Customer Reviews

Morning of the Rising Sun: The Heroic Story of the Battles for Guadalcanal

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Having had a strong interest in the Guadalcanal Campaign since I read "Guadalcanal Diary" when I was in high school I couldn't resist buying Dr.Friedman's book as soon as it came out.I enjoyed the book and found it to be informative especially with the charts and maps that he supplied.He has laid it out in a fashion that shows how the naval and air battles tied in with the ground campaign.It looks like his main interest is in the naval battles as they showed the most detail.If he has a weakness it was in the air battles and being a 'junior birdman' myself(PPL) and having a close relative that flew SBD's from Guadalcanal I probably am more sensitive to this than most readers.I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the Solomons Campaign.I only gave it a four star review due to some editing and binding problems.

This reader has had an interest in the campaign since reading Guadalcanal Diary as a lad and I have read any number of books since, but this is the first that ties everything together, dots the "i"s and crosses the "t"s. The naval action has always been something of a mystery to me, but Dr. Friedman had done a marvelous job by and large with charts depicting the various actions.

Additionally, both the Allied and Japanese perspectives are presented without the bias one often sees. Dr. Friedman does a remarkable job presenting the personalities of the Japanese commanders.

The chronology is seamless and one switches from ground action to naval to air with little effort on the reader's part. He is also adept at going from high level Allied conferences to the cockpit of an aircraft to the bridge of a ship giving a great sense of what it must have been like to be there. Having served in the Field Artillery in the Cold War Army, I found Friedman's account of its use, supply, and effects right on. I got the feeling of being right there watching.

I particularly liked the charts of the naval actions and their position alongside the text describing the action. Dr. Friedman manages to keep these complex operations in perspective in a manner that facilitates understanding.

The book is massive as other readers have pointed out, about seven-hundred pages. Once I picked it up, I had a hard time putting it down. A first printing, I picked out four or five typos, so the rate was less than one per hundred pages, excellent I would say.

This was a campaign that is often overlooked in favor of more glamorous actions. Friedman brings it to life and ties the various parts together particularly well.

At 702 pages, Morning of the Rising Sun is not the type of book you'd pick up casually but it is the kind of book that once you pick it up you'll find very hard to put back down. Ken Friedman has found a way of taking dry facts and figures and the myriad details of conducting warfare and making them come alive for the reader. His depth of research is astounding right down to the names of individual pilots of American and Japanese aircraft, often providing details of what they were thinking during combat actions. Friedman's bibliography and copious end notes show careful and painstaking research that will satisfy the most dedicated historian while the descriptions of the actions and the decisions behind them - on both sides - will please any reader of military non-fiction.

The strategic importance of Guadalcanal to both the Japanese and to the Americans has seldom been so clearly detailed as in Morning of the Rising Sun. The Japanese, after strategic losses at Midway and Coral Sea, were desperate to find a way to cut off Allied supply lines from the U.S. West Coast to Australia. A military airfield on the island of Guadalcanal in the extreme Southern Solomon islands would serve that purpose well. For the Americans, taking and holding that airfield for our own use meant a forward base for launching attacks against Japanese-held territory in the rest of the Solomons chain. It was a must win for both sides and for the Americans it was both far from any U.S. military assistance and the fighting came at a time when the Europe First assessment was depriving Nimitz and MacArthur of needed ships, planes, manpower and materials.

Morning of the Rising Sun is the kind of book that students of WWII history will want to have on their libraries' shelves for reference both because of the importance of the battles for the Southern Solomons and for Ken Friedman's treatment of them.

It is very unfortunate that a book which is so wonderfully laid out to have such simple inaccuracies.

As soon as I started reading I was happy to see the story pull you in. The writing style makes you want to turn the next page. The print is a good size and easy to read. The flow of the book moves well.

However I found inaccuracies and misinformation within the first thirty pages, and with that I became gravely disappointed and almost put the book down. Even a simple proof read by a Pacific Campaign enthusiast knows the second strike launched by the Japanese during the Midway battle was not to strike Midway a second time. With this disappointing error, and others, it almost negates further credibility. How much more of the information contained is incorrect or misleading? I will not even mention the over dramatization of events.

This makes my 12th book to read on the campaign and I cannot rank this very highly with so many other wonderful examples available.
I would rather suggest.

Richard Frank: Guadalcanal
Jack Coggins: The campaign for Guadalcanal
Eric Hammel : Starvation Island
Samuel Morris: The Struggle for Guadalcanal
Michael Smith: Bloody Ridge

First, let me say...the writing of this book was a monumental undertaking and particularly well done considering its size and content. The book is 10"x7", 1 1/2" thick, and weighs over 3 pounds - not light-weight bedtime reading for us gals, and that's the paperback edition. However, don't let its size intimidate you. This is a very personal, well-organized, thorough accounting of this lengthy battle.

