Another Book Review

Turner Publishing is at it again. They have sent me a review copy of Historic Photos of World War II: Pearl Harbor to Japan. Once again the photos have been selected, captioned and accompanied by text written by Bob Duncan. The Pacific War was a very different experience from the war in Europe. On the ground it was dominated by island fighting and the island fighting  commands a large proportion of the pictures in the book. This suits me well because, as I have mentioned before, my father fought on Iwo Jima and my uncle fought on Guam.

Island fighting was relatively short compared with European land campaigns but was also correspondingly intense.  The well chosen photographs capture that intensity. In discussions at the dinner table my father would tell me stories of marines who, having survived one or two island combats , would become convinced that this next assault landing would be their last. The stories that survived were of course about the marines who didn’t. Frequently such a story accompanied the death of a marine who received the Congressional Medal of Honor or another decoration for bravery posthumously.

So many photos dramatize the island fighting that I came away with a sense that the naval war, the air war, the home front and the weapons and equipment did not get their fair share. This may be unfair as the Pacific Ocean and the pacific war  (there’s an irony for you) were both vast in scope. The war was also uniquely American in a way that the European war was not. Still the previous volume on Europe did a better job of capturing the essence of the American effort there. Although the individual photographs are excellent, the whole is not greater than the sum of the parts. Still, for those like me who have a special interest in the island war the book is more than sufficient when seen as a book primarily on that topic and I would recommend it on that basis.

Once, again I have an argument with Mr. Duncan’s  captions and text. I have been fortunate not to have experienced war to any great degree but I have studied it enough, have enough capacity for empathy and have lived long enough not to be moved in the way intended by triumphalism and nostalgia.  Cliched writing doesn’t help either.

Maybe I am being too harsh. It’s a photography book and the photographs are well chosen and very evocative of an important aspect of World War II – the island fighting in the Pacific. Accepted as such it is a very enjoyable and worthwhile book for those who share that interest.

Now that I have seen this book and the earlier one on Europe, I notice the Turner Publishing “Historic Photos of….” series everywhere. At my local Borders Books I saw that they did a very nice job with local and civil war history in my community of Alexandria, Virginia. The series is a worthwhile one and nicely fills a valuable niche. If historic photography interests you, see what they have at your local bookstore or on their website.