Midnight in the Pacific
Midnight in the Pacific

Author: Joseph Wheelan

Publisher: Hachette+ORM

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 538

ISBN-13: 0306824604

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A sweeping narrative history -- the first in over twenty years -- of America's first major offensive of World War II, the brutal, no-quarter-given campaign to take Japanese-occupied Guadalcanal From early August until mid-November of 1942, US Marines, sailors, and pilots struggled for dominance against an implacable enemy: Japanese soldiers, inculcated with the bushido tradition of death before dishonor, avatars of bayonet combat -- close-up, personal, and gruesome. The glittering prize was Henderson Airfield. Japanese planners knew that if they neutralized the airfield, the battle was won. So did the Marines who stubbornly defended it. The outcome of the long slugfest remained in doubt under the pressure of repeated Japanese air, land, and sea operations. And losses were heavy. At sea, in a half-dozen fiery combats, the US Navy fought the Imperial Japanese Navy to a draw, but at a cost of more than 4,500 sailors. More American sailors died in these battles off Guadalcanal than in all previous US wars, and each side lost 24 warships. On land, more than 1,500 soldiers and Marines died, and the air war claimed more than 500 US planes. Japan's losses on the island were equally devastating -- starving Japanese soldiers called it "the island of death." But when the attritional struggle ended, American Marines, sailors, and airmen had halted the Japanese juggernaut that for five years had whirled through Asia and the Pacific. Guadalcanal was America's first major ground victory against Japan and, most importantly, the Pacific War's turning point. Published on the 75th anniversary of the battle and utilizing vivid accounts written by the combatants at Guadalcanal, along with Marine Corps and Army archives and oral histories, Midnight in the Pacific is both a sweeping narrative and a compelling drama of individual Marines, soldiers, and sailors caught in the crosshairs of history.

Hell in the Pacific
Hell in the Pacific

Author: Jim McEnery

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-06-11

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1451659148

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In what may be the last memoir to be published by a living veteran of the pivotal invasion of Guadalcanal, which occurred almost seventy years ago, Marine Jim McEnery has teamed up with author Bill Sloan to create an unforgettable chronicle of heroism and horror McErery’s Rifle Company—the legendary K/3/5 of the First Marine Division, made famous by the HBO miniseries The Pacific—fought in some of the most ferocious battles of the war. In searing detail, the author takes us back to Guadalcanal, where American forces first turned the tide against the Japanese; Cape Gloucester, where 1,300 Marines were killed or wounded; and bloody Peleliu, where McEnery assumed command of the company and helped hasten the final defeat of the Japanese garrison after weeks of torturous cave-to-cave fighting. McEnery’s story is a no-holds-barred, grunt’s-eye view of the sacrifices, suffering, and raw courage of the men in the foxholes, locked in mortal combat with an implacable enemy sworn to fight to the death. From bayonet charges and hand-to-hand combat to midnight banzai attacks and the loss of close buddies, the rifle squad leader spares no details, chronicling his odyssey from boot camp through twenty-eight months of hellish combat until his eventual return home. He has given us an unforgettable portrait of men at war.

Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal

Author: Eric Hammel

Publisher: Zenith Press

Published: 2007-08-15

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9780760331484

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On August 7, 1942, a scant nine months after Pearl Harbor, the Marine Corps struck back against Japan on a small island half a world away: Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. The stakes were high. The Japanese had been running roughshod across Asia and the Pacific and even into the Indian Ocean. If the Marines failed in the Solomons, New Guinea would almost certainly fall, mortally threatening Australia. The victory of the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal, told here in pictures for the first time, ranks with the most heroic, dramatic, and enduring of military history. The six-month long Guadalcanal campaign was by far the longest and most complicated operation the Marines faced in the Pacific War. It began with the weapons and tactics of the Marine Corps 1918 combat in France and ended with the revised weapons and tactics that would sweep aside the Japanese defenders of numerous formidable bases all across the wide Pacific--bringing the United States armed forces to total victory in the Pacific in World War II. This book is a fitting tribute to the men who sacrificed so much in winning this first stepping stone on the path to Tokyo Bay and victory over Japan.

Goodbye, Darkness
Goodbye, Darkness

Author: William Manchester

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2008-12-14

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0316054631

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This emotional and honest novel recounts a young man's experiences during World War II and digs deep into what he and his fellow soldiers lived through during those dark times. The nightmares began for William Manchester 23 years after WW II. In his dreams he lived with the recurring image of a battle-weary youth (himself), "angrily demanding to know what had happened to the three decades since he had laid down his arms." To find out, Manchester visited those places in the Pacific where as a young Marine he fought the Japanese, and in this book examines his experiences in the line with his fellow soldiers (his "brothers"). He gives us an honest and unabashedly emotional account of his part in the war in the Pacific. "The most moving memoir of combat on WW II that I have ever read. A testimony to the fortitude of man...a gripping, haunting, book." --William L. Shirer

Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal

Author: Richard B. Frank

Publisher: Penguin Books

Published: 1992-01-01

Total Pages: 844

ISBN-13: 9780140165616

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“Brilliant...an enormous work based on the most meticulous research.”—LA Times Book Review The battle at Guadalcanal—which began eight months to the day after Pearl Harbor—marked the first American offensive of World War II. It was a brutal six-month campaign that cost the lives of some 7,000 Americans and over 30,000 Japanese. This volume, ten years in the writing, recounts the full story of the critical campaign for Guadalcanal and is based on first-time translations of official Japanese Defense Agency accounts and recently declassified U.S. radio intelligence, Guadalcanal recreates the battle—on land, at sea, and in the air—as never before: it examines the feelings of both American and Japanese soldiers, the strategies and conflicts of their commanders, and the strengths and weaknesses of various fighting units.

