Tales From a Tin Can: The USS Dale from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay - Softcover

First oral history of a combat ship’s service from the beginning to the end of World War II.

Tales from a Tin Can is the true story of the destroyer USS Dale in the words of the sailors who served on her. These colorful first-person accounts bring every aspect of service on a World War II destroyer to life, from the attack on Pearl Harbor:

I was down below, brushing my teeth. . . . There was a huge commotion, so I ran outside to see what was going on. The first thing I saw was a Japanese bomber dropping its torpedo, which then ran right up into the old Utah and exploded.—Alvis Harris

To life on the Dale:

 [S]ome of the guys were chumming the water off the fantail with galley scraps. You could see huge sharks swimming around, so I threw a couple of wooden crates over the side and the sharks went into a frenzy over them. The [captain] came on the squawk box and said, “You guys better not fall over the side because I don’t want to pick up what’s left!”—Earl Hicks

To gripping combat stories:

When the Salt Lake City went dead in the water we figured we were all goners for sure. . . . That water temperature was right at thirty-three degrees, which would give us about ten or twelve minutes before we froze to death. Just when things got to be about as bleak as you could imagine, one of our cans got a 5-incher right smack on the bridge of the lead [Japanese] cruiser. You could see it as plain as day. Then [they] simply turned tail and ran. It was a miracle!—John Cruce

And all the way to the end:

When word came through that the war had ended, everyone went wild. We made noise with whatever we could get our hands on. Sirens shrieked, bells rang, and horns bellowed. . . . I whooped and hollered and banged on metal. . . . And I celebrated a bunch for all those guys that couldn’t, too!—Robert “Pat” Olson

But before the boys come home, Tales from a Tin Can transports the reader to Dale’s rolling decks, under the hot South Pacific sun and deadly enemy fire, illuminating the courage and humor of a generation of young men thrust into the life and death struggle of World War II.

Michael Keith Olson is an agriculturalist and journalist. He has produced, written, and photographed news for the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner newspapers, NBC, ABC, the Australian Broadcast Commission, and KQED Public Television. His previous book, MetroFarm, a guide for small-scale farming in the city, won the 1995 PMA Ben Franklin Book of the Year Award (Silver). Olson is the executive producer and host of the syndicated radio talk show Food Chain, the California legislature’s 1996 “Ag Show of the Year”, and is currently president of the MO MultiMedia Group in Santa Cruz, California, where he lives with his family. Robert “Pat” Olson, his father, served on the USS Dale.