49Jay Luvass, ed., Dear Miss Em: General Eichelberger’s War in the Pacific, 1942-1945 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1972), 64-65.
50 Quoted in Geoffrey Perret, Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur (New York: Random House, 1996), 329.
51 For the war in North Africa see Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).
52 For the Rattle of the Atlantic, see Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War, vol. 1, The Hunters, 1939-42 (New York: Random House, 1996); and the definitive account by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic: September 1939-May 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957).
53 Karl Doenitz and R. H. Stevens with David Woodward, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (Cleveland: World, 1959), 341.
54 Jones, WW II, 85.
55 Ernie Pyle, Here Is Your War (New York: Pocket, 1945), 555-57.
56 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 157. For a brilliant account of how the Allies recovered from the low point of 1942 and turned the tide of the war, see Overy, Why the Allies Won.
CHAPTER 3: AMPHIBIOUS ADVANCE
1 Robert Sherrod, Tarawa: The Story of a Battle (New York: Bantam, 1983; originally published. 1944), 50-31.
2 Quoted in Miller, War at Sea, 375.
3 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 380.
4 Bix, Hirohito, 444.
5 Samuel Eliot Morison, The History of U.S. Naval Operations During the Second World War, vol. 4, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, May 1942-August 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 409.
6 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 389.
7 Quoted in ibid., 391-92.
8 D. Clayton James, “Introduction: Rethinking the Pacific War,” in Gunter Bischof andRobert L. Dupont, eds., The Pacific War Revisited (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997), 3.
9 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 388.
10 Isely and Crowl, Amphibious War, 9.
11 Ibid, 10.
12 Quoted in ibid, 11.
13 A. A. Vandegrift, as told to Robert B. Aspray, Once a Marine: The Memoirs of General A. A. Vandegrift (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964), 235-36.
14 Isley and Crowl, Amphibious War, 3-13.
15 Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, 25.
16 Quoted in Joseph H. Alexander, Storm Landings: Epic Amphibious Battles in the Central Pacific (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 9.
17 Quoted in Isely and Crowl, Amphibious War, 4. Pete Ellis died of mysterious causes while visiting the Japanese islands of Palau in 1923. For Marine Corps amphibious theory see also Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973), Chapter 12; and Allan R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: Macmillan, 1980), Chapter 12. In December 1943 the United States had 1,878,152 military service personnel deployed against Japan and 1,810,367 deployed against Germany. This allocation of manpower was about to change dramatically in favor of Europe with the planning and preparation for the Normandy invasion in early 1944 (Weigley, American Way of War, 271).
18 Alexander, Storm Landings, 6.
19 Paul W. Kearney and Blake Clark, “‘Pete’ Mitscher, Boss of Task Force 58,” The American Legion Magazine (July 1945). For the great carrier fleets, see James H. Belote and William M. Belote, Titans of the Seas: The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces During World War II (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
20 U.S. Marine Corps Correspondents, Betio Beachhead (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1945), passim.
21 Quoted in Charles T. Gregg, Tarawa (New York: Stein & Day, 1984), 162.
22 Quoted in Hanson W. Baldwin, “The Bloody Epic That Was Tarawa,” New York Times Magazine (November 14, 1958), 19.
23 Interview with Robert Sherrod, Lou Reda Productions.
24 Quoted in Patrick L. McKiernan, “Tarawa: The Tide That Failed,” in Merrill L. Bartlett, Assault from Sea: Essays on the History of Amphibious Warfare (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 214.
25 Interview with Michael Ryan, Lou Reda Productions.
26 Baldwin, “The Bloody Epic,” 68.
27 Karl Albrecht, “Tarawa Remembered,” Follow Me (November-December, 1993), 28-31.
28 Quoted in Baldwin, “The Bloody Epic,” 69.
29 Sherrod, Tarawa, xiii, 64.
30 Interview with Harry Jackson, Lou Reda Productions.
31 Quoted in Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 267.
32 Sherrod, Tarawa, 66.
33 Interview with Norman Hatch by DLM; interview with Norman Hatch, Marine Corps Oral History Collection, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
34 Lieutenant Bonnie Little to wife, quoted in Joseph Alexander, Utmost Savagery: The Three Days of Tarawa (New York: Ivy, 1977), 106.
