At the outbreak of the Second World War U.S.S. Quail was in the Philippines sweeping mines to provide access for American shipping to South Harbor, Corregidor. Damaged by enemy bombs and guns during the Japanese invasion of the island John Morrill and his fellow men decided to make the decision to scuttle their ship rather than allow it to be captured. This led them to begin one of the most daring escapes of the Second World War. Lieutenant Commander John Morrill and sixteen fellow sailors took a thirty-six-foot diesel boat nearly two thousand miles through Japanese controlled waters. They moved mostly at night, with a homemade sextant, some salvaged charts, with little fresh water and food, but even despite these difficulties they eventually made their way to Darwin, Australia. "This is not only one of the best of the war books, it is a record of cooperative courage achieved by a group of men in a manner wholly American." The New York Times. "A matter of fact, modest and inherently dramatic account of an isolated incident in the pacific war." Kirkus Reviews.

With over 5,200 entries, this volume remains one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA’s fight against Japan in the Second World War. Including books, articles, and de-classified documents up to the end of 1987, the book is organized into six categories: Part 1 presents reference works, including encyclopedias, pictorial accounts, military histories, East Asian histories, hisotoriographies. Part 2 covers diplomatic-political aspects of the war against Japan. Part 3 contains sources on the economic and legal aspects of the war against Japan. Part 4 presents sources on the military apsects of the war – embracing land, air and sea forces. Religious aspects of the war are covered in Part 5 and Part 6 deals with the social and cultural aspects, including substantial sections on the treatment of Japanese minorities in the USA, Hawaii, Canada and Peru.

As ambitious as her husband, William Howard Taft, Helen Herron may be the most underrated of all our First Ladies. She encouraged Taft in all his political accomplishments and he may not have become president without her. He preferred the judiciary and eventually became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Helen (Nellie) Taft was the first wife of a president to ride down Pennsylvania Avenue with her husband on inauguration day and the only woman who was wife of both a president and a chief justice. She is best known for working with the wife of the Japanese Ambassador to import and plant more than 3,000 cherry trees around the Washington Tidal Basin. Witty, intelligent, open-minded, and curious about the world, she is even today beloved in the Philippines, where her husband served as head of the civil government in 1900. She and her husband courted criticism for including Filipinos in social affairs. In this volume, she recounts her full life as partner to U.S. President William Howard Taft.

Military obligations rested lightly upon the Filipino people for much of the period that America occupied the Philippines, but Filipinos could enlist in the United States Army and Navy, attend the service academies at West Point and Annapolis, or join military organizations restricted to duty in the islands such as the Philippine Scouts, Philippine Constabulary, Philippine National Guard, and the navy’s insular force. In the 1930s, the Philippine government established its own armed forces. Throughout much of this time, the U.S. army also kept a substantial portion of its troop strength in the Philippines. This annotated bibliography of nearly 700 titles highlights the extent and variety of the Philippine-American military experience from the conquest of the islands by the United States in 1902 to the defeat of Philippine and American forces by the Japanese in 1942. The bibliography includes memoirs and biographies of Filipino and American officers and enlisted men (from MacArthur to Ferdinand Marcos), unit histories, army post and navy base histories, medals and insignia books, and the most extensive list of prisoner-of-war memoirs yet published. Annotations address controversies such as the widely disparate estimates of American deaths on the Bataan Death March and include previously unpublished information, such as casualty figures for American and Philippine forces in 1941–1942.

These eye-witness accounts, written by war correspondents, service men and women, home front civilians, and defense workers, among others, constitute an invaluable and underutilized resource for historians, geographers, and students of this great historical event.