Death on the Hellships

Gregory F. Michno is the son of a World War II submariner whose boat participated in one of the infamous torpedoings of a Japanese “hellship.” He has written twelve nonfiction books, several of them award winners, and more than forty articles. He and his wife, Susan, live in Erie, Colorado.

"Gregory Michno’s riveting chronicle of life and death for American and Allied POWS aboard Japanese ships during World War II offers an extraordinary look into a neglected chapter in the prisoner-of-war experience in the Pacific. He has mastery over both his sources and subject and produces an exhaustive history as well as a gripping tale.” —Stuart I. Rochester, author of Honor Bound: American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973 “A carefully researched and poignantly told tale of thousands of Americans who died at sea at the hands of their own countrymen. The fact that their numbers were greater than the number of deaths in the bloodiest of all Pacific was battles, Okinawa, is shocking. . . . Simultaneously judicious, sympathetic, and compelling in his presentation, Michno has produced a must read book for anyone interested in Pacific war history.” —Roger R. Dingman, author of Ghost of War: The Sinking of the Awa Maru and Japanese-American Relations, 1945-1995"