Novel: A WWII Old-Fashioned Hero Fights the Japanese at Sea

‘Sink the Rising Sun’ follows America’s entry into World War II through an action-ready hero who faces the problem of Navy being stuck in the past.

Submarine veteran Jon C. Gabriel presents a historical novel on America's submarine unit in the early days of World War II.

In the opening days of December 1941, Lt. Benjamin Holt is a career U.S. Naval officer and a graduate of Annapolis.  He is executive officer of S-33, a submarine currently at Freemantle, Australia. Holt wants to be where the action is, in the Atlantic, squaring off against Nazi Germany, not part of the U.S. Navy’s somnolent Asiatic Fleet in the Far East.

Then the Japanese resets everything. Holt wakes up on Dec. 8 to learn the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor has been attacked by Japanese Naval aircraft. A few hours later, the Philippines comes under attack. S-33’s home port, Cavite in Manila Bay, is devastated. The war has come to Holt.