Ride the Waves to Freedom

There are many stories of the war to be told, but very few are as unique as the story that can be related by five particular United States soldiers about one fateful day near the end of World War II. On this day, while held against their will in the middle of the South China Sea on a Japanese prison ship, the Arisan Maru, a torpedo from their own country arrived to rip their world apart, killing 1,800 of their comrades.

Calvin Graef, one of the five soldiers who survived the destruction of the Arisan Maru, had already experienced the Bataan Death March and imprisonment in three Japanese POW camps. Graef's story goes beyond most recollections told by other POW's, whose final destination was the coal mines in Japan. He rode Typhoon waves in a lifeboat, faced the big guns of a Japanese destroyer ship on the hunt, and bonded with the common people of China in a united effort to ensure that he returned to his homeland again. While running from the Japanese across the Chinese Mainland, he escaped from their iron hand of tyranny by means of such conveyances as rickshaws, bicycles, disguises, and prayers.

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