| Wiley's Island, Or, Island Blong Wiley
(1986)
|
| Front Cover |
Book Details |
|
| Genre |
Non-Fiction |
| Subject |
Radio operators - United States - Biography; United States. Navy - Biography; Wiley, Delmar D.; World War, 1939-1945 - Aerial operations, American; World War, 1939-1945 - Naval operations, American; World War, 1939-1945 - Personal narratives, American; Yorktown (Aircraft carrier : CV-5) |
| Publication Date |
1986 |
| Format |
Softcover (8.7
mm)
|
| Publisher |
D.D. Wiley |
|
|
|
|
| Product Details |
| LoC Classification |
D774.Y625 .W55 1986 |
| Dewey |
940.54/4973 |
| No. of Pages |
200 |
| First Edition |
No |
| Rare |
No |
|
| Notes/Review |
I didn't expect much when I started this one. It looks to be self-published, in a typewriter sort of font and full of misspellings, punctuation errors, and incorrect word usage (e.g. "to" instead of "too"). But none of that matters.
The author tells the story of his youth, enlistment in the US Navy in the summer of 1940, his experience in the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, the sinking of the USS Yorktown, and his continued service aboard the USS Enterprise. That is the first half of the book. The second half is being shot down, drifting fifteen days alone in a rubber raft, floating up on a small island, living there for five months until a B-17 crew drifts up on the same island.
Wiley chose to tell the story in an interesting framework. Each chapter has three parts - "As I Remember", "In Retrospect", and "History". I thought it was goofy at first, but it's very well done. The first part is what he did, saw, and said in a very immediate way; it reads as if it was written soon after the events. The retrospective is clearly written decades after the fact. The third part is a short, succinct description of key world events during the time the chapter covers. |
|