BOOK OF THE DAY - The PacificBy Hugh Ambrose Canongate Books, 489pp, £20: THE PACIFICis written by Hugh Ambrose, military historian and son of Stephen Ambrose, author of the hugely popular book and HBO series Band of Brothers. Band of Brotherstells the story of the US military's war in Europe through the eyes of a tightly-knit group of US troops. The Pacifictells the story of the US war against the Imperial Japanese army and navy in the Pacific.
Adopting exactly the same style as Band of Brothers, Ambrose jnr delivers a straightforward chronological account of the war from 1942 to 1945. The narratives of the main characters were pieced together by way of painstaking archival research and extensive interviews with American veterans of the Pacific campaign. The Pacific is ambitious in its scope and covers the full sweep of the war from Pearl Harbor to the battles of Midway, Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Japan’s eventual defeat. The book focuses on the experiences of a half dozen main characters – a cross-section of real-life officers and men who fought in the war. The personal stories of these men – and the down-to-earth “GI speak” they employ – succeed to some extent in reducing the complexity of the Pacific war to simple human terms.
The group of marines and naval aviators that Ambrose selects for the book, however, are only partially representative of the regional, educational and class make-up of the rapidly expanded US military of the second World War. What we get in the book is an all-male, all-white group of eager volunteers. None are conscripts. All are keen to go and “kill Japs”. Whilst there is a mix of blue and white collar experiences of the war reflected in the book, there is little or no reference to African Americans, Hispanics or other ethnic groups that fought in the war. Neither does the book focus on the war experiences of the Japanese – more often than not referred to as “Japs” by the protagonists – or those civilians such as the Okinawans that found themselves caught in the crossfire of war. Women’s voices are also largely absent from the book.
For all that, Ambrose produces a relatively pleasing all-American "buddy-buddy" version of the war in the Pacific. Whilst much of the book reads like a Boys Ownretelling of war stories, Ambrose does make some reference to the savagery of combat, with the experiences of those marines caught up in the ground warfare particularly harrowing. There are several accounts in the book of human-wave "banzai" attacks by Japanese troops on US marine positions. There are also disturbing accounts of the torture of US prisoners of war by Japanese troops.
The book also brings out the capricious nature of wartime service in describing the widely differing experiences of combat among those in the US navy, air force and marines. Unlike the infantry and marines, the officer pilots return from combat to three-course meals in the air-conditioned officers wardroom – which often include ice cream and cold beer.
The Pacificwill sell by the hundreds of thousands and the HBO series to accompany it running on Sky Movies will no doubt attract enormous ratings. However, at a time when the US is once more at war the book fails to address in any significant way the psychological and emotional consequences of killing. Nor does the book adequately capture the trauma of combat. There is a peculiar detachment in the writing style that may reflect Ambrose's status as an academic with no combat experience of his own. In this respect, The Pacificlacks the authority, immediacy and authenticity of war-time classics such as Siegfried Sassoon's Memoirs of George Sherstonor Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.
Dr Tom Clonan is The Irish TimesSecurity Analyst. He is a retired army officer and fellow of the Inter University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society at Loyola University
