The Jersey Brothers

Starred review from April 1, 2017
The plight of three brothers and their mother during one of the most shameful episodes of World War II.The abandonment of American servicemen in the defense of the Philippines in 1942 propelled Freeman--a former speechwriter and public relations executive and current board chair of The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland--to re-create the tragic story of her uncle, Barton Cross, who suffered a long imprisonment in Japanese POW camps. In a fluid, restrained, and deeply researched narrative, the author returns to the awful chaos just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Cross, a Supply Corps officer on the submarine tender USS Otus, was wounded by shrapnel in the subsequent Japanese air attack on Cavite Navy Base, Manila, and inexplicably left behind by his ship at Sternberg Hospital. Moreover, while Gen. Douglas MacArthur had ordered the evacuation of the Army wounded on the last vessel to depart Manila before the city fell to the Japanese, the 30-some Navy wounded were again neglected. They were eventually transported over the next three years--along with thousands of other captured American servicemen--from one miserable Japanese POW camp to another. "The macabre displays," writes Freeman, "were intended to humiliate the captured Americans and brandish the new Japanese dominion over the Filipinos." Meanwhile, Cross' two older half brothers, Benny and Bill, "lifelong protectors" and "Annapolis-minted officers," along with their mother, Helen, frantically lobbied to find news of their lost brother, as conditions in the camps were notoriously bad, and several of the POW ships were bombed late in the war by U.S. attacks. Freeman has reopened the long-closed inquiry into her uncle's account and scoured the diaries and letters that Helen wrote to Washington, D.C., as well as those written by fellow prisoners. The result is an obvious labor of love, a touching, suspenseful, and deeply troubling story of one family's patriotic devotion and betrayal. A grieving family ultimately finds closure in this meticulously researched and compelling history.

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March 1, 2017

Freeman's (board chair, the Writer's Ctr.) latest book is an investigation into her uncle's fate. Barton and his brothers Benny and Bill were navy officers during World War II. While serving in the Pacific theater, Barton was captured during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. The primary theme is the family's attempts to determine Barton's whereabouts during and after the war, with the conflict in the Pacific as the backdrop. The narrative provides insights into Japanese treatment of POWs and the daily life of these prisoners. Some chapters are nearly documentary histories, with transcribed correspondence among family members. Some flaws hinder the book's value, including its length and that many conversations are not cited. Interviews conducted more than 60 year after World War II form the basis for much of the content. VERDICT A touching story that would have been better in abbreviated form. Recommended for readers looking for personal accounts of World War II, instead of a history.--Matthew Wayman, Pennsylvania State Univ. Lib., Schuylkill Haven

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2016

One Jersey brother was chosen by Roosevelt to run his first Map Room; another served as gunnery and anti-aircraft officer on the USS Enterprise, by late 1942 the last ship left in the Pacific to counter the Japanese. The third brother ended up missing in action after the Philippines fell, and Freeman spent ten years researching this tale of his two brothers trying to rescue him. An in-house favorite.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017
Intending to write a family history focusing on her uncle, Arthur Bertram Cross Jr., a U.S. WWII naval officer and prisoner of the Japanese, Freeman found herself researching deeply into the POW archives. Cross had two older half-brothers, also naval officers. One, William Mott (the author's father), was well-positioned to pursue leads, first as an assistant to President Roosevelt responsible for the maps on which FDR tracked the war and later as a staff officer involved in amphibious landings. The other half-brother served on the aircraft carrier Enterprise. Both men's involvement in air-sea battles allowed Freeman to connect the family's private anguish about Cross' safety to the wider course of the Pacific War. By late 1944, battles resumed in the Philippines, and the Japanese decided to ship their POWs to Japan. Freeman relies on postwar revelations and interviews with surviving prisoners who knew Cross to depict the transfer operation in its brutal inhumanity and finally discover her uncle's fate. Freeman proves to be a strongly motivated researcher, who poignantly conveys a sorrowful experience encountered by thousands of American families in WWII.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)