In October, 1944, the U.S. Navy submarine Tang was on her fifth Pacific patrol led by Commander Richard O'Kane, a man whose hatred for the enemy was impossible to miss or ignore. He had, after all, sunk over 100,000 tons of Japanese vessels in his previous patrols and was always on the lookout for more. That October, O'Kane indeed found more, but at a great cost.
On October 24, the U.S.S. Tang found herself in the Formosa Strait surrounded by a convoy of Japanese vessels. Although O'Kane torpedoed some of the ships, one of the Tang's torpedoes misfired and struck itself, sending the sub and it's 87-man crew to the bottom of the South China Sea.
But the story's just beginning. Kershaw's gripping account, gathered mainly from the survivors themselves, takes the reader from the frantic moments when the crew realized their fate to the successful escape of a handful of the sailors to their rescue by a Japanese ship to a Japanese torture camp and beyond.
Escape from the Deep never lets up, not for a second. I was hooked from the first paragraph and felt like I never got a good breath until I'd finished the book. Even the person who absolutely hates history in any form will find the book hard to put down. Yes, it's an exciting page-turner and good history, but Escape from the Deep also leaves the reader with thoughts and questions that last beyond the initial excitement of the story: the nature and rules of war, the human capacity for inflicting suffering, concepts of forgiveness, revenge, brotherhood, understanding and survival. Highly recommended.
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