South Pacific Cauldron: World War II's Great Forgotten Battlegrounds

by Alan P Rems

Overview

“Award-winning author Alan Rems brilliantly tells of the campaigns in the South Pacific, a region long overlooked, offering both the big picture and the foxhole view” — Military Officer “A fitting tribute to the men who fought and died in an often overlooked theater of World War II. As such, it is a welcome addition to our knowledge of World War II in the Pacific Theater.” — On Point: The Journal of Army History While the Pacific War has been widely studied by military historians and venerated in popular culture through movies and other media, the fighting in the South Pacific Theater has, with few exceptions, been remarkably neglected. Authoritative yet written in a highly readable narrative style, South Pacific Cauldron is the first complete history embracing all land, sea, and air operations in this critically important sector of the oceanic conflict.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612514703
Publisher:	Naval Institute Press
Publication date:	05/15/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	939,445
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Alan Rems, a retired CPA, has been a regular contributor to Naval History magazine since his first writing effort that earned the U.S. Naval Institute’s 2008 Author of the Year award. He lives with his wife, a retired newspaper managing editor, in Centreville, Virginia.

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From the Preface



Nearly forty years ago, Guadalcanal veteran and author James Jones lamented how little was remembered about the World War II battlefields of the South Pacific. He wrote, "Almost all of them names people in the United States never heard of." The same could likely have been said about how much was remembered by Australians and New Zealanders, whose nations fought there alongside America. Since Jones' lament, the situation can only have worsened with the deaths of most who served there.



Even the setting is largely forgotten. The words "South Pacific," for most, evoke only the fictional island paradise on which Rodgers and Hammerstein set their musical adaptation of James Michener's tales. But there were few "enchanted evenings" in the very different South Pacific region--Melanesia-- that we speak of here. Encompassing the Solomon Islands, the eastern half of New Guinea, and the waters and lands of the Solomon and Bismarck seas in between, this region contained some of the worst terrain and weather of all World War II combat zones. With towering mountains; treacherous razorback ridges; dense, disease-ridden jungles; great miasmal swamps; infernal heat and humidity; and torrential rainfall, the environment there was challenging enough without the dangers of battle.



From that war zone, one battlefield, Guadalcanal, has remained etched in American memory as a symbol of courage and endurance. Australians and New Zealanders might remember, too, the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Kokoda Trail, fought when their nations were under dire threat of invasion from Japan.



After these 1942 battles, the Allies went on the offensive and the character of the war in the South Pacific changed. Beachheads were obtained on large islands at relatively low cost, and terrain, weather, and supply difficulties often slowed advances more than the Japanese did. It was slow, hardscrabble fighting, hardly material for dazzling war reporting, and what public attention remained was mostly absorbed by the more spectacular Central Pacific offensive that started in November 1943 with Tarawa. Except for those at home with ties to men whose lives were invested there, the war in the South Pacific was eminently forgettable. But for those who were there it was The War. And its result influenced the outcome of World War II no less than El Alamein, Kursk, Anzio, Normandy, and Iwo Jima did.



James Jones commented about the war in the South Pacific in 1943: "They had a year of battles, fought without any great victories to stimulate troop morale. . . . Short, sharp, costly fights, each of them, which got scant publicity at home." His observation about publicity was correct, but Jones' mordant view about what was accomplished was not. In just nine months, the Allies wrested control of the South Pacific from the Japanese, neutralizing their great base of Rabaul and opening the way to the Philippines and the heart of the Japanese Empire.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Chronology
Chapter One: "The Hottest Potato"
Chapter Two: "I Want You to Take Buna, or Not Come Back Alive"
Chapter Three: "There Was Indeed Only One Yamamoto"
Chapter Four: "The Most Unintelligently Waged Land Campaign"
Chapter Five: "A Custody Receipt for Munda . . . Keep 'Em Dying"
Chapter Six: "Lae and Salamaua Must Be Defended to the Death"
Chapter Seven: "Prevent Your Troops Engaging My Troops"
Chapter Eight: "The Weakness of Trying to Fight Battles from a Distance"
Chapter Nine: "It's Torokina. Now Get on Your Horses!"
Chapter Ten: "Halsey Knows the Straight Story"
Chapter Eleven: "Make Sure They Think the Invasion Has Commenced"
Chapter Twelve: "Guadalcanal--Minus Most of the Errors"
Chapter Thirteen: "The Final Outcome . . . Was Never in Doubt"
Chapter Fourteen: "The Most Desperate Emergency"
Chapter Fifteen: "The Closest Thing to a Living Hell"
Chapter Sixteen: "A Shop in the Japs' Front Yard"
Chapter Seventeen: "More Nerve-Racking Than . . . Tobruk or El Alamein"
Chapter Eighteen: "Nature Proved to Be a Worse Enemy Than the Japanese"
Chapter Nineteen: "Keep Rabaul Burning!"
Chapter Twenty: "The Worst-Kept Secret of the War in the South Pacific"
Chapter Twenty-One: "But for the Stern Resistance . . . of the XIV Corps"
Chapter Twenty-Two: "They Wanted to Fight"
Chapter Twenty-Three: "The South Pacific Campaign Was Finished"
Chapter Twenty-Four: "Kicking Around a Corpse"
Chapter Twenty-Five: "The Japanese Could Die Where They Were or Die Advancing"
Chapter Twenty-Six: "Doubtful That He Checked with the Ordinary Foot Soldier"
Chapter Twenty-Seven: "No Enemy Can Withstand You"
Chapter Twenty-Eight: "Japan Man 'E Cry Enough"
Chapter Twenty-Nine: "Once It Was Over It Was Over"
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"South Pacific Cauldron is an important contribution to the literature of the Pacific War." -The NYMAS Review

From the Publisher