Customer Reviews

The War in the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa, 1941-1945

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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Considering the lack of published US Army photos of the war in the Pacific, Gawne's book is an excellant entry into an almost empty field. If I see another book on the PR savy Marines, I think I'll explode. The captions are quite good with some little known uniform and equipment details. The publisher reproduced a couple of the photos a bit fuzzy and some more early war photos would have been of interest. I'm quibling because overall this is a very good book ... As the Army committed some 21 Divisions to this theater, this book finally gives the Army some of its due.

This book is part of the G. I. series of short illustrated studies covering a period or a series of campaigns. All of these books are vertical studies covering a period of years. Though sometimes the illustrations serve to identify individual items of equipment, these works are not intended for that purpose. They are not catalogs intended for materiel collectors. They are of such a length and of such a level of detail that they will serve the purposes of the general reader with a curiousity about what grandaddy did in WW II or great great great grandaddy in the Civil War and what he looked like and how he lived. This is not to say that the specialist such as myself cannot find useful nuggets herein. I can. I use these for general surveys of periods I do not study in detail, such as the Civil War, and the War With Mexico, etc. And to look up the odd facts. I have yet to be disappointed with any of them.

This is a good collection of WW2 photos I had not seen before (and I've seen a lot of them). My Only complaint is the reprodiction, which is slightly soft. Otherwise NEW and unseen photos from WW2, and really interesting captions. A nice mini-history of the Pacific war from the Army's viewpoint.