[August 7th
marks the 75th
anniversary of the start of the World War II Battle
of Guadalcanal, the first major Allied offensive against Japan. So this
week I’ll AmericanStudy five aspects of the war’s Pacific
Theater, starting with that 1942 battle.]
On three texts
that can help us AmericanStudy a lengthy, pivotal
military campaign.
1)
Kawaguchi’s quote: “Guadalcanal is no longer
merely a name of an island in Japanese military history. It is the name of the
graveyard of the Japanese army.” So stated Major General Kiyotake
Kawaguchi, commander of the first Japanese infantry brigade to attempt to
retake the island after the Allied occupation. The back and forth battle for
control of Guadalcanal, its strategically crucial Henderson
(air)Field, and other neighboring Solomon Islands would stretch from August
1942 through February 1943, with any number of moments and conflicts that could
have provided turning points in an alternative history of not only this
campaign but the war’s (and world’s) future more broadly. Yet ultimately the
result was the result—and as the Pacific Theater’s first truly substantive
battle, that result fundamentally shifted the balance of power in the region
and the war. Although of course the war would go on for two and a half more long
and highly contested years, Kawaguchi’s quote helps us understand just how much
the die was cast at Guadalcanal.
2)
Guadalcanal
Diary (1943): In a strikingly new development in war journalism, International
News Service correspondent Richard
Tregaskis accompanied the Allied forces for months in the early stages of
the battle, documenting both everyday experiences and the campaign’s biggest
moments. The resulting book was published in January 1943, before the campaign
had even concluded, and respresented a more immediate and grounded portrayal of
war than any prior American text. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily more factually
or historically accurate—the book is a personal memoir, as its title suggests, and
so the same uncertainties
of memory and truth that accompany any personal narrative apply—but the
rawness and honesty of its perspective and details offers a kind of
experiential accuracy nonetheless. This is what the campaign felt like, to a
man who lived it and the men with whom he shared it. In November a Hollywood film
adaptation of the book would be released, and it too felt more personal
than most of the war’s big-budget
blockbusters; but there’s no beating the book for that raw representation of
wartime experiences.
3)
The
Thin Red Line (1962): James Jones’s fourth novel was based, as were a
number of his novels before and after (including his most famous, From
Here to Eternity [1951]), on his experiences in World War II’s Pacific
Theater; Thin in particular focuses
on three battles from the Guadalcanal campaign. Although Terence Malick’s
controversial 1998 film adaptation of the novel certainly amplifies these
qualities, the book too is far more detached and (at times) dreamlike than
Tregaskis’ journalistic text. It balances those aspects, however, with some of
the most gritty and realistic depictions of violence in any World War II novel,
leading military historian John Keegan to call it (in his 1983
book The Face of Battle) one of
the two best literary portrayals of the war. In its naturalistic depiction of a
battle and war that are far bigger than any of their individual participants,
Jones’s book also compares favorably to such classics as Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895) and Erich
Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western
Front (1929). This is a vital war novel for perhaps the Pacific Theater’s
most vital battle.
Next
PacificStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other aspects of the Pacific Theater you’d highlight?
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