan’s successful attacks on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field. For the first time, he documents how it was the devastating loss of air power in the Philippines – and not the battleships lost at Pearl – which permitted Japan’s lightning conquest of the Far East in 1942.Published in 1994
	Price: Around $20.00 – New
	By Water Beneath The Walls by Benjamin Milligan
	A gripping history chronicling the fits and starts of American special operations and the ultimate rise of the Navy SEALs from unarmed frogmen to elite, go-anywhere commandos – as told by one of their own.
	Price: $21.63 – New (Amazon)
	SAMPAN SAILOR: A Navy Man’s Adventures in WWII China by Clayton Mishler
	Recounts the author’s experiences with a secret intelligence and guerrilla-training unit. Published in 1994
	Price: Around $2.00 – New (Amazon)
	The House of Memory: Reflections on Youth and War by John Freely
	John Freely’s voice is still astonishingly youthful, full of wonder, humor, and gratitude, as he remembers his fully lived life. Born in Brooklyn to Irish immigrants, he went to Ireland with his mother when he was five, where he spent his young childhood on his grandfather’s farm. Western Ireland was impoverished by the times, but rich in beauty and intriguing people, and it opened in him a lifelong desire to see the world and its inhabitants. When he was seven, he returned to Brooklyn, and the antics of a coming-of-age boy played out on streets filled with character and characters. He took whatever jobs he could when times got tough, always shaking off his losses and moving on, hungry to see and experience what was next. He joined the U.S. Navy at seventeen to “see the world,” and did just that. In wartime, while bringing supplies and ammunition over the Stilwell-Burma Road to Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese guerrilla forces, Freely served alongside them during the last weeks of World War II in the Tibetan borderlands of China, a Shangri-la that war had turned into hell on earth.
	Price: Around $12.00 – New
	Ninety-Day Wonder: Flight To Guerrilla War by John Horton
	In his four years of navy service during WWII, Ensign John Horton’s military career ranged from communications in Manila to commander of a guerrilla training camp for Chinese soldiers. He also engaged with the Chinese in acts of sabotage, blowing up railroads and bridges in Japanese-occupied areas.Horton experienced a fascinating yet little-known aect of the war. With eyewitness accounts from both chinese and U.S. soldiers , he provides a rare and riveting glimpse of a china filled with bravery and foreboding, a country fighting a vicious enemy while teetering on the brink of civil war. Published in 2000
	Price: Around $18.00 – New
	“The OSS in China” by Maochun Yu
	Tells the dramatic story of the intelligence activities of the Office Of Strategic Services (OSS) in China during World War II. Gives insight into the barriers faced by Admiral Miles.Published in 1997
	Price: Around $65.00 – New
	“”And I was there”: Pearl Harbor And Midway – Breaking Secrets” by Rear Adm. Edwin T. Layton, Roger Pineau, John Costello
	Dedicated to RI Guys and gives the REAL story of the intelligence community including proof that FDR had no prior knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor.Published in 1985
	Price: Around $10.00 – New
	“SACO – The Rice Paddy Navy” by Roy Olin Stratton
	How two men, Lieutenant General Tai Li, Chief of Nationalist China’s Secret Service, and RADM (then Captain) Milton E. Miles, USN, Chief of the US Strategic Services in the Far East, met at Chungking one day in early 1942 and formulated plans for prosecuting the Navy’s part of the war in China and its waters; how they selected a group of technicians and fighting men to carry out America’s objectives; the patience, tolerance and understanding employed by them in welding Chinese guerrilla forces into an organization whose activities extended from the borders of the Gobi Desert to French Indochina and from the Himalayan Mountains in Western Yunaan to China’s Pacific seaboard, in front of and behind enemy lines.Published in 1950, Reprinted in 2004
	Price: $19.95 From the Nimitz Museum Bookstore
	“A Different Kind of War: The little-known story of the combined guerrilla forces created in China by the U.S. Navy and the Chinese during World War II” by Milton E. Miles
	Admiral Miles account of the activities of SACO in WWII. Published in 1967
	Price: Only available second-hand
	“The Army Navy Game” by Roy Stratton
	Tells the dramatic story of the intelligence activities of the Office Of Strategic Services (OSS) in China during World War II. Gives insight into the barriers faced by Admiral Miles.Published in 1977
	Price: Only available second-hand
	“From Troy to Entebbe: Special Operations in Ancient and Modern Times” by John Arquilla
	Gives history of special operations warfare, used today as text in Navy Graduate School at Monterey, CA. Gives great kudos to SACO.Published in 1996
	Price: Around $44.00 – New
	The Rice Paddy Navy: U.S. Sailors Undercover in China by Linda Kush
	After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy knew it would need vital information from the Pacific. Captain Milton ‘Mary’ Miles journeyed to China to set up weather stations and monitor the Chinese coastline – and to spy on the Japanese. After a meeting with Chiang Kai-shek’s spymaster, General Dia Li, the Sino-American Cooperative Organization was born.
	Price: $7.38 – New (Amazon)
	“Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor” by Robert B. Stinnett
	Brings to light devastating evidence that FDR knew of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Gives credit to R.I. Published in 2001
	Price: Around $16.00 Paperback