Harm's Way is a 1962 war novel by James Bassett. Set in the Pacific theater during World War II, it follows the exploits of Captain Rockwell "Rock" Torrey as he plans and carries out naval operations against the Japanese. The book was adapted into the 1965 film In Harm's Way, which was produced and directed by Otto Preminger and starred John Wayne and Kirk Douglas. Plot summary A regular United States Navy officer in the Pacific theater is assigned to command an operation to seize a group of strategic islands from the Japanese. The novel opens with the attack on Pearl Harbor which catches the US Navy unaware. Captain Rockwell Torrey is in command of a heavy cruiser known only as Old Swayback (an obvious reference to the ), which is off the Hawaiian coast near Pearl Harbor, running another set of exercises in a long string of them. Lieutenant (junior grade) William "Mac" McConnell is assigned as Officer of the Day aboard a destroyer, USS Cassiday, tied up in Pearl Harbor, not far from Battleship Row. When the attack comes, Lieutenant McConnell takes his ship out of the harbor, leaving his captain and executive officer behind, and eventually joins a scratch task group assembled around Torrey's cruiser. Torrey leads his task group on a seek-out-and-destroy mission. When the ships approach the end of their fuel, Torrey orders them to steer a straight course. That makes the group vulnerable to attack. A Japanese submarine scores two torpedo hits on Old Swayback before Cassiday can sink the sub with depth charges. Back at Pearl Harbor, Torrey is relieved of his command and faces a Board of Inquiry that could lead to a court-martial, but when Admiral Chester Nimitz arrives to take command in the Pacific theater, he makes sure that Torrey will have a position on his planning staff. Torrey's officers scatter to various points in the Pacific theater, with his old exec, Paul Eddington, assigned to an unrewarding post at an old Free French base on the island of Toulebonne. Torrey drifts into a romance with a Navy nurse named Maggie Haynes; this romance is interrupted only briefly by the alert ordered during the Battle of Midway. Eventually, Torrey and his roommate, Captain Egan Powell, USNR, are invited to dinner at Nimitz's house, where Nimitz personally presents Torrey with the pair of Rear Admiral (lower half) stars that Nimitz had