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History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. 14
Victory in the Pacific, 1945
Samuel Eliot Morison| Pub Date: | |
| Pages: | 464 pages |
| Dimensions: | 6 x 9 in. |
| Illustrations: | 64 black & white photographs, 20 line drawings, 10 tables |
This final narrative volume of Morison's history recounts the infamous campaigns for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two of the most bitterly contested campaigns of the war.
When the U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima, they expected to secure it within a few days. No one had anticipated Japan's determination to defend the island to the last man. Morison describes the Japanese defense system of camouflaged rifle pits and fortified gunning positions that held the Allies at bay and the heavy and continuous cover of naval gunfire that prevented even greater losses. As it was, the securing of Iwo Jima cost the United States more casualties than had been incurred in taking any other island in the Pacific. On Okinawa, the conflict stretched over six long, bloody months.
As land forces struggled for every inch they took on the islands, the U.S. Navy faced the desperate fury of the kamimaze corps and its harvest of flaming terror: explosions, burning and flooded ships, searing injuries and death. Fierce weather, logistical complexities, Japanese submarines, and the unexpected death of President Roosevelt also took their toll.
Morison concludes his epic account with the final skirmishes of the war, the fateful decision to drop the atomic bomb, and the delicate negotiations leading to Japanese surrender.
"Admiral Morison may well be the best writer on deployed combat since Xenophon."--Saturday Review
"There is no naval operations history at once as concise and complete, and salty and understanding of the men and situations involved, as unemotional and yet as vivid and human, as the work which Morison and his score of principal aides and collaborators have now completed."--New York Herald Tribune
Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) was the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and the author or editor of more than fifty books, including Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus, The European Discovery of America, and the multivolume Oxford History of the American People. He retired from the navy with the rank of rear admiral.
Subjects:
History, Military / History, Am.: 20th C.
