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Title: Storm Landings: Epic Amphibious Battles in the Central Pacific by Joseph H. Alexander, Carl E. Mundy Jr ISBN: 1-55750-032-0 Publisher: United States Naval Inst. Pub. Date: May, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A Textbook Treatment of WWII Pacific Battles
Comment: If you're looking for a detailed, factual analysis of the major Pacific amphibious battles in WWII, this is the book for you. If you're looking for something with "personality" or more of a human angle, there isn't much here. This is no "Flags of our Fathers", nor is it as accessible as the Time-Life books.
This book has very few pictures, drawings or maps. I think more graphics would aid in envisioning what was going on.
Rating: 5
Summary: Col. Alexander surprises to the up side...again
Comment: Once again Retired Col. Joseph Alexander has penned a superb text. In "Storm Landings" he captures the essence of seven violent island assaults and the planning of a eighth; Kyushu in the Japanese home islands. These epic battles spearheaded by Marines were the core of the Central Pacific drive. Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, amphibious landings all, were distinguished as storm landings by the Japanese commanders. They were so called as they contained six additional elements: extreme danger, long-ranged, large scaled, self-sustaining, against defended positions under the protection of fast carrier forces. Col. Alexander's strength is his prodigious research skills and an ability to preceive the over all connection between diverse elements. Drawing on these skills the author reflects on the five separate landings on D-Day, Guadalcanal. In an interesting introduction to the main battles, Alexander notes that on Gavutu and Tanambogo the 1st Parachute Battalion, subsequently reinforced by B Co. 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, engaged in the first opposed landings. To Alexander's perceptive eye, the Gavutu-Tanambogo landings represented a microcosm of opposed landings to come. All were violent, relatively short, thoroughly decisive and always bloody. One can not read this work without coming away with a profound awareness of the increasingly fierce determination of the Japanese defenders the closer the din of combat came to the Japanese home land. 100,000 Japanese died defending Okinawa along with 150,000 native Okinawans. On Kyushu alone, 600,000 defenders awaited the invasion force that was to come but for the bomb. Obviously, for both combatants, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, were saved.
The epilogue, quoting war correspondent Robert Sherrod adds, "...no man who saw Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa would agree that all the American steel was in the guns and bombs. There was a lot, also, in the hearts of the men who stormed the beaches." Lt.Col. Robertson after watching the Marines landing at Iwo Jima during the worst of the shelling asked himself, "What impels a young guy landing on a beach from the very first craft in the face of fire?" Reading this book, Marine or not, one has a deeper understanding of the answer to that question. It lies in the Hallmark of Marine pride: "Semper Fidelis".
Rating: 5
Summary: The Science of Savagery
Comment: The debacle of the British amphibious assault at Gallipoli during WWI caused conventional wisdom to say that amphibious assaults were too risky and too bloody to attempt. Between the wars, the Marine Corps developed a theory for making them work. They tested and refined this theory in the bloody crucibles of Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Pelileu, and Iwo Jima, with their magnum opus being Okinawa. Success came at a high price, and Alexander pulls no punches in describing the horror.
As a teenager, I once expressed the opinion that it was wrong to drop The Bomb on Japan. My father, a veteran of the Third Marine Division who saw combat at Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima, quickly informed me that I would never have been born if The Bomb had not been dropped. The Third Marine Division had been chosen to spearhead the amphibious assault on Kyushu, an isle of the Japanese homeland, and my father sincerely believes that he would not have survived the assault. Alexander dissects the plans for that invasion, and sums up the anticipated carnage. The assaults from Tarawa to Iwo Jima had this in common. Each was bloodier than the last. Kyushu promised to be a mini-Armaggedon. We can never really know what the bodycount would have been had The Bomb not been dropped. From Alexander's description of what was expected to happen at Kyushu, one could make the case that the death toll would have been much, much higher, both in Japanese and American lives.
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Title: Utmost Savagery by Col. Joseph Alexander ISBN: 0804115591 Publisher: Ivy Books Pub. Date: 27 November, 1996 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: To Hell and Back by Audie Murphy ISBN: 0805070869 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene B. Sledge, Paul Fussell ISBN: 0195067142 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Edson's Raiders: The 1st Marine Raider Battalion in World War II by Joseph H. Alexander ISBN: 1557500207 Publisher: United States Naval Inst. Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle by Richard B. Frank ISBN: 0140165614 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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