May 3, 2020
Working on the Railway of Death: A POW’s Story (After Surviving a Massive Naval Battle)
American Sailor Howard Brooks survived the Battle of the Sundra Strait only to slave away in the Burmese jungles as a prisoner of the Japanese.
by Warfare History Network
When Howard Brooks joined the United States Navy in 1939, the 20-year-old farm boy from Tennessee had no idea that he was going to experience one of the most harrowing adventures of World War II. In the early months of the war, Brooks and his fellow crewmen aboard USS Houston fought heroically against overwhelming odds, only to have their ship blown out from under them at the Battle of the Sunda Strait in February 1942. But the battle, horrific as it was, marked the beginning, not the end, of their ordeal. Houston survivors were captured by the Japanese and shipped to Burma, where they became slave laborers on the notorious “Railway of Death,†made famous by the Academy Award-winning (if rather inaccurate) 1957 movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Houston (CA 30) was a heavy cruiser that became celebrated in the 1930s as President Franklin Roosevelt’s favorite warship. She was a thing of beauty, sleek and powerful as her graceful prow sliced though the water at speeds upward of 33 knots. Houston hosted Roosevelt four times, carrying him and his staff on long holiday cruises in 1934, 1935, 1938, and 1939. As the president later remarked, “I knew that ship and loved her. Her officers and men were my friends.â€
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/working-railway-death-pow%E2%80%99s-story-after-surviving-massive-naval-battle-150641
