Customer Reviews

This Is Guadalcanal: The Original Combat Photography

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Given the number of photos in this slim volume - some familiar, many hard-to-find - it is a bargain for the price. As another reviewer notes, some of the photos are graphic: this is not a sanitized view of the campaign. The book also features a number of excerpts and quotes, which make for good reading.

One warning though: in terms of historical fact, "This Is Guadalcanal" should be approached with caution. WASP, for example, was nowhere near Savo Island when she was torpedoed, contrary to this book's account. A photo of US transports under attack on 8 August is placed in the account of mid-September action. The section on the mid-November brawl opens with the well-known "Proceed Without Hornet" shot aboard ENTERPRISE's flight deck: the photo was in fact taken two weeks before, during the 26 October battle of Santa Cruz, where HORNET was lost. Carriers at Guadalcanal were attacked neither by Kamikaze nor by shell fire, despite the authors' claims. Both of those unique events would have to wait until the Battle of Leyte Gulf, nearly two years after the crux of the Guadalcanal campaign.

And so on...

Great photos, good text, but this book could have used more research and care to ensure it impressed factually as much as it does visually.

This is an excellent collection of period black and white photography. I bought it used in very good shape. Quadalcanal was a very primitive hands-on kind of combat. It's hard to appreciate how difficult it was without something like this to bring it home.