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LIMITED DISTRIBUTION SAMPLER—NOT FOR SALE THE OFFICIAL COMPANION BOOK TO THE ® MINISERIES SM A MARCH 2010 NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY CALIBER HARDCOVER Introduction Hundreds of great books have been written about the Pacific War. The majority of these volumes fall into one of three categories: a book about the war in general; a book that illuminates every detail of a single battle or important aspect; or a book by a veteran about his experiences. While all of these have their place in the historiography of such an important event, there is room for one more. The goal of The Pacific is to take the reader through the Pacific War, from first to last, through the eyes of a select few of the men who fought it. In this way, the reader enjoys the immediacy of the individual narrative, but sees the war as a whole. To achieve this goal, the five stories included here were chosen because they are representative of the experience. Between these men, they fought many of the great battles of the Pacific War. The coincidences and relationships that connect the five men allow their experiences to arrive in the context within which they occurred. The historical perspective emerges in a variety of ways. After carefully choosing the right stories, and developing them to their fullest, the author has chosen to provide only a thin skein of omniscience. Given its goal, this work is self-evidently not a definitive history of the entire war or even of the battles that it covers. Attempting to tell the story of individuals is fraught with perils. Sources contradict one another. The fog of war leaves mistaken impressions. The fog of time increases these misapprehensions. The documents are incomplete, sometimes inaccurate, and always more revealing of the aggregate experience than that of the individual. Relying on the letters, reports, and journals written during the war, though, solves most of these problems. 18626 9780451230232_ThePacific_FM.indd 15 18626 12/23/09 3:10:34 PM xvi • I NTRODUCTION History books relate what happened. This work focuses on what the men thought was going to happen, what they endured or witnessed, and what they believed had happened. Determining what someone thought at a particular time, before their understanding was shaped later by new information, is highly problematical. Contemporaneous accounts remain the best source. These accounts form the basis of this book. For reasons that will become obvious, I chose not to distinguish between remarks made at the time and those made many years later. Instead, I took great care to prevent the rosy glow of memory from obscuring the facts. The diaries, letters, and reports of Austin Shofner, Sid’s friend John “Deacon” Tatum, John Basilone, and Eugene Sledge are new to the war’s scholarship. They are rare and extremely valuable documents. They have made possible the vivid and unrelenting stories told herein. They also offer new insights and new information on key events and important individuals, as the avid military historians will discern. The basis of research for four of the individuals whose lives appear in this book (Sidney Phillips, Austin Shofner, Vernon Micheel, and Eugene Sledge) amounts to a core group of documents: their respective military records, letters, journals, memoirs, memoirs of friends, photos, and interviews. Since this book intends to tell the story of these men in their words as much as possible, these sources are quoted and paraphrased liberally (except in the case of Eugene Sledge’s memoir). In order to make the endnotes of this book less cumbersome, these sources will be cited in the first endnote of each story, in a “super endnote.” The additional material used will be cited in the text as necessary. The story of the fifth veteran, on the other hand, could not be handled in this manner. John Basilone’s story was pulled together from a hundred different sources, none of which offers more than a piece of the whole. 9780451230232_ThePacific_FM.indd 16 18626 12/9/09 10:46:32 AM 18626 THE CAST THE VAST AND COMPLEX WAR AGAINST JAPAN CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY FOLLOWING five individuals through it. On the day the Pacific War began, they were (in order of appearance): Lieutenant Austin C. “Shifty” Shofner—the scion of a prominent family with a long record of military service, he considered himself a professional marine. He had seen the barbarity of Japanese occupation up close and looked forward to leading men in combat. Ensign Vernon “Mike” Micheel—the prospect of being drafted had forced him to leave the family farm and complete the navy’s flight school in the fall of 1941. The challenge of being a naval aviator