35 Sherrod interview.
36 Quoted in Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 267.
37 Hatch interview with DLM.
38 Hatch interview, Marine Corps Oral History Collection; Hatch interview with DLM.
39 Interview with Edward Heimberger (Eddie Albert), Lou Reda Productions.
40 Quoted in Alexander, Utmost Savagery, 192.
41 Hatch interview with DLM; interview with Norman Hatch, Lou Reda Productions; Hatch interview, Marine Corps Oral History Collection.
42 Sherrod, Tarawa, 90-92.
43 Quoted in Alexander, Utmost Savagery, 187.
44 Sherrod, Tarawa, 96.
45 Ibid., 96-97, 110.
46 Interview with Colonel William Jones, Lou Reda Productions; Joseph H. Alexander, Across the Reef: The Marine Assault of Tarawa (Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1993), 42.
47 Quoted in Sherrod, Tarawa, 113.
48 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 282.
49 William Jones interview.
50 Quoted in Alexander, Across the Reef, 46.
51 Quoted in Sherrod, Tarawa, 100; Sherrod interview.
52 Carl Hoffman, Marine Corps Oral History Collection.
53 Sherrod, Tarawa, 113-14.
54 Heimberger (Albert) interview.
55 Quoted in Baldwin, “The Bloody Epic,” 72.
56 Sherrod, Tarawa, 100-101.
57 Ibid., 132.
58 Quoted in ibid., 129.
59 Sherrod interview.
60 William Jones interview.
61 Quoted in Sherrod, Tarawa, 139.
62 Sherrod, Tarawa, 140; Sherrod interview.
63 Life (October 11, 1943); Davis quoted in Frederick S. Voss, Reporting the War: The Journalistic Coverage of World War II (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 34.
64 George S. Horne, “Tarawa’s Captor Reviews Victory,” New York Times (November 30, 1943).
65 Sherrod interview.
66 “Mid-Pacific Stronghold,” New York Times (December 27, 1943).
67 Lt. Gen. Holland M. Smith, “Tarawa Observation and Analysis,” in Smith, Marine Corps, 558-61.
68 Vandegrift, Once a Marine, 230.
CHAPTER 4: SAIPAN
1 Robert Capa, Slightly Out of Focus (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 111. On the invasion of Sicily, see Carlo D’Este, Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily, July-August 1943 (London: Collins, 1988). For the Italian campaign, see Albert N. Garland and Howard McGaw Smyth, United States Army in World War II: The Mediterranean Theater of Operations: Sicily and the Surrender of Italy (Washington. D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1965).
2 Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 111.
3 Theodore L. Gatchel, At the Water’s Edge: Defending Against the Modern Amphibious Assault (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1996), 132-33.
4 Bergerud, Touched with Fire, 61.
5 Quoted in ibid., 70.
6 Quote
d in Patrick K. O’Donnell, Into the Rising Sun (New York: Free Press, 2002). 87-88.
7 Bergerud, Touched with Fire, 271.
8 Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998), 114.
9 Quoted in O’Donnell, Rising Sun, 127.
10 Oral testimony of David C. Krechel, EC.
11 Quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, vol. 8, New Guinea and the Marianas, March 1944 to August 1944 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), 5.
12 Quoted in Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999), 48.
13 Robert Sherrod, On to Westward: War in the Central Pacific (New York: Duell. Sloan & Pearce, 1945), 14.
14 Quoted in Alexander, Storm Landings, 70.
15 Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness, 309.
16 Quoted in John C. Chapin, Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan (Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1994), 17, 36.
17 General Edwin Simmons, oral testimony, Lou Reda Productions; interview with Simmons by DLM.
18 Quoted in Alexander, Storm Landings, 62.
19 Sherrod, On to Westward, 50.
20 Quoted in Haruko Taya Cook, “The Myth of the Saipan Suicides,” Military History Quarterly 7 (Spring 1995), 13.
21 Interview with John C. Chapin, Lou Reda Productions; Chapin, Breaching the Marianas, 2.
22 Sherrod, On to Westward, 55.
23 Henry Crowe, Marine Corps Oral History Collection, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
24 Hatch interview by DLM.
25 Sherrod, On to Westward, 58.
26 Quoted in Bernard Naulty, The Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Marine Corps Historical Center, 1995), 1.
