Gone Asiatic

An account of Martin's four-and-a-half years in the Navy during the frightening Khrushchev years, when everyone knew thermo-nuclear war was inevitable. From boot-camp and temporary duty on idyllic San Nicolas Island, to Tsoying, Yokosuka, Hongkong, Manila, Olongapo, Okinawa, Borneo, and Honolulu, almost drowning in Subic Bay, hitchhiking across the US, saving a boddy's life in the San Diego surf, to San Francisco nightlife, he tells how he went in the Navy a boy and came out a man. He describes three bothers in WWII surviving kamikaze strikes and the 37th division's infantry's battle for Manila. Three other brothers served in the Cold War army; one was a tank driver and gunner in Korea, and two others served in Germany when NATO forces were nose to nose with Russian troops in East Germany. From this pacifist Mennonite family, he was the youngest of seven boys serving in the military. Ironically, his father was imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth as a conscientious objector in World War I. The book includes a fellow veteran's funny, hard-to-believe Cold War experiences as a Nuclear Weaponsman on a carrier in the years leading up to Vietnam, and suggests the newer attitudes about American military might. -- From back cover.