The US Military and the Pacific Environment: The Making of an American Lake

by Andrew C. Isenberg (Editor), Beth Bailey (Editor), Paul Landsberg (Editor)

Overview

The environmental consequences of the US military presence from World War II through the end of the US war in Vietnam.

Oceans and deserts, jungles and plains, mountains and rivers, monsoons and blizzards, fertile grounds and diseased lands; all have shaped how strategy and technology has been deployed and developed, and all have supported unexpected victories and decimated even the best-laid plans. Conversely, warfare and militarization have shaped the environment, scarring landscapes, accelerating the global spread of disease, unbalancing ecosystems, and contributing to climate change.

Reflecting on the inextricable, reciprocal, and often surprising relationship between the natural world and human warfare, these essays offer a new perspective on power, knowledge, and the environment in US military history.

The history of US military engagement in the Pacific powerfully demonstrates the profound and diverse impacts that regions’ extraordinarily diverse environments have wrought on warfare. US military action has also had profound impacts in the Pacific, from the nuclear weapons testing programs of the Cold War to the use of chemical defoliants in Vietnam. The contributors to this volume consider how the physical environments of the Pacific shaped the process and outcome of battles and wars, and discuss the effect warfare and other military actions had on these physical environments.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700638710
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	07/22/2025
Series:	Modern War Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Andrew C. Isenberg, the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History
Beth Bailey is Foundation Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies at the University of Kansas.
Paul Landsberg is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the United States Air Force Academy.

Table of Contents

Introduction: An American Lake?, Beth Bailey and Andrew C. Isenberg

1. “A Lifetime of Bad Dreams”: Military Base Construction in the Tropical Environment of Port Moresby, Papua, in 1942, John Moremon

2. Animal Histories and the Pacific War: Decentering Violence and Destruction, Christopher Capozzola and William San Martin

3. War and Ecological Imperialism in the Alaskan Indigenous Environment, Holly Miowak Guise

4. A Fire Came Down from Heaven: Destroying Natural and Built Environments with Napalm During World War II, Michael A. Hill

5. Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Radiation and the Environment in the Marshall Islands, Joshua McGuffie

6. The Ring of Fire: How Underground Nuclear Explosions in Alaska Unleashed the Catastrophic Imaginary of the Pacific World, Toshihiro Higuchi

7. Atomic Currents: The US Military and Nuclear Energy in the Alaskan Pacific, Philip A. Wight

8. “We Are Freed from the Tyranny of Terrain”: Airmobility and the US Army’s Global Environment, Paul C. Landsberg

9. Imagined Environmental Warfare: Vietnamese Experts, the French Military, and American Herbicides in the Red River Delta, 1952–1954, Michitake Aso

10. Kidnapped on the Beach: Global Grids and Communist State-Building in a Cold War Borderland, David Biggs

11. The Neglected Rose of Oceans and Marine Resources in the US-Vietnam War, Pamela McElwee

12. Militarized Harvest: Rice and Revolutionary Warfare in South Vietnam, Martin G. Clemis

Editor and Contributor Biographies

Index

Editorial Reviews

This volume marks a long stride forward in scholarly work on the nexus between environmental and military matters, with new research and novel insights on the Pacific War, the Vietnam War, and nuclear weapons testing. It brings together a broad variety of approaches to environmental history, matching the broad diversity of Pacific environments and peoples.”—J. R. McNeill, coauthor of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945

“This is a rich collection of original essays that critically examine the destructive effects of US imperial expansion on varied Pacific environments, their populations, and non-human life forms from World War II to the Vietnam War. The contributions to this well-researched volume underscore the connection between scientific knowledge and state power, the reciprocal interaction between the US military and the environments it sought to conquer, the power of discursive imaginaries centered on ecological devastation, and the resistance of local and Indigenous people. The result is a compelling intervention on the relationship between war and the environment.”—David Hanlon, author of Making Micronesia: A Political Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama

“This provocative collection presents new perspectives on the social and ecological consequences of total warfare on the sea, land, and air, from Alaska to Vietnam and Papua New Guinea. Focusing on US military strategies and their consequences, this is essential reading on the environmental legacy of warfare with lessons for our own time.”—Richard Tucker, coeditor of Natural Enemy, Natural Ally: Toward an Environmental History of War

“This is the first book to seriously grapple with the ways that US military has long been deeply intertwined with local environments across the Pacific. From the shores of Alaska to the beaches of Papua New Guinea, from World War II to the US war in Vietnam, the contributors address how the US military has long sought to understand and utilize local environments while also realizing that environments are not always so easily manipulated and managed. The essays provide an exciting and important roadmap for how scholars can continue to bridge the gaps between environmental studies and histories of the US military and the US in the world.”—Gretchen Heefner, author of The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland

From the Publisher