Customer Reviews

To the Marianas: War in the Central Pacific 1944

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Let me make this short, sweet, and to the point: Mr. Hoyt has never failed to deliver the concise, but detailed, information required to make historical review of occurances interesting. I especially like how he ties the details into the story line so that one can follow the thinking at the time of occurance.

I consider this book to be of the same higher quality of all his books and urge you to look and buy beyond this one book.

Living on Saipan and having the American War Memorial Museum/Park at my fingerprints,I found the book to be well-researched and factual, and not in any major conflict with other writers (dozens now). Hoyt allows the reader a look at the battles from both the American and Japanese perspectives - well done. The battle for Saipan had been costly in terms of lives. The Americans had nearly 17K casualties, inluding about 4K dead. The Japanese loss was listed at 24K dead, but this figure was probably not accurate because Japanese soldiers were sealed in caves by dynamite and flame-throwers, and many bodies were washed away by the sea. Saipan and Tinian gave the Americans the ability to routinely bomb Japan and return safely, and eventually was the staging ground (Tinian) for the two atomic bombs that finally caused Japan to surrender. Hoyt takes you across the Central Pacific "to the Marianas" and WW II victory. Very compelling, interesting piece of work.