Authored Books

Unique from most books about the Pearl Harbor attack, it takes the readers to the very scene of the battles and allows them to share in the horrors of the men's experiences and feel their inner most emotions. It includes combat action from all of Oahu's six airfields and many of the ships in the harbor. It also describes the experiences of several of the Japanese participants to get a flavor of the emotions felt by the men who brought the attack to Oahu.

You'll stand alongside John Finn who, although wounded repeatedly, took on strafing Zeros at Kaneohe Air Station in a deadly duel using his single machine gun. You'll live with a group of sailors trapped for days on the capsized battleship Oklahoma as they awaited rescue or death, whichever came first.

You'll also sit in the cockpit of a P-40 with Ken Taylor and George Welch in their first aerial combat high over Oahu still wearing their tuxedos from the night before. And you'll lie in the cramped confines of a Japanese midget submarine with its two man crew on their 32 hour ordeal attempting to enter Pearl Harbor.

Individually, each of the 16 chapters presents some startling and little-known information on the experiences of those involved in that episode. Collectively, the chapters provide an amazing historical account of America's darkest day. Some of the information has just come to light within the past several years and thus is being included in book form for the first time.

The book also offers irrefutable logic and facts to support a conclusion rarely found in other accounts of the battle. It concludes that the attack was not the overwhelming Japanese victory that others claim, but a resounding defeat from which Japan never recovered.

This book is a full length ship's history and tells the incredible story of the USS Ward, (DD-139/APD-16). This ship was built in 1918 to fight German submarines but was too late for actual combat. In 1941, after 19 years in the inactive reserve fleet, it was called upon again to serve. And serve it did!

Although now 23 years old and obsolete by many standards, it fired America's first shot of WW II when it sighted and sank a submarine attempting to enter Pearl Harbor an hour before the Japanese attacked by air on December 7, 1941. But it was not done yet.

After conversion to a destroyer-transport, it fought for two more years in the South Pacific carrying troops to hostile shores in almost a score of amphibious operations. During her last operation, on Leyte Island, she was overwhelmed by kamikaze aircraft and sunk on December 7, 1944.

In this book you'll share the experiences of the young crew of reservists as they stalk, fire on, and sink an unknown submarine at Pearl Habor. You'll witness the Ward's crew fight back in several attacks by over 100 Japanese aircraft which surrounded the ship off Guadalcanal in 1943. And you'll experience the ship's frightening struggle to survive when set upon by a terrible new weapon - the kamikaze.

Share these and many other emotional moments of the little ship with bold officers and crew that was bombed, shelled, and strafed in three years of action without losing a man in combat. Discover why it took over 60 years to confirm what Ward accomplished at Pearl Harbor.

The saga of the Ward deserves to be told and this book, based on archival reports and personal interviews has finally told the full story. Whether you are a historian, navy veteran, or casual reader, you will find this story intriguing.