Last Plane to Shanghai

by Richard Tregaskis

Scott Osterman was at the end of his spiritual rope when he rescued Martha Shoop from a rioting mob in the streets of Shanghai. She, too, was drifting, trying desperately to cling to principles and ideals that were fatally undermined by the disintegration of the world around her under the onslaught of the Communist forces.
Their own shattered lives were reintegrated as Scott and Martha determined to shake off the immorality of their past and preserve what is decent in human life. Together they knew they had to act. Together they plunged into the turmoil. Their resolution led them to the thick of battle and into crises in which only their devotion to each other was the cause of freedom that sustained them. This inspiring, dramatic story of love and war is a tribute to the grandeur of the human spirit.
This story is a major publishing event, wherein through a tender and effecting love story, a theme of great consequence is unrolled for the American people-perhaps not too late to save us in the generally unrecognized war which shakes our world. The setting is the China civil war, which placed one fifth of the world's population in the Communist camp. The China War was the prototype of Cuba, the Congo, Laos, the first and greatest of the civil conflicts, the revolutions, the bush wars, through which the Reds have been conquering the world. This sets Last Plane to Shanghai apart from the many romance novels.

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Richard Tregaskis was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on November 28, 1916, and educated at the Pingrie Day School for Boys, Elizabeth, New Jersey, at Peddie School, Hightstonsic, New Jersey, and at Harvard University. Prior to World War II he worked as a journalist for the Boston Herald newspaper.

Shortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.)

Assigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. He subsequently covered the European Theater of Operations against Nazi Germany and Italy.

Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, "This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. . . . Until the author's departure in a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks."

As a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, ''Guadalcanal Diary'' is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. military personnel. (A modern edition is available with an introduction by [[Mark Bowden]], author of Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.

Tregaskis later covered Cold War-era conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam.

Tregaskis died at age 56 near his home in Hawaii as a result of drowning.