Pacific Campaign

Pacific Campaign PDF

Author: Dan Van der Vat

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1992-12

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 0671792172

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Naval history of the United States and Japan in the Pacific Ocean during World War II.

The Pacific War

The Pacific War PDF

Author: John Costello

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 1982-12-01

Total Pages: 759

ISBN-13: 0688016200

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John Costello's The Pacific War has now established itself as the standard one-volume account of World War II in the Pacific. Never before have the separate stories of fighting in China, Malaya, Burma, the East Indies, the Phillipines, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Aleutians been so brilliantly woven together to provide a clear account of one of the most massive movements of men and arms in history. The complex social, political, and economic causes that underlay the war are here carefully analyzed, impelling the reader to see it as the inevitable conclusion to a series of historical events. And the bloody fighting that indelibly recorded names like Midway and Iwo Jima in the annals of human conflict is described in detail, through its ominous conclusion in the mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fire and Fortitude

Fire and Fortitude PDF

Author: John C. McManus

Publisher: Dutton Caliber

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 0451475046

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"John C. McManus, one of our most highly-acclaimed historians of World War II, takes readers from Pearl Harbor--a rude awakening for a ragtag militia woefully unprepared for war--to Makin, a sliver of coral reef where the Army was tested against the increasingly-desperate Japanese. In between were nearly two years of punishing combat as the Army transformed, at times unsteadily, from an undertrained garrison force into an unstoppable juggernaut, and America evolved from an inward-looking nation into a global superpower."--Provided by publisher.

Black Yanks in the Pacific

Black Yanks in the Pacific PDF

Author: Michael Cullen Green

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-05-02

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0801462215

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By the end of World War II, many black citizens viewed service in the segregated American armed forces with distaste if not disgust. Meanwhile, domestic racism and Jim Crow, ongoing Asian struggles against European colonialism, and prewar calls for Afro-Asian solidarity had generated considerable black ambivalence toward American military expansion in the Pacific, in particular the impending occupation of Japan. However, over the following decade black military service enabled tens of thousands of African Americans to interact daily with Asian peoples—encounters on a scale impossible prior to 1945. It also encouraged African Americans to share many of the same racialized attitudes toward Asian peoples held by their white counterparts and to identify with their government's foreign policy objectives in Asia. In Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green tells the story of African American engagement with military service in occupied Japan, war-torn South Korea, and an emerging empire of bases anchored in those two nations. After World War II, African Americans largely embraced the socioeconomic opportunities afforded by service overseas—despite the maintenance of military segregation into the early 1950s—while strained Afro-Asian social relations in Japan and South Korea encouraged a sense of insurmountable difference from Asian peoples. By the time the Supreme Court declared de jure segregation unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, African American investment in overseas military expansion was largely secured. Although they were still subject to discrimination at home, many African Americans had come to distrust East Asian peoples and to accept the legitimacy of an expanding military empire abroad.

Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II

Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II PDF

Author: Alan M. Osur

Publisher:

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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This book is based upon a Ph. D. dissertation written by an Air Force officer who studied at the University of Denver. Currently an Associate Professor of History at the Air Force Academy, Major Osur's account relates how the leadership in the War Department and the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) tried to deal with the problem of race and the prejudices which were reflected in the bulk of American society. It tells a story of black racial protests and riots which such attitudes and discrimination provoked. The author describes many of the discriminatory actions taken against black airmen, whose goal was equality of treatment and opportunities as American citizens. He also describes the role of black pilots as they fought in the Mediterranean theater of operations against the Axis powers. In his final chapters, he examines the continuing racial frictions within the Army Air Forces which led to black servicemen protests and riots in 1945 at several installations.

Fighting for America

Fighting for America PDF

Author: Christopher Paul Moore

Publisher: One World

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0307415228

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The African-American contribution to winning World War II has never been celebrated as profoundly as in Fighting for America. In this inspirational and uniquely personal tribute, the essential part played by black servicemen and -women in that cataclysmic conflict is brought home. Here are letters, photographs, oral histories, and rare documents, collected by historian Christopher Moore, the son of two black WWII veterans. Weaving his family history with that of his people and nation, Moore has created an unforgettable tapestry of sacrifice, fortitude, and courage. From the 1,800 black soldiers who landed at Normandy Beach on D-Day, and the legendary Tuskegee Airmen who won ninety-five Distinguished Flying Crosses, to the 761st Tank Battalion who, under General Patton, helped liberate Nazi death camps, the invaluable effort of black Americans to defend democracy is captured in word and image. Readers will be introduced to many unheralded heroes who helped America win the war, including Dorie Miller, the messman who manned a machine gun and downed four Japanese planes; Robert Brooks, the first American to die in armored battle; Lt. Jackie Robinson, the future baseball legend who faced court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a military bus; an until now forgotten African-American philosopher who helped save many lives at a Japanese POW camp; even the author’s own parents: his mother, Kay, a WAC when she met his father, Bill, who was part of the celebrated Red Ball Express. Yet Fighting for America is more than a testimonial; it is also a troubling story of profound contradictions, of a country still in the throes of segregation, of a domestic battleground where arrests and riots occurred simultaneously with foreign service–and of how the war helped spotlight this disparity and galvanize the need for civil rights. Featuring a unique perspective on black soldiers, Fighting for America will move any reader: all who, like the author, owe their lives to those who served.

