"The Jersey Brothers" by Sally Mott Freeman

Sydney M. Williams

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Burrowing into Books

“The Jersey Brothers,” by Sally Mott Freeman

September 26, 2019

“Starving men forget discipline, forget honor and forget self-respect”

                                                                        Major John Wright

                                                                        Aboard the Japanese prison ship Enoura Maru, January 1945

                                                                        As quoted by Sally Mott Freeman

Books on war that emphasize the personal, the stories of the average soldier, marine, sailor or airman paint a moving (and true) picture of war, its fright and its horrors. The World I poet John McCrae, who died in France in January 1918, echoed those feelings. His poem “In Flanders Fields” was written in 1915. It retains its power: “We are the Dead. Short days ago/We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow/Loved and were loved…” There are novels that provide a sense of the personal, like The Red Badge of Courage, All Quiet on the Western Front, and The Naked and the Dead. Others are non-fiction, like With the Old Breed and We Were Soldiers Once…and Young. They enfold us and make us part of the fabric of their story. It is in this pantheon of great war books that The Jersey Brothers belongs, a story of the War in the Pacific.

Sally Mott Freeman’s story is of three brothers – her father (Bill) and two uncles (Ben and Barton) – and their mother Helen. She writes of the search for the youngest, Barton who was taken prisoner after the fall of the Philippines, in March 1942. But the book is more than that; she covers the Pacific War, from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She describes, for example, the logistics for the invasion of Saipan, an island 3,500 miles from Pearl Harbor: “120 days of provisions for three hundred ships’ companies, with an additional sixty-days of supplies for the 100,000-man landing force.” An assault plan had to be devised “to put 8,000 men ashore every twenty minutes.” She quotes Sun Tzu: “Many calculations lead to victory and few calculations lead to defeat.” Her bibliography of interviews conducted, venues visited, and reference material cover ten pages.

The eldest two brothers, Ben and Bill, sons of Dr. Raymond Mott, were born in 1908 and 1911. The third, Barton, was born of Arthur Barton Cross in 1918. They grew up near the Jersey shore, in a home called Lilac Hedges, in those inter-war days. Like so many, they lived idyllic lives, only to fight and die on battlefields, in the air and on the seas during World War II.

Ben and Bill graduated from the Naval Academy, Ben in 1930 and Bill three years later. Ben received his commission and by 1941 was Gunnery Officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Later, after being wounded, he rotated back to Washington, where he became the chief of Ship Characteristics and Fleet Requirements at the newly constructed Pentagon. When Bill graduated, in the depths of the Depression, only a handful of commissions were granted; so, as a naval reservist, he worked in the U.S. Patent Office and went to law school at night. As war clouds gathered, he was offered a commission in Naval Intelligence. From there he went to the Map Room at the White House. Later he served as a staff officer in the Pacific for Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner aboard the USS Eldorado, during the invasions of the Marianas, Iwo Jim and Okinawa. Barton did not get an appointment, so went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he graduated in 1940. With the War in Europe underway, Barton’s brother Bill arranged for him to get a Naval Commission in the Supply Corps. In September 1941 he received orders to go to Cavite Naval Yard in Manilla. At home in New Jersey, before he left, he raised his glass in a mock toast: “Here’s hoping the Japs don’t get me, Mother. I’d hate to give all this up.”

Within three months he was a prisoner of war, having been wounded in the Japanese bombing attack on Cavite Navy Yard on December 10, 1941. He survived the Bataan Death March and over three years of imprisonment in Cabanatuan, Davao Penal Colony and Bilibid prisons, only to die on January 30, 1945, a day after the Japanese prison ship Brazil Maru, on which he and several hundred prisoners were jammed below deck, docked on Japanese soil. Through diary entries, letters and conversation with survivors, Ms. Freeman renders judgment on her uncle: “His was the big heart that had bestowed on fellow prisoners a will to get to the next day, a love born in the twilight games of three Jersey brothers.” While his death was confirmed in September 1945, it would be sixty-four years later before its cause would be discovered and translated.

While Sally Mott Freeman covers a lot of ground, this is a personal story. Helen Cross knew early on what was in store for the sons she had birthed, loved and raised. After listening to President Roosevelt’s declaration of war on December 8, 1941, she wrote in her diary: “What have mother’s done to deserve such grief? I stare numbly at my Christmas cards and packages, longing to stow away the gaudy reminders.”

As I read this book, I was reminded of my own father’s story told through his letters to my mother, and of what could have been or might have been. As I read of the tortuous imprisonment Barton underwent, I could not help thinking but there for the grace of God might have gone my own father, and of how my life and those of my siblings would have been altered. As my mother wrote at one point, how fortunate it is that we cannot foresee the future. The lesson in Sally Mott Freeman’s story is one of love and of the indescribable perseverance of those who fought and of the heartfelt anguish of those who stayed at home.