Customer Reviews

First 24 Hours of War in the Pacific

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Military historian Donald J. Young takes the reader to eleven Pacific sites where war is about to change everything. He puts us on doomed Wake Island where Major Devereaux is ordering his Marine bugler to sound "Call to Arms" as an invasion force looms offshore and bombs devestate. We are with more marines in North China, embassy guards, who must surrender or die on the spot. The bugler sounds "Retreat" for one last time and then breaks his bugle across his knee and hurls it away. We are aboard the PanAm flying boat "China Clipper" as it desperately tries to flee Wake Island already under attack. We are on indefensible Guam when an ill-equipped handful of American Marines, mindful that no U.S. Marine unit has ever gone down without a fight, march off to make a stand agasinst an invasion force of 5000. The Marines are armed with 1903 Springfield rifles, two .30 caliber machine guns, and a few.45 sidearms. They are assisted by Insular Guards, native Chamorros who also carry ought three Springfields but theirs are stamped ""Do not shoot. For training purposes only." We are at Clark Field in the Phillipines where B-17s are caught on the ground by aerial raiders. We are abandoning the ill-fated 2100 ton lumber schooner "Cynthia Olsen" torpedoed and sinking off Hawaii, the first U.S. merchantman to be sunk in World War Two but not the last. Reading this book will remind you how lucky we are there can never be another be another Pearl Harbor. Oh, sure! (review taken from my review in"Vapor Trails", news letter of the Mass. Chapter of the 8th Air Force Historical Society of which I am editor and publisher.)

Most of us associate the beginning of World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Actually, Pearl Harbor was only one of numerous attacks carried out by the Japanese that day. Their true objectives were the mines of Malaya and the oil fields of Borneo--Pearl Harbor was a side-show which was necessary to keep the United States from interfering.

In this book Donald J. Young vividly describes the other events of December 7, 1941, giving minute by minute details seldom found elsewhere. He describes the inept responses of our (U.S. and British) military forces to attacks which should not have come as any surprise, but did. In the last chapter, he fills us in on the reaction in Washington, where the Japanese attacks may actually have solved a problem for President Roosevelt.

For the serious WW II historian this is a valuable book. For the casual reader this is an interesting and entertaining book, particularly if you are already aware of some of the controversy surrounding the events of the day.