27 Quoted in Henry Shaw and Ralph W. Donnelly, Blacks in the Marine Corps (Washington, D.C.: History and Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1975), 34.
28 Quoted in Naulty, Right to Fight, 20-21.
29 Quoted in Shaw and Donnelly, Blacks in the Marine Corps, 35.
30 Quoted in Morison, New Guinea and the Marianas, 200.
31 Quoted in ibid., 213.
32 Quoted in Boyne, Clash of Titans, 298.
33 Spruance and Nimitz quoted in Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, 305.
34 Interview, Lou Reda Productions.
35 Morison, New Guinea and the Marianas, 278.
36 Morison, Two-Ocean War, 343.
37 Quoted in Morison, New Guinea and the Marianas, 291.
38 Quoted in Boyne, Clash of Titans, 302.
39 Quoted in Morison, New Guinea and the Marianas, 302.
40 Ibid., 302-4.
41 Weinberg, World at Arms, 653.
42 Quoted in Chapin, Breaching the Marianas, 17-18.
43 Quoted in ibid., 29.
44 Quoted in ibid.
45 Chapin interview.
46 Quoted in Chapin, Breaching the Marianas, 19.
47 Birdie B. Daigle diary, EC; most U.S. Navy nurses in the Pacific served in hospitals far from the battlefront, but some, like Lieutenant Daigle, were assigned to field hospitals near the firing line.
48 Quoted in Walter A. McDougall, Let the Sea Make a Noise: A History of the North Pacific from Magellan to MacArthur (New York: Harper Perennial, 2004; originally published, 1993), 647.
49 Quoted in Sherrod, On to Westward, 89. For this controversy, see Harry A. Gailey, Howlin’ Mad Versus the Army: Conflict in Command, Saipan 1944 (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1986).
50 Quoted in Carl Hoffman, Saipan: The Beginning of the End (Washington, D.C.: Historical Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1950), 223.
51 Sherrod, On to Westward, 23-24, 140.
52 Quoted in Cook, “Myth of the Saipan Suicides,” 15.
53 Arnold Krammer, “Japanese Prisoners of War in America,” Pacific Historical Review 52 (1983), 71-72, 82-83.
54 Philip A. Crowl, The Campaign in the Marianas (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959), 265-67.
55 Sherrod, On to Westward, 119-23.
56David Nichols, ed., Ernie’s War: The Best of Ernie Pyle’s World War II Dispatches (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 367.
57 Sherrod, On to Westward, 119-23.
58 Robert Sherrod, “Saipan,” Life (August 28, 1944), 75.
59 Robert Sherrod, “The Nature of the Enemy,” Time (August 28, 1944), 27; Sherrod, On to Westward, 144-47; interview with John McCullough by DLM.
60Smith, ed., Marine Corps, 607.
61 Quoted in Carl Hoffman, Saipan, 260.
62 Quoted in Frank, Downfall, 30.
63 Quoted in Cook, “Myth of the Saipan Suicides,” 17.
64 Cook, “Myth of the Saipan Suicides,” 17.
65 Bix, Hirohito, 480.
66 Quoted in John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), 247.
67 Quoted in Andrew A. Rooney, The Fortunes of War: Four Great Battles of World War II (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), 37.
68 Quoted in Chapin, Breaching the Marianas, 36.
69 Quoted in H. N. Oliphant, “How the Jap Soldier Thought,” in “Yank.” the GI Story of the War, 148-54.
70 Interview with Justice M. Chambers, Marine Corps Oral History Collection, Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C.
71 Manchester, American Caesar, 405.
72 Quoted in Spector, Eagle Against the Sun, 294.
73 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 432.
74 Weinberg, World at Arms, 657.
75 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 425.
76 The most prominent proponent of this thesis is D. Clayton James in The Years of MacArthur, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970-1975), 533-35. For a suggestive essay on how MacArthur’s political clout may have influenced Roosevelt’s decision to liberate the Philippines, see Michael Schaller, “General Douglas MacArthur and the Politics of the Pacific War,” in Bischof and Dupont, eds., Pacific War Revisited, 17-40.
