Introduction

The extraordinary, real-life adventure of three brothers at the center of the most dramatic turning points of World War II and their mad race to change history—and save one of their own.

They are three brothers, all Navy men, who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of the war’s most crucial moments. Bill is picked by Roosevelt to run his first Map Room in Washington. Benny is the gunnery and anti-aircraft officer on the USS Enterprise, one of the only carriers to escape Pearl Harbor and by the end of 1942 the last one left in the Pacific to defend against the Japanese. Barton, the youngest and least distinguished of the three, is shuffled off to the Navy Supply Corps because his mother wants him out of harm’s way. But this protection plan backfires when Barton is sent to the Philippines and listed as missing-in-action after a Japanese attack. Now it is up to Bill and Benny to find and rescue him.

Based on ten years of research drawn from archives around the world, interviews with fellow shipmates and POWs, and primary sources including diaries, unpublished memoirs, and letters half-forgotten in basements, The Jersey Brothers is a remarkable story of agony and triumph—from the home front to Roosevelt’s White House, and Pearl Harbor to Midway and Bataan. It is the story, written with intimate, novelistic detail, of an ordinary young man who shows extraordinary courage as the Japanese do everything short of killing him. And it is, above all, a story of brotherly love: of three men finding their loyalty to each other tested under the tortures of war—and knowing that their success or failure to save their youngest brother will shape their family forever.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2017: Sally Mott Freeman's The Jersey Brothers is the well-researched true story of three brothers living out a very personal narrative against the backdrop of WWII. Eldest brother Benny was an officer on the USS Enterprise, one of the only vessels to survive Pearl Harbor; and middle son Bill was assigned by Roosevelt to the Map Room in Washington. Youngest brother Barton was sent to the Philippines, where he was expected to be relatively safe—but after a Japanese attack, he was listed as MIA. The Jersey Brothers is the story of a family’s frantic efforts to find and free the youngest brother, while he fights to survive life in a Japanese concentration camp. Author Sally Mott Freeman takes an intimately human approach to this war story, adding a meaningful and memorable chapter to our understanding of the Greatest Generation. --Chris Schluep, The Amazon Book Review

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