Time Life Victory In The Pacific

As 1945 progressed, Allied forces continued to move from island to island across the Pacific, closing in on the Japanese homeland. In Victory in the Pacific, youÍll find the winning strategies that lead to the Allies retaking Manila, invading Okinawa, attacking Iwo Jima and, finally, dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese could fight no more. After six long years, World War II was truly over.

As 1945 progressed, Allied forces continued to move from island to island across the Pacific, closing in on the Japanese homeland. In Victory in the Pacific, you'll find the winning strategies that lead to the Allies retaking Manila, invading Okinawa, attacking Iwo Jima and, finally, dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese could fight no more. After six long years, World War Ii was truly over.

This is the story of J. R. Ritter (1902-1994), a civil engineer from Texas who became a U.S. Navy Seabee officer during World War II. For his memoir he preserved personal papers, letters, photos, and other items, many of which are reproduced in this book. His narrative is edited and annotated by his grandson, Jonathan Templin Ritter. The U.S. Naval Construction Battalions, known as the “Seabees,” were formed in March 1942. Their duties were to build military facilities and airfields overseas, in both the European and Pacific Theaters. In the Pacific Theater alone, including the Aleutians, the Seabees built 111 major airstrips, 441 piers, 2258 ammunition magazines, and much more. Ritter tells the story of two Seabee Battalions, one in the Aleutians and one in the Central Pacific. He describes the Aleutian Islands Campaign during 1942-1943, when there was a real concern that Japan might try to attack Alaska and the continental United States through the “back door.” Ritter also gives an eyewitness account of the building of the airfields on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas that enabled the B-29 fire raids on Japan—the “Empire Run”—which culminated in the two missions that dropped the atomic bombs in August 1945, ending the Pacific War. This book provides a major contribution to the wartime literature about the Seabees, those brave, resourceful, and hard-working American patriots, whose mottos were “Can do!” and “The difficult we do now; the impossible takes a little longer.”

In the last, triumphant months of World War II, young Americans won their nations greatest victoryor victories. For the war they won was a world war, a conflict fought on two very different fronts in two very different ways. In Europe, the battle-tested troops who had landed in Normandy on D-Day fought their way onto Adolf Hitlers doorstep, then crossed the Rhine and brought down the Nazis thousand-year Reich. Meanwhile, across the Pacific, sailors, Marines and airmen teamed up to invade a series of crucial islands Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawarolling back a tough Japanese enemy and paving the way for the surprising end of the war with the dropping of an atom bomb on Hiroshima. Every step of every day, these members of The Greatest Generation were shadowed by reporters and photographers from two great American magazines, Time and Life. Now, the editors of Time have returned to these archives to compile a memorable, visually stunning portrait of those stirring times, Americas Greatest Generation and Their World War II Triumph.

Chronicles the Pacific Theater of the Second World War, highlighting major battles, life on the homefront, and the war's end.

"Catholic chaplains shared fully in the lot of the common soldier in World War II - in Pacific island jungles, Europe's battered cities, North African deserts, and the oceans in between. And like the common soldier, they endured the same combat perils, exposure to the elements, internal conflicts, boredom, and intense longings for peace and home. They saved lives, provided comfort and hope, and renewed lost faith in a dark time. In this compelling account Father Donald Crosby provides an unforgettable portrait of faith under fire and grace at ground level, reminding us again that "there are no atheists in foxholes.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.” Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”

Battle diaries are essential for understanding what generals are thinking as they work their way through the fog of battle. Nicholas Sarantakes juxtaposes the diaries of two very different generals who both fought at Okinawa: Lt. Gen. Buckner, a by-the-numbers man who favored the use of artillery and tanks to reduce entrenched positions, and Gen. Stilwell, a prickly outsider who preferred maneuver to set-piece battles. Sarantakes identifies individuals, includes explanations of important events alluded to by the generals and provides glossaries of main characters and military terms. The result is a record of how Buckner and Stilwell came to grips with the problems of command on a war-torn island at the end of a long logistical tether. With the background information provided by Sarantakes, the diaries of these men become accessible to the reader. Buckner is the more restrained, a southern gentleman whose career was average and whose diary entries are interspersed with letters to his wife. He shuttles between forward command posts and shipboard conferences, noting how much rain has fallen, how many enemy have been killed, and how many aircraft have been shot down. Stilwell is a self-styled outsider, a brilliant warrior with the social graces of a porcupine. He dislikes Buckner and has little patience for his irreverent humor. Stilwell writes, "Buckner is tiresome. I tried to tell him what I had seen, but he knew it all. Keeps repeating his wise-cracks. 'The Lord said let there be mud,' etc. etc." ( June 5, 1944). Stilwell's entries are peppered with frank and often acrid observations about everything and everybody. He dismisses the British as "hoggish, inconsiderate" Limeys and atomic scientists as "temperamental bugs." The battle for Okinawa was a pivotal event in World War II and has the distinction of being the single bloodiest conflict in the history of the United States Navy. The diaries of these two men provide a new perspective from which to evaluate the events. This book is a fascinating exploration of the art of leading troops in battle and will interest scholars and students of the Pacific War.