PROMISE OF THE SKY

From Bataan to Home — A Pilot’s WWII Story

Promise in the Sky tells the extraordinary true-to-life journey of Colonel Robert J. Jones, a Wisconsin farm boy whose promise to the woman he loved carried him through the darkest crucible of war. From the quiet streets of Ashland to the skies over the Philippines, Robert’s life was defined by duty, faith, and an unshakable vow to return home. Captured after the fall of Bataan, he endured the infamous Death March, starvation in prison camps, and years of brutality in Japan—dropping from 220 pounds to just 129 at liberation. Through it all, his poem to Dorothy, “Promise of the Sky,” became his beacon. Reunited and rebuilt, Robert went on to serve with honor in Korea and Vietnam before retiring in 1970. Both harrowing and uplifting, this sweeping narrative stands with Ghost Soldiers and Unbroken as a story of survival, sacrifice, love, and the will to endure.