77 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 427.
78 Robert Ross Smith, “Luzon Versus Formosa,” in Kent Roberts Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions (Washington, D.C.: Office of Chief of Military History, 1960), 463-65.
79 Quoted in James H. Hallas, The Devil’s Anvil: The Assault on Peleliu (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994), 281.
80 Quoted in ibid., 280.
81 Sherrod, On to Westward, 148.
CHAPTER 5: A MARINE AT PELELIU
1 E. B. Sledge in Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II (New York: New Press, 1984), 65-66.
2 James D. Seidler, testimony, EC.
3 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Eugene Sledge are from the following sources: E. B. Sledge, With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990; originally published, 1981, Presidio Press); Sledge, oral testimony, Lou Reda Productions; Sledge interview with DLM. See also “The Old Breed and the Costs of War,” in John V. Denson, ed., The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997); Eugene B. Sledge, “Peleliu 1944: Why Did We Go There?,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 120 (September 1994); Eugene B. Sledge, with Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, “Sledgehammer’s War and Peace: Reflections on Combat, North China Duty, and Homecoming,” 1999, ms. I am grateful to the late Dr. Sledge for allowing me to quote from this book before it was published as China Marine: An Infantryman’s Life after World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
4 Quoted in George P. Hunt, Coral Comes High (New York: Harper & Bros., 1946), 13.
5 Officer and sergeant quoted in ibid., 40, 43.
6 Quoted in Hallas, Devil’s Anvil, 41.
7 Quoted in ibid., 36.
8 Tom Lea, Peleliu Landing (El Paso, Tex.: Carl Hertzog, 1945), 4.
9 Russell Davis, Marine at War (New York: Scholastic, 1961), 95.
10 Tom Lea, “Peleliu: Tom Lea
Paints Island Invasion,” Life (June 11, 1945), 61.
11 Lea, Peleliu Landing, 1-8; Lea, “Peleliu,” 61-66.
12 Lea, Peleliu Landing, 6-7.
13 Ibid., 7; Lea, “Peleliu,” 61.
14 Jones, WW II, 118.
15 Lea, Peleliu Landing, 12-13.
16 Ibid., 12-15.
17 Hunt, Coral Comes High, 98.
18 Lea, Peleliu Landing, 17-18.
19 Ibid., 20-21.
20 Lea, “Peleliu,” 66.
21 Interview with Benis Frank by DLM.
22 Interview with General Paul Henderson, Lou Reda Productions. For Puller, see Lieutenant Colonel Jon T. Hoffman, Chesty: Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, USMC (New York: Random House, 2001); for two fine accounts of the battle, see Harry A. Gailey, Peleliu, 1944 (Annapolis, Md.: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1983), and Bill Sloan, Brotherhood of Heroes: The Marines at Peleliu 1944—The Bloodiest Battle of the Pacific War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005).
23 Interview with General Ray Davis, Lou Reda Productions.
24 Hunt, Coral Comes High, 112.
25 The description of this encounter is based on Sledge’s later conversations with Harris.
26 Quoted in Hallas, Devil’s Anvil, 176.
27 Hunt, Coral Comes High, 144.
28 Ibid., 112.
29 Frank interview.
30 Lea, Peleliu Landing, 34.
31 Lea, “Peleliu,” 65.
CHAPTER 6: THE RETURN
1 Quoted in Manchester, American Caesar, 388-89. The campaign to recover the Philippines is covered exhaustively in Louis Morton, The United States Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific: The Fall of the Philippines (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1953).
2 Quoted in Bix, Hirohito, 481.
3 Quoted in Flower and Reeves, The War, 750.
4 Morison, Two-Ocean War, 449. For the most rousing action account of this titanic battle, focusing on the battle off Samar, see James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (New York: Bantam, 2004).
5 Interview with Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, Columbia University Oral History Project.
6 Quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, Leyte (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), 288.
7 Morison, Two-Ocean War, 463.
8 Kinkaid interview.
D-DAYS IN THE PACIFIC Page 45