Great post! I especially love using Google Translate to read part of it. I guess because I was shortly after the war and had many uncles (all gone now) who fought in it, I have always found the subject very interesting. Battleships along with fighter aircraft are instruments of war that have changed dramatically - missiles of course made both obsolete.

I had an uncle - Terrell Thomas - who was a sailor captured in the very early stages of WWII during the battle of Java who spent 447 days in captivity only to die a couple of months before the war ended and his camp was liberated!

Thanks for posting this! http://wwii-pows.mooseroots.com/l/129529/Charles-Terrell-Thomas