Morning Star, Midnight Sun
Morning Star, Midnight Sun

Author: Jeffrey Cox

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-02-22

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1472826396

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Following the disastrous Java Sea campaign, the Allies went on the offensive in the Pacific in a desperate attempt to halt the Japanese forces that were rampaging across the region. With the conquest of Australia a very real possibility, the stakes were high. Their target: the Japanese-held Solomon Islands, in particular the southern island of Guadalcanal. Hamstrung by arcane pre-war thinking and a bureaucratic mind-set, the US Navy had to adapt on the fly in order to compete with the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy, whose ingenuity and creativity thus far had fostered the creation of its Pacific empire. Starting with the amphibious assault on Savo Island, the campaign turned into an attritional struggle where the evenly matched foes sought to grind out a victory. Following on from his hugely successful book Rising Sun, Falling Skies, Jeffrey R. Cox tells the gripping story of the first Allied offensive of the Pacific War, as they sought to prevent Japan from cutting off Australia and regaining dominance in the Pacific.

Fire and Fortitude
Fire and Fortitude

Author: John C. McManus

Publisher: Dutton Caliber

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 0451475046

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"John C. McManus, one of our most highly-acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor--a rude awakening for a ragtag militia woefully unprepared for war--to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly-desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower."--Provided by publisher.

Midnight in Broad Daylight
Midnight in Broad Daylight

Author: Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2016-01-05

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0062351958

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Meticulously researched and beautifully written, the true story of a Japanese American family that found itself on opposite sides during World War II—an epic tale of family, separation, divided loyalties, love, reconciliation, loss, and redemption—and a riveting chronicle of U.S.–Japan relations and the Japanese experience in America After their father’s death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara—all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest—moved to Hiroshima, their mother’s ancestral home. Eager to go back to America, Harry returned in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Harry was sent to an internment camp until a call came for Japanese translators and he dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, his brothers Frank and Pierce became soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army. As the war raged on, Harry, one of the finest bilingual interpreters in the United States Army, island-hopped across the Pacific, moving ever closer to the enemy—and to his younger brothers. But before the Fukuharas would have to face each other in battle, the U.S. detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, gravely injuring tens of thousands of civilians, including members of their family. Alternating between the American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting as well as the deteriorating home front of Hiroshima—as never told before in English—and provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Intimate and evocative, it is an indelible portrait of a resilient family, a scathing examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time.

The Battle of Tassafaronga
The Battle of Tassafaronga

Author: Estate of R S Crenshaw

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2010-09-15

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1612515517

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The Battle of Tassafaronga, November 30, 1942, was the fifth and last major night surface action fought off Savo Island during World War II’s Guadalcanal campaign. It ended a string of Japanese victories, but it was also a horrible embarrassment to the U.S. Navy, which had three heavy cruisers damaged and one sunk to enemy torpedoes. After the battle, American commanders erroneously reported that multiple enemy ships had been sunk or seriously damaged, leading Admiral Nimitz to focus on training as the missing ingredient. Not until more than half a century later did Captain Russell S. Crenshaw, Jr., the destroyer Maury’s gunnery officer during the battle, discover that the outcome hinged instead on critical shortcomings that had been built into the U.S. Navy before the war—defective torpedoes, poor intelligence, blinding gunfire, over-confidence, and a tendency to equate volume of fire with effectiveness of fire—factors that turned the battle into “a crucible in which the very nature of the U.S. Navy and its weapons was tested [and] a miniature of what might have been, under other circumstances, a truly devastating defeat.”

Neptune's Inferno
Neptune's Inferno

Author: James D. Hornfischer

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2012-03-06

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0553385127

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“A literary tour de force that is destined to become one of the . . . definitive works about the battle for Guadalcanal . . . [James D.] Hornfischer deftly captures the essence of the most pivotal naval campaign of the Pacific war.”—San Antonio Express-News The Battle of Guadalcanal has long been heralded as a Marine victory. Now, with his powerful portrait of the Navy’s sacrifice, James D. Hornfischer tells for the first time the full story of the men who fought in destroyers, cruisers, and battleships in the narrow, deadly waters of “Ironbottom Sound.” Here, in stunning cinematic detail, are the seven major naval actions that began in August 1942, a time when the war seemed unwinnable and America fought on a shoestring, with the outcome always in doubt. Working from new interviews with survivors, unpublished eyewitness accounts, and newly available documents, Hornfischer paints a vivid picture of the officers and enlisted men who opposed the Japanese in America’s hour of need. The first major work on this subject in almost two decades, Neptune’s Inferno does what all great battle narratives do: It tells the gripping human stories behind the momentous events and critical decisions that altered the course of history and shaped so many lives. Praise for Neptune’s Inferno “Vivid and engaging . . . extremely readable, comprehensive and thoroughly researched.”—Ronald Spector, The Wall Street Journal “Superlative storytelling . . . the masterwork on the long-neglected topic of World War II’s surface ship combat.”—Richard B. Frank, World War II “The author’s two previous World War II books . . . thrust him into the major leagues of American military history writers. Neptune’s Inferno is solid proof he deserves to be there.”—The Dallas Morning News “Outstanding . . . The author’s narrative gifts and excellent choice of detail give an almost Homeric quality to the men who met on the sea in steel titans.”—Booklist (starred review) “Brilliant . . . a compelling narrative of naval combat . . . simply superb.”—The Washington Times