Quoting from the back cover:

"Morning of the Rising Sun: The Heroic Story of the Struggle for Guadalcanal by author and his historian Kenneth I. Friedman, Ph.D., provides a thorough and thought-provoking examination of this pivotal struggle fought between the US and the Japanese Empire during the early days of the Second World War. Like other earlier battles such as Verdun in World War I and Stalingrad in World War II, both sides sent every gun, airplane, and man they could spare to Guadalcanal to decide who would win. When the Americans evicted the last Japanese solider from Guadalcanal in February 1943, the Japanese strategy shifted from the offensive to the defensive, and they began to lose territory. The Americans were now on the offensive and would not stop until they sailed into Tokyo Bay to accept Japan's surrender aboard the USS Missouri. Dr. Friedman is also the author of Afternoon of the Rising Sun: The Battle of Leyte Gulf."

If you're a history buff or have a special interest in WWII, I'm certain you will find this book worth your money and time. I particularly enjoyed the personal memoirs from that time period, the attack on Pearl Harbor and this lengthy struggle.

Kaye Trout
Reviewer

Morning of the Rising Sun is the compelling story of the first major Allied combined land, air and sea offensive in the war in the Pacific. Historian and author, Dr. Kenneth Friedman, spent six years extensively researching and painstakingly writing the first draft of this sweeping trip across the battlefields and into the minds and motivations of the combatants ... and it shows. It unflinchingly depicts the deadly details of the war in the jungles, waters and airspace that made up the struggle for control of Guadalcanal.

Dr. Friedman brilliantly lays out the political and cultural underpinnings of that bloody six month donnybrook with the meticulous clarity of an accomplished historian while at the same time taking the reader into the minds, motives and personal experiences of warriors from both sides with a novelist's sense of story. This is an eminently readable and thoroughly enjoyable delineation of the fascinating details of the conflict that changed the course of the war.

Guadalcanal stopped the advance of the Japanese across the Pacific and created momentum that would take the Allies from blood soaked island to blood soaked island all the way to Japan. Hastily organized, audaciously launched and uncompromisingly fought, its outcome was tenuous and uncertain until the very last days and, but for a few propitious moments that we euphemistically, in hindsight, call the fortunes of war, it could easily have turned out differently. And that would have dramatically altered the course of the war.

This book is a valuable addition to our understanding of the causes of conflict and the nature of both victory and defeat, a testament to the honor and courage of those who believed in their cause and fought on both sides. Anyone interested in military history, political history or the very personal nature of war without quarter will find Morning of the Rising Sun a productive investment of their time and a fascinating read.

A fastidious account of World War II's critical Battle of Guadalcanal.

Author and historian Friedman (Afternoon of the Rising Sun: The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 2001) pens an impressive, comprehensive treatise on what he views as the second World War's most pivotal battle. The island of Guadalcanal occupied a strategic position in the Pacific theatre, and military planners from both Japan and the United States believed it was key to controlling the region. When the confrontation began in August 1942, the outcome of the war in the Pacific was very much in question, if not entirely leaning in Japan's favor. The Japanese were clever and aggressive foes, the first to put significant numbers of men and a base on the island.

But, as Friedman shows, they vastly underestimated the Americans' resolve and presence in the region. From their dominant position in the Pacific arena, the Japanese were eventually reduced to a defensive crouch, a mind-set that plagued them for the remainder of the war. A natural storyteller, Friedman's account of the conflict is told in a compelling, narrative fashion that deftly pulls the reader through the book's hefty page count.

He does an excellent job analyzing both the micro--and macro--aspects of the battle, smoothly switching between the intimate conversations of
military leaders and the historical and political implications of an American victory in the war. Friedman is also careful to present a balanced, nonnationalistic approach to the conflict; the Japanese military is frequently portrayed as a cunning foil to the Americans' more headstrong forces.

Maps, charts and even diagrams of planes keep the pages moving and will wet the tongue of any amateur military strategist. It's a thoroughly, enthusiastically researched book that can only come from the desk of a true connoisseur of military history.

An impressive, meticulous and enjoyable must for any history buff's bookshelf.

Kirkus Discoveries.
March 31, 2008

I enjoyed the book "Morning of Rising Sun: The heroic story of the battles for Guadalcanal". The battles were the crucial turning point in Pacifc War and the end of the Japanese iniciative. The author Kenneth Friedman has done a superb job of describing the naval battles that took place between the Americans and Japanese off the Guadalcanal. This book was were well written with detailed information and nice maps and charts which help to understand the naval battles.

There have been a number of first rate accounts of this campaign and some 2nd and 3rd rate ones as well. This one belongs in one of the latter catagories.
Dr. Friedman starts out by thanking Adm. Morison for his work on the subject but manages to get the mans name wrong, a harbinger of things to come. He follows with an account of a pre-landing conference among senior commanders for which there is no record of the proceedings. The authors solution is to make it up which he freely admits in an end note.
The first naval battle of the campaign-Savo Island-resulted in a severe check to Allied forces under the command of RAdm Richmond Turner. Dr. Friedman turns literary somersaults in absolving Turner (obviously a hero to the author) of all blame for the defeat. Indeed Turners great talent throughout the war was covering his own mistakes. He knew a thing or two about Navy politics.
This tedious and overblown work continues for 600+ pages but never measures up to the standard Dr. Friedman says he aspired to which was to "tell the tale to the great Republic". It's a tale that should long be told but not by Dr. Friedman.

The book was printed missing the top margin and 2 or 3 lines of copy. I hope someone involved will read this and replace the book.
Thanks