Graveyards of the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Bikini Island [Hardcover]

Robert D. Ballard (Author), Michael Hamilton Morgan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2001

To be published in the 60th anniversary year of the infamous bombing of Pearl Harbor, Graveyards of the Pacific is Dr. Robert Ballard's compelling survey of the major WWII Pacific battlefields and graveyards including Midway, Guadalcanal, and Truk Lagoon. This authoritative overview of the Pacific war begins with a thrilling account of Ballard's search for an elusive midget sub sunk just prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and ends with the American Nuclear tests on Bikini Island, where captured German and Japanese craft were scuttled. Featuring rare archival photographs, firsthand accounts of Ballard's explorations and the stories of survivors and eyewitnesses to the Pacific conflicts (gathered by National Geographic over the last year for this project), Graveyards of the Pacific is unique in the thoroughness of its coverage of the Pacific war. In this lavishly illustrated and definitive book, Ballard, a pioneering marine scientist and explorer best known for his discovery of the Titanic, has succeeded in recreating a defining period in American history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Graveyards of the Pacific offers exactly what readers expect from National Geographic: A beautiful book full of outstanding photos and graphics. It is worth reading (bestselling historian Stephen E. Ambrose writes the introduction), but even better to look at. Coauthor Robert D. Ballard, of course, is the explorer best known for discovering the Titanic on the Atlantic seabed. As the title suggests, Graveyards of the Pacific focuses on the Second World War. It includes fewer underwater photos than what one might expect from a book coauthored by Ballard--no more than a dozen or so. But each is well selected: A Japanese torpedo lying on the floor of Pearl Harbor, planes encrusted by decades of marine growth, the mast of an aircraft transport surrounded by fish and covered with seaweed--in the shape of a cross, it looks "like an underwater shrine"--and vessels sunk during the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests. Most of the photographs and other illustrations (there are more than 150 in total) are contemporary pictures taken during the war, from a blurry image of Japanese battleships heading toward Pearl Harbor before the sneak attack to a sequential series of photos showing a kamikaze plane approaching an American aircraft carrier, and then smashing into it. The text of the book moves back and forth between historical descriptions of the naval war and accounts of how Ballard found many of the ships lost during the fighting. His most significant discovery in the Pacific was probably the U.S.S. Yorktown, destroyed during the battle of Midway in 1942 and now resting 17,000 feet below the waves. The description of its dark, final resting place is eerie: It "looks like a huge craft dropped down from space, shorn of many of the antenna and cables and protrusions that had once made her serviceable, but now reduced to her core, which is still massive and formidable. ...[A] huge sunken sea-beast from another time, a steel dinosaur out of another era, when deluded men still thought they could conquer the world." As Graveyards of the Pacific proves once again, we are fortunate to have Ballard embarking on an altogether different kind of conquest. --John Miller

From the Publisher

"Bob Ballard is one of the great explorers of the age. He is not only a great explorer, but a gifted storyteller and an evangelist for science." - John F. Lehman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: National Geographic (June 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792263669
• ISBN-13: 978-0792263661
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 0.9 x 12.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #575,924 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A solid ripoff, June 9, 2002

By 

Christopher P. Cavas (Bethesda, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Graveyards of the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Bikini Island (Hardcover)

This book purports to take the reader "on a tour" of Pacific warship shipwrecks. What a complete crock.
There are probably not a dozen wrecks covered here; all the photos save one are very small and mostly boring (unless you're really keen to see portholes underwater). Two photos come from the Japanese merchant wrecks at Truk, some of the most-photographed wrecks in the world (and offered in exceptionally better quality in other publications). The only large wreck illustration is a lovely Tom Freeman painting of the YORKTOWN wreck. Nice, but by no means worth the space on your bookshelf.
If you're someone who knows nothing about the Pacific war, then this is a reasonably good primer of some of the major actions. If you already know what the Battle of Midway was and have some idea that the Americans and Japanese each had aircraft carriers, this book will tell you nothing about the war you don't already know, and the photos, while nice, are available in dozens of other books. If you're looking for some interesting views of the shipwrecks Ballard has made his reputation on finding, you will find nothing of interest here.
Save your money, and pass this one up.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not up to the usual standards, June 26, 2001

By 

Mark Seitz (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Graveyards of the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Bikini Island (Hardcover)

Having purchased everything ever published by Dr. Ballard, I eagerly awatied this release. Upon first glance, the book appears to be every inch what his previous volumes have been, with the exception of the mediocre "Explorations".

After reading this though, I can't call it more than a short compilation of his previous works on Midway and Gudalcanal, with short side trips to Pearl Harbor, Truk, and Bikini.

There are very few photogrpahs of wrecks, certainly not anywhere near the amount in previous volumes...AND WHERE ARE KEN MARSCHALL's PAINTINGS? Overall, I felt rather underwhelmed. Bikini has been done better in "Ghost Fleet", and the Submeged Cultural Resource unit did a bettr job at Pearl Harbor.

On the up side, there is one haunting internal photograph from the Arizona...hardly enough to recommend full retail for this book.

Wait for it to be $4.99 in a few weeks if you simply must have it.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not like I thought..., March 10, 2002

By 

Umbral X (Sunrise, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Graveyards of the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Bikini Island (Hardcover)

When I recieved a letter from a seller of this book asking for an order for it I thought: "Wow, shipwrecks... especially ones from WWII!" As a student in an oceanography-themed high school, I was right away interested in this book. The excerpts and details from the preview made it sound great.
However when the book came in, it wasn't what I thought. The book was nicely writen by Dr. Ballard, but the detail of each section was nothing to brag about. The book shows each area as a section. Beginning with Pearl Harbor, each section describes a certain battle scene involving the Navy. From Midway to Guadalcanal, each battle is shown with photos and diagrams. However these pictures and maps are not really enough to satisfy your thirst for WWII information. The text ends off in a way and talks about something else, and the lack of good photos make each section seem empty.
When I opened to the Midway chapter I expected more in-depth information on the battle. Instead I got a lot less than the National Geographic article on Midway from '99. None of the planes were mentiond much, and when they mentioned a PBY, they did not show what this scout plane looked like, making you have to use your imagination to picture the Catalina plane.
This book is supposed to mention salvage oeprations for the wrecks and exploration expeditions to them as well. However most of the text is a history lesson rather than a step in Marine Affairs. Out of the entire book I would say about 20% is actual expedition info.
As an owner of many of Dr. Ballards works, I would have to say this one is not one of his best.