long sunrise

I read a book in elementary school titled "Up Periscope." (Google tells me it was by Robb White.) Synopsis: navy lt jg dispatched on a US sub in WWII to infiltrate a Japanese base on some island and destroy something-or-other. It was not an assault on the site, but I can't remember the details now.

The sub is cruising across the Pacific. There's a comment about how quickly the sun sets in the tropics. Being raised in Florida and spending nearly all of the first 22 years of my life between 31 degress north and 1 south (with most at 26N), I didn't really know what that meant. We did visit my Mom's family in Michigan and I remember the long summer evenings, but as a kid I didn't really notice the difference.

Here in Sweden the sun has been raising for the last hour. It's 3am and still hasn't come up. I've been watching the sky slowly get brighter. Sunrise and sunset really do take a while up here.

The Amazon reviews for "Up Periscope" says it's based on a true story about one of the first navy frogmen, cleaned up for kids. I enjoyed it and probably checked it out or read it in the library 3 or 4 times. To this day when people refer to alternate names of coffee I remember a part of the book using terms like joe, java and battery acid.