Hawaii's War Years

Hawaii's War Years PDF

Author: Gwenfread Allen

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0824885015

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When war struck December 7, 1941, the people of Hawaii were not unprepared. Within minutes after bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, a well-rehearsed disaster relief plan went into full operation. Thousands of volunteers of all ages and races toiled selflessly to bring order out of chaos. Even before the pall of smoke had died away, air raid trenches had begun to crisscross lawns. By nightfall, windows were blacked out, curfew stilled the darkness, and citizen-soldiers stood girded for a last-ditch fight. During the following tension-ridden days, the entire populace was fingerprinted and inoculated; gas masks were issued and evacuation kits prepared. Barbed wire entanglements, taped windows, sandbag barricades, camouflaged buildings, gas alarms—everywhere were constant, grim reminders of total war. No other American community felt the tensions and shapeless fears the Islands knew during those first months after Pearl Harbor. And, as the Pacific war progressed, no other American community felt its impact so much as Hawaii. Headquarters area, training, staging, and supply area, repair base—Hawaii served as the springboard of the Pacific offensive. Hordes of troops and war workers deluged the Islands; land and buildings were taken over by the armed forces. Controls of every type plagued businesses and individuals. No phase of Island living was left untouched by the war. Hawaii's War Years, 1941–1945, the official history of Hawaii's dramatic part in World War II, is a comprehensive, unbiased account based on material collected over a six-year period by the Hawaii War Records Depository. Written by an Island newspaperwoman with the proper perspective for a subject of such scope, the book does not attempt to render judgments. It is primarily a book of record, a straightforward presentation of facts.

Desperate Surgery in the Pacific War

Desperate Surgery in the Pacific War PDF

Author: Thomas Helling, M.D.

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2017-01-04

Total Pages: 475

ISBN-13: 1476664218

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Caring for the wounded in the World War II Pacific Theater posed serious challenges to doctors and surgeons. The thick jungles, remote atolls and heavily defended Japanese islands of the Pacific presented dangers to medical personnel never before encountered in modern warfare, as did the devastating new kamikaze attacks. Sophisticated treatments, including complex surgery, were by necessity far removed from the fighting, requiring front line doctors to do the minimum--often under fire--to stabilize patients until they could be evacuated: "damage control," it would later be called. Navy doctors responsible for thousands of sailors aboard fleets in battle found caring for the wounded daunting or nearly impossible. Yet to save lives, medical resources had to be kept as close as possible to the action. This book systematically details the efforts and innovations of the doctors and surgeons who worked to preserve life under extreme peril.

Before The Bomb

Before The Bomb PDF

Author: John Chappell

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0813193540

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Almost forgotten in the haze of events that followed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the summer of 1945 witnessed an intense public debate over how best to end the war against Japan. Weary of fighting, the American people were determined to defeat the imperial power that had so viciously attacked them in December 1941, but they were uncertain of the best means to accomplish this goal. Certain of victory—the "inevitable triumph" promised by Franklin Roosevelt immediately after Pearl Harbor—Americans became increasingly concerned about the human cost of defeating Japan. Particularly after the brutal Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns, syndicated columnists, newspaper editorialists, radio commentators, and others questioned the necessity of invasion. A lengthy naval and aerial siege would have saved lives but might have protracted the war beyond the public's patience. Advertisers filled the media with visions of postwar affluence even as the government was exhorting its citizens to remain dedicated to the war effort. There was heated discussion as well about the morality of firebombing Japanese cities and of using poison gas and other agents of chemical warfare. Chappell provides a balanced assessment of all these debates, grounding his observations in a wealth of primary sources. He also discusses the role of racism, the demand for unconditional surrender, and the government's reaction to public opinion in the decision to drop the atomic bomb. Compelling and controversial, this is the first work to examine the confusing and contradictory climate of the American home front in the months leading up to V-J Day.