SYNOPSIS War is a Lonely Place to Be A Novel by: sherman smith 129,000 words , 95 chapters No one wanted war and few wanted to be heroes. Duty called in many guises but whether it was on a convoy ship in the frigid Artic, a cruiser in the Dutch East Indies, or a nurse in San Francisco , they did their duty, and when it was over all they wanted was to go home. The depression honed the character of the 317 men who lost their lives at the battle of Midway, and the many battles before and after. This is the story of seven of the Greatest Generation who did their duty as they saw it. The story begins in 1932, concluding in 1946 at the Veteran’s Hospital as strangers coming to terms with their common experience. The author uses the news reels of the times as the transitional voice. Ivory Burch, grew up as a depression era itinerant farmer, has the temperament of a man willing to do hard work regardless of how little it pays. His father, a WWI veteran, told him not to join the army. So, Ivory joined the marines in 1935, serving first as a fleet marine before being transferred to Shanghai in 1937. There he is reunited with his boot camp drill instructor, Ralph Ware, to defend America’s interest while China and Japan wage war against each other as America vacillates between its responsibility and isolationism. On December 8th, 1941, the last remaining China Marines are captured by Japan without firing a shot. Ivory and Sergeant Ware spend the entire war as POW’s in the Philippines where the sergeant sacrifices his life so Ivory can escape, crawling out of the jungle eight days after the shooting stops, the war ending. In 1935 Earl Crier is playing piano at a quiet hotel in Colorado. At the height of the depression he has no other marketable skills than his passion for music. His meeting with Benny Goodman sets him on a course from Colorado to New York, to Kansas City, where he finely finds his ‘Swing’ voice. There, after buying his own bar and nightclub, he meets Sophia. Sophia, who is Jewish, returns to Czechoslovakia to rescue her mother when Prague is occupied. Earl follows but the Nazis will not let him cross the border. Heartbroken, he stays in in Paris until he is forced to flee to London as Germany occupies France. Unable to get home, he plays the piano as the bombs fall on London until he is recruited to become the Manager of a Swing Club on a derelict freighter reserved for black merchant marine crewmen who are forbidden to go ashore in Iceland. In 1943 Earl becomes a ships cook on a convoy to Murmansk. His ship sunk, he winters over, eventually finding himself in Bari, Italy where he is blinded when a ship load of mustard gas explodes. He is the only survivor of what will become an ultra-secret disaster. Brooks Weingarden, a handsome, self-centered conman, is booted out of Yale Law School in 1935. With his likability and mediocre vocal and piano skills he finds himself playing at a mob bar in Manhattan. Skipping out on a debt , he has his eyes on Hollywood, when he makes a stopover in Las Vegas he becomes the go-to guy at the ‘Two Duces Casino.’ With money in his pocket he follows his dream of being in the movies but is mugged winding up on Skid Row rather than Tinsel Town. Working his way out of the gutter, he once again becomes a connections man, this time at an affluent resort for the rich and famous. Falling in love with a British cigarette girl they go to Bristol England where they experience the worst of the blitz. Losing Ruthie, he moves on to London becoming the manager of a private men’s Club where his connections in the black market soon make him wealthy. In 1944, while playing a piano at his favorite pub, he loses his sight and al his good looks to a Nazis VII Rocket. Having never served in the military he uses his connections to get a bed at the Veteran’s Hospital in San Francisco where the man with no face only looks forward to his next drink. Stella Tate leaves her small mountain town in Washington to become a nurse in San Francisco. Overwhelmed by the big city and the difficulties of nursing school she almost gives up until she meets Claude, a handsome Navy aviator. Caught between becoming a military wife or becoming a nurse, she pens a Dear Claude letter just before he is killed on the U.S.S. Houston off Java. Her spirit is nearly broken as she nurses some of the burn victims from Pearl harbor being treated at Letterman’s Hospital. Unable to cope with their pain and suffering she excepts a position at the Veteran’s Hospital where by the war’s end she is a Head Nurse. Born in 1901, Sergeant Ralph Ware grows up as tough as they come in the mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. Missing the First World War. he joins the Marines, seeing his first action with the combined Army and Marine Expeditionary Force in Siberia. By 1935 he had seen the world and served his country only to face discharge, short of full retirement, as the country’s armed forces downsize. His career is saved by becoming a boot camp drill instructor where he meets marine boot Ivory Burch. Two years later he is transferred to Shanghai, China. Due to retire from the marines, the last of the China Marines are taken prisoner by the Japanese the day after Pearl Harbor. The sarge should have won the Medal of Honor for sacrificing his life to save Ivory’s life in their escape from their POW slave camp. Henry Akita is your average Japanese-American farm boy growing up poor and racially shunted in the central Valley of California. Not wanting to be a farmer all his life he becomes an apprentice veterinarian until his older brother upsets the family’s dream of owning their own land when he defects to Japan. Shamed, and on a watch list because of his brother, the Akita family follows other Japanese Americans into the concentration camps after Pear Harbor. In 1943 Henry joins the All Nisei 101st Combat Division as a battle field medic. After liberating a sub-camp of the Dachau Concentration Camp all he wants is to go home. Returning home with honors he faces the unforgiving hatred still held against Japanese-Americans in post-war San Francisco. Nick Akita, feeling more Japanese than American, is deeply troubled by the prejudice surrounding him, jects his father’s wishes, abandoning his family’s farm, to move to Japan. There he is looked down upon because he is not native born. Recruited as a Warrant Officer in the Kempeitei, the Japanese equivalent to the gestapo, he learns that serving the Emperor of Japan is not all cherry blossoms. At first his motivation is to serve the Emperor. As he is transferred to Shanghai then to Hong Kong he hones his skills as a servant of the Emperor without mercy. Struggling with his non-acceptance and his pride, by the war’s end he is working as a special agent for Japan’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Unit becoming a wanted war criminal. In Manchuria, he deserts, disguising himself as farmer. As a wanted war criminal he deserts and In the last two days of the war he is captured by the Russians disappearing into the gulags of Siberia. In 1946, as millions of servicemen are finding their way home, Earl and Brooks meet at the Veteran’s Hospital in San Francisco - two blind men who can not stand the sight of each other. They squabble over their music, the air they breathe, and for Stella’s attention. The new hospital orderly, Henry Akita is given the task of helping Ivory Burch, whose hatred of the Japanese consumes him, find the will to live. Ivory is torn between Earl’s healing music, Stella’s heart, and the specter of Sergeant Ware calling for him to rejoin his platoon. There is a new healing element at the hospital, Earl’s music.