Book Review: 'The Pacific'
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| Cover art by Home Box Office, Inc. (C) 2010 NAL Caliber Books |
Pros: Interesting concept; vivid anecdotes;
compelling characters
Cons: None
After the phenomenal success of their HBO miniseries Band
of Brothers, executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks turned
to their friend Stephen E. Ambrose, author of the book they had just adapted
for TV, and started thinking about future World War II projects they could
collaborate on.
The Second World War, after all, was a topic Ambrose knew backwards and forwards from his stint as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's official biographer and his subsequent career as a history professor.
Ike had - before entering politics in 1952 - been one of America's top generals during the war, rising to the title of Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and five-star general before the end of hostilities in 1945, so it was not a stretch for Ambrose to pen several best-selling books about the U.S. Army - especially its "citizen soldiers" - in World War II.
Although Ambrose wrote extensively about the groundpounders, trackheads, flyboys and paratroopers who fought against the Third Reich in Europe, he died in 2002 before he got around to doing one of the projects he had tentatively discussed with Hanks and Spielberg: a book about the "other war" in the Pacific Theater of Operations.
In March of 2010, almost nine years after the premiere of Band of Brothers, Spielberg, Hanks and many of the producers and writers of that landmark miniseries launched The Pacific, a 10-part saga which follows three Marines as they embark on a series of campaigns that that takes them from the tropical island of Guadalcanal to the hellish landscapes of Okinawa and - for the survivors - their homecoming after Japan's surrender in September of 1945.
Fittingly, when HBO and Playtone needed a companion book for the series, they turned to the late Hugh Ambrose, son and assistant of Stephen and a historian in his own right. (Sadly, Hugh Ambrose died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 48.)
Published by NAL Caliber, Ambrose's non-fiction book is not the source of the miniseries in the same way that his dad's 1990s Band of Brothers was the takeoff point for Playtone's 2001 classic series about Easy Company in Northwest Europe.
Being a "companion book" rather than the wellspring for the HBO 10-parter, The Pacific takes the reader from the dark days after Pearl Harbor and on to the long struggle to push the Japanese back to the Home Islands in a chain of naval battles and amphibious landings that started at the Battle of the Coral Sea and ended with the landings at Okinawa and the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan itself.
Though two of the miniseries' three Marines - "Manila John" Basilone and Eugene Sledge - are prominent main characters; the third, Robert Leckie, was deliberately omitted for various reasons, the most important being Ambrose's need to include a narrative about Navy aviators, without which America wouldn't have won the air-sea battles in the Pacific.
The subtraction of Leckie - who was himself a noted writer of many books about the Pacific campaigns - allows Ambrose to add several narratives connected to those of Basilone (a Medal of Honor winner from New Jersey) and Sledge (a young Marine from Mobile, Alabama), who are played in the miniseries by actors Joe Mazzello and Jon Seda.
Some, like Marine Sidney Phillips, have close ties with those two men. Phillips (who was also seen in Ken Burns' 2007 documentary The War) was Sledge's best friend in Mobile and joined the service right after Pearl Harbor. Phillips saw action for the first time on Guadalcanal, where "Manila John" (so-called for his sea stories about his pre-war stint on the Philippines in the Army) earned the Medal of Honor.
Others, such as "Mike" Micheel and Austin "Shifty" Shofner, were included to widen the narrative to include men who had either flown in aerial combat (Micheel) or been held as POWs by the Japanese (Shofner) at the same time that Basilone and Sledge were "island hopping" across the Pacific.
Stylistically, The Pacific is a story told from the perspective of the men featured in its narrative. Instead of telling the tale from the omniscient we-know-this-now-in-the 21st Century perspective of a historian, Ambrose puts the reader in his protagonists' combat boots and mindsets. We know only what they know; if the U.S. Navy sinks a Japanese carrier called Ryukaku in the Battle of the Coral Sea, by God that's how it's reported at the time. (Ambrose, of course, gives us the correct name, Shoho, in a footnote.)
Ambrose, who worked with his father on such books as Undaunted Courage, Citizen Soldiers and The Wild Blue, explicitly chose this technique to give the reader some notion of what the wartime perspective - often obscured by the "fog of war" and very fragmented to the people caught up in World War II - was like.
The prose, while not exactly as folksy as that of Stephen Ambrose's, is crisp and clear, full of engaging details (such as Basilone's tattoos of a gorgeous Filipina) as well as horrifying vignettes of battle and its aftermath (such as the Marines' shock when the Navy transports leave the landing area off Guadalcanal before the supplies are completely offloaded as a result of a disastrous battle near Savo Island, or how Phillips and his buddies have to learn to breathe through their mouths while searching Japanese corpses for documents and even souvenirs).
