Mr. Michel's War: From Manila to Mukden: An American Navy Officer's War with the Japanese

Mr. Michel's War: From Manila to Mukden: An American Navy Officer's War with the Japanese by Michel, John J.A.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780891416432.

Mr. Michels War is the memoir of a young U.S. Navy junior officers combat experiences during the Battle of the Java Sea and of his life as a "guest of the emperor" as a prisoner of war. Following post-Pearl Harbor Japanese attacks on the Philippines, the Asiatic Fleet began a fighting retreat to the south. Along the way, Michels ship, the Pope, a four-stack relic from World War I, participated in several aggressive counterattacks, surprising a much better equipped and organized enemy. On March 1, 1942, the Pope, surrounded by a fleet of Japanese cruisers, engaged the enemy in desperate combat - and was sunk. Michel and several of his mates, clinging to liferafts, were picked up by the Japanese and sent to POW camps. It is here that Mr. Michels war with the Japanese takes a different - and entirely fascinating - turn as a "guest of the emperor." He recounts surprisingly humane treatment under the Japanese, as he lived with other POWs first at Makassar in the Dutch East Indies, then in Nagasaki, ultimately ending up in Mukden, China, where he remained until August 1945 when an OSS team parachuted into his camp with the news of the Japanese surrender.