D-Days in the Pacific2005

A distinguished historian who revised and updated Henry Steele Commager's History of World War II now focuses on the Pacific War. The theatre emerges as a series of amphibious landings, for which the U.S. had prepared before the war and which almost certainly shortened the war. But as the U.S. fought its way from Guadalcanal to Okinawa and prepared to invade the Japanese home islands, its troops faced skilled and tenacious resistance by the Japanese. Survivors on both sides (Americans include Eugene Sledge, William Manchester and James Jones) emphasize the brutality and the stress of the close-quarters combat that often arose from an amphibious landing. The author also emphasizes the strained relations between MacArthur and Nimitz, which led to a two-front campaign that pushed even...