Excerpt
From the Preface
Nearly forty years ago, Guadalcanal veteran and author James Jones lamented how little was remembered about the World War II battlefields of the South Pacific. He wrote, "Almost all of them names people in the United States never heard of." The same could likely have been said about how much was remembered by Australians and New Zealanders, whose nations fought there alongside America. Since Jones' lament, the situation can only have worsened with the deaths of most who served there.
Even the setting is largely forgotten. The words "South Pacific," for most, evoke only the fictional island paradise on which Rodgers and Hammerstein set their musical adaptation of James Michener's tales. But there were few "enchanted evenings" in the very different South Pacific region--Melanesia-- that we speak of here. Encompassing the Solomon Islands, the eastern half of New Guinea, and the waters and lands of the Solomon and Bismarck seas in between, this region contained some of the worst terrain and weather of all World War II combat zones. With towering mountains; treacherous razorback ridges; dense, disease-ridden jungles; great miasmal swamps; infernal heat and humidity; and torrential rainfall, the environment there was challenging enough without the dangers of battle.
From that war zone, one battlefield, Guadalcanal, has remained etched in American memory as a symbol of courage and endurance. Australians and New Zealanders might remember, too, the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Kokoda Trail, fought when their nations were under dire threat of invasion from Japan.
After these 1942 battles, the Allies went on the offensive and the character of the war in the South Pacific changed. Beachheads were obtained on large islands at relatively low cost, and terrain, weather, and supply difficulties often slowed advances more than the Japanese did. It was slow, hardscrabble fighting, hardly material for dazzling war reporting, and what public attention remained was mostly absorbed by the more spectacular Central Pacific offensive that started in November 1943 with Tarawa. Except for those at home with ties to men whose lives were invested there, the war in the South Pacific was eminently forgettable. But for those who were there it was The War. And its result influenced the outcome of World War II no less than El Alamein, Kursk, Anzio, Normandy, and Iwo Jima did.
James Jones commented about the war in the South Pacific in 1943: "They had a year of battles, fought without any great victories to stimulate troop morale. . . . Short, sharp, costly fights, each of them, which got scant publicity at home." His observation about publicity was correct, but Jones' mordant view about what was accomplished was not. In just nine months, the Allies wrested control of the South Pacific from the Japanese, neutralizing their great base of Rabaul and opening the way to the Philippines and the heart of the Japanese Empire.