Because I don't have HBO, I waited till The Pacific miniseries became available on DVD or Blu-ray in the fall of 2010. Until then, I read an excellent account of the Marines and Navy aviators who fought a very different and sometimes crueler war than that experienced by their Army and Navy brethren in the European and Mediterranean theaters of operation.
The Second World War, after all, was a topic Ambrose knew backwards and forwards from his stint as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's official biographer and his subsequent career as a history professor.
Ike had - before entering politics in 1952 - been one of America's top generals during the war, rising to the title of Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and five-star general before the end of hostilities in 1945, so it was not a stretch for Ambrose to pen several best-selling books about the U.S. Army - especially its "citizen soldiers" - in World War II.
Although Ambrose wrote extensively about the groundpounders, trackheads, flyboys and paratroopers who fought against the Third Reich in Europe, he died in 2002 before he got around to doing one of the projects he had tentatively discussed with Hanks and Spielberg: a book about the "other war" in the Pacific Theater of Operations.
In March of 2010, almost nine years after the premiere of Band of Brothers, Spielberg, Hanks and many of the producers and writers of that landmark miniseries launched The Pacific, a 10-part saga which follows three Marines as they embark on a series of campaigns that that takes them from the tropical island of Guadalcanal to the hellish landscapes of Okinawa and - for the survivors - their homecoming after Japan's surrender in September of 1945.
Fittingly, when HBO and Playtone needed a companion book for the series, they turned to the late Hugh Ambrose, son and assistant of Stephen and a historian in his own right. (Sadly, Hugh Ambrose died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 48.)
Published by NAL Caliber, Ambrose's non-fiction book is not the source of the miniseries in the same way that his dad's 1990s Band of Brothers was the takeoff point for Playtone's 2001 classic series about Easy Company in Northwest Europe.
Being a "companion book" rather than the wellspring for the HBO 10-parter, The Pacific takes the reader from the dark days after Pearl Harbor and on to the long struggle to push the Japanese back to the Home Islands in a chain of naval battles and amphibious landings that started at the Battle of the Coral Sea and ended with the landings at Okinawa and the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan itself.
Though two of the miniseries' three Marines - "Manila John" Basilone and Eugene Sledge - are prominent main characters; the third, Robert Leckie, was deliberately omitted for various reasons, the most important being Ambrose's need to include a narrative about Navy aviators, without which America wouldn't have won the air-sea battles in the Pacific.
The subtraction of Leckie - who was himself a noted writer of many books about the Pacific campaigns - allows Ambrose to add several narratives connected to those of Basilone (a Medal of Honor winner from New Jersey) and Sledge (a young Marine from Mobile, Alabama), who are played in the miniseries by actors Joe Mazzello and Jon Seda.
Some, like Marine Sidney Phillips, have close ties with those two men. Phillips (who was also seen in Ken Burns' 2007 documentary The War) was Sledge's best friend in Mobile and joined the service right after Pearl Harbor. Phillips saw action for the first time on Guadalcanal, where "Manila John" (so-called for his sea stories about his pre-war stint on the Philippines in the Army) earned the Medal of Honor.
Others, such as "Mike" Micheel and Austin "Shifty" Shofner, were included to widen the narrative to include men who had either flown in aerial combat (Micheel) or been held as POWs by the Japanese (Shofner) at the same time that Basilone and Sledge were "island hopping" across the Pacific.
Stylistically, The Pacific is a story told from the perspective of the men featured in its narrative. Instead of telling the tale from the omniscient we-know-this-now-in-the 21st Century perspective of a historian, Ambrose puts the reader in his protagonists' combat boots and mindsets. We know only what they know; if the U.S. Navy sinks a Japanese carrier called Ryukaku in the Battle of the Coral Sea, by God that's how it's reported at the time. (Ambrose, of course, gives us the correct name, Shoho, in a footnote.)
Ambrose, who worked with his father on such books as Undaunted Courage, Citizen Soldiers and The Wild Blue, explicitly chose this technique to give the reader some notion of what the wartime perspective - often obscured by the "fog of war" and very fragmented to the people caught up in World War II - was like.
The prose, while not exactly as folksy as that of Stephen Ambrose's, is crisp and clear, full of engaging details (such as Basilone's tattoos of a gorgeous Filipina) as well as horrifying vignettes of battle and its aftermath (such as the Marines' shock when the Navy transports leave the landing area off Guadalcanal before the supplies are completely offloaded as a result of a disastrous battle near Savo Island, or how Phillips and his buddies have to learn to breathe through their mouths while searching Japanese corpses for documents and even souvenirs).
Because I don't have HBO, I waited till The Pacific miniseries became available on DVD or Blu-ray in the fall of 2010. Until then, I read an excellent account of the Marines and Navy aviators who fought a very different and sometimes crueler war than that experienced by their Army and Navy brethren in the European and Mediterranean theaters of operation.
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