Sea Of Sharks: A Sailor's World War II Survival Story

Rating:
Summary: Sea of Sharks, Sea of Bureaucracy
Review: Elmer Renner's 136 foot wooden ship, Yard Mine Sweeper 472, was a victim of weather and apparently of an ill-planned mission. The Pacific war was just over when the typhoon struck and left eight men on a wreck of a raft. The unique survivors had no provisions nor even any way of sleeping. At the end of the war there were abundant naval ships and planes available for searching-but the few searchers quit looking much too soon. An official inquiry found nobody at fault.

The decision to send small ships into big storms was all too common in the Pacific in 1944 and 1945. See also the book by the same publisher: Halsey's Typhoon.

I am a former carpenter at a Chicago shipyard that produced Yard Mine Sweepers. Renner's well-documented narrative seems to me to be unique in all my sea reading. There may be people who suffered more at sea, but they are not able to write about it. I like his positive outlook on life. Sea of Sharks makes me appreciate what a good life I've got. This would be a great book selection for modern youth.

Rating:
Summary: Thank you Mr. Renner
Review: Elmer Renner's narrative of his near death experience in the waters off Okinawa immediately after World War II is a gift to those of us who grew up in the post-war generation. On the surface, this is a story of eight men who survived the ravages of the Pacific during and after the worst typhoon on record. But the simple survival story is a metaphor: the immediacy, the tenacity, and the endurance, of the eight crew-members provides an example of the kind of heroism that, multiplied a thousand-fold, protected this nation from the wartime threat posed by the Axis nations.

In a moving description of the harrowing days at sea on a skeletal raft without food, water, or enough square inches to sleep, the author invites us truly to experience the determination of the stranded sailors to survive and to return to their families. We seem literally to experience the sailors' hunger, their thirst, their disorientation, and finally their hallucinations. We approach that reality as closely as a reader may come vicariously.

Other reviewers have noted the astonishing failure of the Navy to search for the survivors of the minesweeper after it was sent directly into the path of destruction by the Naval command. There seems to be no question that there were ships, planes, and personnel available for the search which was inexplicably abandoned.

And other questions remain. Were the weather warning systems actually so primitive that catastrophe could not have been predicted? Why was a shallow water minesweeper sent into deep sea water to battle the worst weather imaginable? Why was the treacherous sailor who made it to safety never disciplined for his failure to seek help for his companions? And who is to answer for the callous abandonment of the search for survivors?

Mr. Renner's sense of disappointed resignation seems an understated response to the reader who has become furious on his behalf. His own review of Naval documents recording the inquiry into the disaster reveals only inconclusive, unsatisfactor, and self-serving answers. No one was found to be at fault. The administration of justice to those responsible for the deaths of 25 crew members and the nearly indescribable suffering of the survivors may seem a very small matter in the entire context of World War II. But the dead and the living of YMS-472 deserve nothing less.

Rating:
Summary: A harrowing and horrifying true story
Review: Sea Of Sharks is the true story of a Marine Corps veteran who served as a radio operator in the Pacific theater of war during World War II, and the occupation of Japan. Yet Sea Of Sharks is not a saga of the war itself, but rather of a handful of men caught in the grip of one of the worst typhoons in recorded history, off the coast of Okinawa. Their Navy minesweeper was unable to withstand the fury of nature, and the author and eight others barely escaped on a raft. Not only did they have to weather the horrific storm, but afterward, they endured days of hunger, thirst, shark attacks, and despair. Lives were lost to the all-encompassing sea, to the ruthlessness of sharp-toothed sea predators, and to the onset of delusion and madness. The rescue of the survivors could not begin heal the lasting scars of the ordeal, now put to paper years after the fact. A harrowing and horrifying true story, that also raises keen questions as to why the service was so quick to write off the survivors as dead, leaving their rescue to blind chance.



Rating:
Summary: Rivals the Story of the Indianapolis
Review: The first person tales of World War II are nearing their end. Elmer Renner was a college graduate when he entered the Navy in 1943, sixty years ago. I am thankful that he was able to tell this story. It is a story of survival at sea.

More than that it is a story of a Navy capable of what can only be called gross incompetance. Renner was aboard the 130 wooden hulled minesweeper YMS-472. Designed for work in coastal areas the YMS-472 sailed across the Pacific Ocean to Okinawa. With a typhoon forecast, the YMS-472 was sent to sea to ride out the storm. The shallow draft vessel capsized in what is known as one of the worst storms ever. Renner and eight others managed to ride out the storm on a life raft. The Navy searched for a while, then called off the effort (why with the war over and plenty of ships and planes available). Days later, days without food or water, they happened to be spotted by a Corsair that radioed for help.

This is a story of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances. Mr. Renner says that it was good for him to tell the story rather than keep it inside himself. It is good for the rest of us also.