At 2245 hrs (1545 Greenwich Mean Time) tonight, Jakarta time, marks the 69th anniversary of the opening shots of the BATTLE OF SUNDA STRAIT . Two Allied ships, USS Houston, CA-30, The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast and HMAS Perth, battered and low on ammunition and fuel following the Battle of the Java Sea, stumbled upon the 60+ ship invasion force of Japan's 16th Army, under General Imamura.

Houston (with one main battery out of action following a bomb hit) and Perth fought IJN heavy cruisers Mikuma and Mogami, supported by a light cruiser, and squadron of destroyers. The relatively few Allied survivors ended up as slave labor for the infamous Death Railroad between Burma and Thailand.

For his handling of the action Captain Albert H. Rooks, USN, commanding officer of U.S.S. Houston, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

In the book The Ghost that Died at Sunda Strait by Walter G. Winslow (1984), my dad is shown as KIA. I have the War Dept. Western Union telegrams stating his was missing, then KIA, and his telegram to his folks that he had escaped and was alive and well in Australia.