deepened at every turn. Sidney C. Phillips—the easygoing teenager went down to enlist when the war started because his buddy William “W. O.” Brown said they should do it. They thought they would join the navy because Mobile, Alabama, was a navy town. Sergeant “Manila John” Basilone—the son of immigrants had found happiness in the rough-and-ready life of a marine. Having previously served overseas, John had already experienced America’s postcolonial foreign policy. He thought it was worth fighting for. Eugene B. Sledge—the serious, intelligent son of a famous doctor, he watched as his best friend, Sidney Phillips, enlisted without him. The sight mortified 18626 9780451230232_ThePacific_FM.indd 17 18626 12/9/09 10:46:32 AM xviii • T HE C A ST him. For a year he deferred to his parents, who insisted that his elder brother Edward’s service would represent the family’s contribution to the war effort. Robert “Lucky” Leckie—viewers of the HBO miniseries The Pacific will note that one of the miniseries’s central characters, Robert Leckie, appears briefly in this text. Viewers will also notice that this volume features two men, Austin Shofner and Vernon Micheel, who are absent from the miniseries. The explanation can be found in the imperatives of print versus those of film. While the book and the miniseries share a core story, they are different mediums. Each must do what it does best. 9780451230232_ThePacific_FM.indd 18 18626 12/9/09 10:46:32 AM [ ACT I “HOUSE OF CARDS” December 1941–June 1942 AS THE 1930S GAVE WAY TO THE 1940S, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES thought little of the Empire of Japan. Americans worried about their economy, which had wallowed on the brink of collapse for a decade, and wished to stay out of the world’s problems. The speed at which Nazi Germany had come to dominate Europe had, however, provided President Franklin Roosevelt with enough political capital to take a few steps toward preparing the country to defend itself. Roosevelt and his military leadership also opposed the Japanese drive to dominate vast stretches of China. The Japanese government, ruled by a military cabal that included Emperor Hirohito, had created an ideology to justify its colonial conquest and built a military to enact it. Japan obviously intended to seize other valuable areas along the Pacific Rim. The United States controlled some of these valuable areas and it expected to keep the region open to trade. Roosevelt endeavored to curb Japan’s expansion by a series of economic and diplomatic measures backed up by the U.S. military— the smallest and least- equipped force of any industrialized nation in the world. 9780451230232_ThePacific_TX.indd 1 18626 12/9/09 10:43:48 AM [ FIRST LIEUTENANT AUSTIN SHOFNER WOKE UP EXPECTING ENEMY BOMBERS TO arrive overhead any second. Just after three a.m. his friend Hugh had burst into the cottage where he was sleeping on the floor and said, “shof, Shof, wake up. I just got a message in from the CinCPAC saying that war with Japan is to be de- clared within the hour. I’ve gone through all the Officer of the Day’s instructions, and there isn’t a thing in there about what to do when war is declared.”1 With the enemy’s strike imminent, Lieutenant Shofner took the next logical step. “Go wake up the old man.” “Oh,” Hugh replied, “I couldn’t do that.” Even groggy with sleep, Shofner under- stood his reluctance. The chain of command dictated that Lieutenant Hugh Nut- ter report to his battalion commander, not directly to the regimental commander. Speaking to a colonel in the Marine Corps was like speaking to God. The situation required it though. “You damn fool, get going, pass the buck up.” At this Hugh took off running into the darkness surrounding the navy base on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. Shofner followed quickly, running down to the docks, where the enlisted men were billeted in an old warehouse. He saw Hugh stumble into a hole and fall, but he didn’t stop to help. The whistle on the power station sounded. The sentry at the main gate began ringing the old ship’s bell. The men were already awake and shout- ing when Shofner ran into the barracks and ordered them to fall out. The bugler sounded the Call to Arms. Someone ordered the lights kept off, so as not to give the enemy’s planes a target. 18626 9780451230232_ThePacific_TX.indd 3 18626 12/9/09 10:43:48 AM 4 • T HE PACIFIC His men needed a few minutes to get dressed and assembled. Shofner ran to find the cooks and get them preparing chow. Then he went to find his battalion commander. Beyond the rundown warehouse where his men bunked, away from the rows of tents pitched on the rifle range where others were billeted, stood the handsome fort built by the Spanish.