Many veterans of war, upon their return home, choose to never speak about their time serving in the military, hoping to put it behind them and forget. But some veterans don’t hesitate to share their stories and experiences with anyone who will listen. Whether talking about it is their way of coping with what they witnessed and endured, an effort to pass on to the next generation a small slice of history, or an attempt to preserve the memories for themselves, doesn’t really matter. What matters is that countless veterans have shared their stories.

Laurin Hansen was such a veteran. He told of his time serving in the US Army during WWII to his sons and wife during family road trips. He spoke of his experiences to his sons as they sat for hours in a fishing boat and during chilly evenings in a north woods hunting cabin. This book is the result of the stories told by an American father who proudly served his country, as recalled by his oldest son.

This work of creative nonfiction was lovingly compiled to honor his father’s memory. The author also uses interviews with some of his dad’s army buddies and wartime letters from soldiers to loved ones back home to aid in his painstaking efforts to maintain historical accuracy and detail. 

The Rising Sun Sets is written in a way that will give the listener a true sense of one soldier’s time in New Guinea, the Philippines, and other South Pacific Islands during the war. Follow Laurin Hansen and his squad of American soldiers from basic training, to face-to-face combat, to the eventual occupation of Japan, and get a glimpse of what it was like to be on the receiving end of heart-pounding banzai charges by fanatical Japanese soldiers, contrasted with the boredom of day after day with no enemy contact, all while trying to adjust to the unfamiliar and sometimes brutal environment of the islands.

The amazing coincidences that occurred during this story are hard to believe when one ponders the odds, but none the less they happened. One of these soldiers suffered overwhelming odds of being vastly outnumbered, yet he survived and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions.