Pacific Legacy: Image and Memory from World War II in the Pacific
Rex Allen Smith and Gerald A. Meehl. New York: Abbeville Press, 2002. 316 pp. Photos. Maps. Index. $65.00.
Reviewed by James P. Delgado
World War II in the Pacific raged from atolls and islands spread across 40'million square miles of ocean. In a 44-month-long period, men, ships, aircraft, and military vehicles were spent in relentless, brutal combat that left an incredible legacy of war on more than a hundred islands. Photographer Gerald A. Meehl roamed those islands decades later to capture images of what remains today. With author and storyteller Rex Allen Smith, he has melded historic images and text, much of it drawn from veteran reminiscences, to offer this unique look at the relics and memories of the war.
Smith and Meehl’s heavily illustrated account begins with the first chapter’s look at Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, and the Doolittle Raid. The next chapter revisits Bataan and Corregidor. The third chapter tours Guadalcanal and Tulagi, Munda, and Bora Bora. The fourth chapter takes readers to Tarawa’s Betio, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, the Philippines, and the sidelines at American Samoa, Nadi, Nauru, Funafuti, and Truk. Chapter 5 revisits Iwo Jima and Okinawa, while the sixth chapter surveys Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the deck of the USS Missouri (BB-63). An epilogue reviews what happened after the war, from reminiscence and reconciliation to commemoration and commercialization.
The text offers a concise and focused overview of the various campaigns, emphasizing the battles on land and in the air more so than those at sea, although naval operations are discussed and the roles of carriers, PT boats, and submarines, among other craft, are discussed. Meehl’s photographs are masterful and do a marvelous job of linking past to present. Among the most striking images are the 1984 image of the skeleton of a Japanese Army officer, with helmet, ammunition belt, and sword scabbard still adorning his bones; a U.S. dog tag found on the sands of White Beach One at Peleliu; and a Filipino tourist standing knee deep in the reflecting pool at Palo, south of Tacloban, as she holds the bronze hand of a larger-than- life Douglas MacArthur. While these images stand out, they are joined by many others of half-sunken tanks, the rusted remains of amphibious vehicles, rusted guns, crashed aircraft, shell-marked bunkers, memorials, and old men reliving the past.
Smith and Meehl stress in the preface that their book is intended to portray the Pacific War “as it looked and felt to those who fought there, and how it looks now to visitors who seek out those Pacific battlefields. The vivid images and memories in the minds of the veterans are the key elements.” They fulfill this task admirably. The authors also acknowledge their book’s shortcomings—it is a brief and selective overview, and “we could not cover every campaign in detail.”
Meehl’s three decades of travels and image gathering help give the book its greatest strength. Its weakness is revealed by the places he was unable to visit or photograph. Worthwhile images of some of the historic ships preserved in the United States—the Bowfin (SS-287), Eaffey (DD- 724), Missouri, and PT-617—do appear in the book, but they do not capture what the war was like for many naval veterans: mess areas, pipe bunks, the interior of turrets, or the torpedo tubes of a submarine, let alone the sick bay or the bridge. By not showing more of those now-preserved scenes of service afloat, the book fails to complete its promise to “recapture impressions of the war and its times, the sight, sound, and feel—thereby enabling readers who lived through those times to remember and relive them.” Also missing are photographic impressions and text that could spark the memory of the veteran airman and educate the modem reader—such as of the cockpits of a Helldiver or a Corsair, or the gun turret of a B-29.
While mention is made of sunken ships—and wreckage protruding from the sea is included—striking imagery of the lost ships of the Pacific War are not included. Other books do just that, such as Robert Ballard’s various books on individual wrecks or battle losses. Even though these wrecks were not within Meehl’s photographic scope and hence not in the book, the bibliography, as a selected reading guide, probably could and should have cited these works to guide the interested reader to them.
It also was disappointing, given the significance of the Makin raid by Carlson’s Raiders, the bombardment and invasion of Kwajalein, and the incredibly diverse and well-preserved battlefields and relics at Kiska and Attu, that they were not the subject of more discussion and imagery. But Meehl could not go everywhere, nor photograph every site or relic of the Pacific War. Despite its shortcomings, this book remains an invaluable and striking document, with thoughtful and insightful writing and compelling images that take it well beyond the realm of the coffee table and onto the shelves of the historian and the veteran.
First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country A World Power
Warren Zimmerman. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. 562 pp. Photos. Notes. Bib. Index. $30.00.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Henry J. Hendrix, U.S. Navy
By their actions, the people of the United States ensured that the 20th century will forever be remembered as the “American Century.” In the space of a mere hundred years, the young republic emerged from its self-imposed, continental-conquering isolationism to burst forth on the world scene with startling energy. As the tectonic forces of two world wars shook and rendered the colonial empires of Europe asunder, the United States weighed in with blood and treasure to promote the values of its own founding revolution. Much has been written about the group of men—Dean Acheson, George Kennan, John McCloy, Robert Lovett, and others—who contributed so significantly to the post-1945 world. They were, by their own admittance, “present at the creation” of a new age and have been alternately called “The Wise Men” and the “Best and the Brightest.” Their ultimate achievement was to see democracy sustained as the preeminent political model as Western civilization began its third millennium. Our country and even these demigods, however, owe a debt to an earlier generation— one that shook the nation and turned its attention outward.
Ambassador Warren Zimmerman, a distinguished foreign service officer, the last U.S. envoy to Yugoslavia, and the author of Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers (New York: Times Books, 1996) has made a significant contribution to diplomatic history with the appearance of his latest effort, First Great Triumph. Detailing the actions and interactions of Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Alfred Mahan, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Elihu Root, Zimmerman presents a compelling story of a clique bent on the growth of their nation to a position of great power on the world’s stage. Zimmerman traces each individual’s growth from widely varied backgrounds, each life rising from the pages with compelling authenticity: Roosevelt, the emotional, energetic, and brilliant Knickerbocker; Mahan, son of a distinguished Army intellectual who rose above a mediocre naval career to redefine his profession; Hay, secretary to Lincoln, diplomat, journalist, unlikely philanderer, and ultimately Secretary of State to two Presidents; Lodge, scion of one of Boston’s oldest families, professor, writer, and obstructionist legislator; and Root, a self- made lawyer to both princes and paupers who characterized the United States as his “most important client,” and who had a profound enduring effect on U.S. foreign policy. Slowly intertwining their stories, the author presents a rising cabal, bent on overthrowing some of the nation’s most dearly held doctrines, and who see their desires fulfilled with the commencement of hostilities with Spain in 1898.
It is a story of particular interest to members of the naval profession. While only Mahan wore a naval uniform, each man recognized naval power as the principle coercive instrument in an age of far- flung colonial empires. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the nations of Europe actively had sought the resources and requisite navies to protect trade routes from commerce raiders. By the end of the 19th century the most advanced warship, the battleship, stood as the strategic currency of the day. The numbers of these assets and their capabilities were tracked closely by the great powers, and Zimmerman’s five Americans all were conversant in the equations of great power calculus.
Zimmerman lays out a flowing narrative, presenting complex and at times archaic diplomatic concepts in easy to understand terms. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, the author spans the width and depth of the historical literature of diplomacy of nearly two centuries to present a cogent description of a profound moment of U.S. history, when the nation shrugged off its aversion to the vicissitudes of Westphalian diplomacy to plunge into imperial competition. It is clear that the author draws on the group biography method and structure of Evan Thomas and Walter Isaacson’s earlier seminal work, The Wise Men (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1986), to illuminate an earlier but no less important transitional era. As the nation grapples with the implications of the 11 September 2001 attacks and George W. Bush’s emerging preemption doctrine, we would be wise to look to the lessons of past eras of rapid change in the international system to challenge the assumptions of today.
The Terror before Trafalgar: Nelson, Napoleon and the Secret War
Tom Pocock. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003. 256 pp. Photos. Index. $24.95.
Reviewed by Andrew Lambert
If you like your history full of larger- than-life characters, intrigue, espionage, murder, and political struggles, this book will not disappoint. While the central characters are the icons of the age—Horatio Nelson, the greatest sea warrior of them all, and Napoleon Bonaparte, master of the battlefield for two decades—they are surrounded by heroes, villains, cranks, rogues, and men of genius, supported by novelists, travelers, and politicians.
After a century of limited wars, fought for colonies, trade, and provinces, the world’s two most powerful economies went to war in 1793 for ideology and survival. By 1800 the war was total, and extended around the globe. On land the French carried all before them, until Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798. This exposed him to a devastating counterstroke, which Nelson administered by annihilating the Corsican’s fleet at the Nile, securing absolute command of the sea. In 1801 Bonaparte hoped a Russian-led “Armed Neutrality” would force Britain to make peace, but this resulted in his new friends being crushed at Copenhagen, once more by Nelson. All other options exhausted, Bonaparte assembled a Grande Arme'e at Boulogne and threatened to invade Britain across a 22-mile-wide stretch of the English Channel. This threat, commonly called “the Terror,” dominated British strategy for the next four years, and provides a master class in the contest between land and sea strategies. To meet the threat Nelson took command of the English defenses to bolster British morale. Small-scale coastal warfare was not his metier, however, and his attack on French invasion shipping at Boulogne failed. Such things were better left to Royal Navy Captain Sir Sidney Smith. Smith was at the heart of British intelligence operations in France (his cousin was the Prime Minister), landing agents, spying, and even escaping from the most secure jail in Paris. The British also supported several assassination attempts against Bonaparte.
In 1801, the two counties patched up a temporary truce of mutual exhaustion, but when the war resumed in 1803 the newly crowned Emperor Napoleon’s army remained central to his plans against Britain. The problem was how to secure command of the Channel while his unwieldy flotilla carried the army across. His fleets were widely scattered at Antwerp, Brest, Rochefort, and Toulon, and under the constant gaze of British forces. Unable to comprehend the unique and contingent nature of naval warfare under sail, Bonaparte developed a series of complex plans to decoy the British to the West Indies, give them the slip, and rush back to cover an invasion. He had underestimated his enemies. The British admirals were experienced strategists, easily penetrating such childish notions. They paralyzed Bonaparte’s efforts by keeping the main French fleet base at Brest soundly blockaded throughout the period of danger. By contrast, Nelson, in the Mediterranean, hoped the Toulon fleet would come out, so he could destroy it and go home to his mistress.
Never before in modern history had such mighty states waged a total war in which everything hinged on the relative weight of the land and the sea as bases of strategy and sources of military, economic, industrial, and political power. Britain’s very survival rested on command of the sea. When the French finally escaped from Toulon, Nelson’s relentless pursuit ruined their plans. Meanwhile Smith, with his new friends William Congreve, the rocket pioneer, and Robert Fulton, the torpedo promoter, attacked the invasion shipping at Boulogne without success. With his naval plans thwarted, Napoleon abandoned the Channel coast and sent his army east, annihilating an Austrian army at Ulm— and on the very next day Nelson destroyed the combined French-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar. The Terror had passed, Nelson had become a hero and martyr, and Napoleon never again threatened invasion.
Tom Pocock, doyenne of Nelson scholars and biographer of Sidney Smith, allows his rich cast of characters to speak for themselves. His writing is vivid, concise, and effective. There may be more profound works on this subject, based on impressive research, and more obvious educational texts, but Pocock provides an ideal point of entry and a valuable guide to such further study as his readers may wish to undertake.