Stanley P. Holloway joined the Marines at the start of World War II and spent nearly four years fighting in the Pacific. "Pacific War Marine" recounts his experiences during that time. It also tells the story of meeting his sweetheart, Marg, in New Zealand and includes their letters.

From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, and more recently from the jungles of Vietnam to the killing fields of Iraq, America's "soldiers of the sea" have fought their country's battles with famed valor, skill, and perseverance in the face of long odds. But where did the U.S. Marines earn their reputation as being the "first to fight?" It was on the South Pacific Island of Guadalcanal. There, on August 7, 1942, the 1st Marine Division stormed ashore to begin one of the most difficult and brutal campaigns of military history, and an unbroken string of victories staged across the Pacific.

The Marine Corps covered itself in glory in World War II with victories over the Japanese in hard-fought battles such as Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. While these battles are well known, those who led the Marines into them have remained obscure until now. In Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II, Stephen R. Taaffe analyzes the fifteen high-level Marine generals who led the Corps' six combat divisions and two corps in the conflict. He concludes that these leaders played an indispensable and unheralded role in organizing, training, and leading their men to victory. Taaffe insists there was nothing inevitable about the Marine Corps' success in World War II. The small pre-war size of the Corps meant that its commandant had to draw his combat leaders from a small pool of officers who often lacked the education of their Army and Navy counterparts. Indeed, there were fewer than one hundred Marine officers with the necessary rank, background, character, and skills for its high-level combat assignments. Moreover, the Army and Navy froze the Marines out of high-level strategic decisions and frequently impinged on Marine prerogatives. There were no Marines in the Joint Chiefs of Staff or at the head of the Pacific War's geographic theaters, so the Marines usually had little influence over the island targets selected for them. In addition to bureaucratic obstacles, constricted geography and vicious Japanese opposition limited opportunities for Marine generals to earn the kind of renown that Army and Navy commanders achieved elsewhere. In most of its battles on small Pacific War islands, Marine generals had neither the option nor inclination to engage in sophisticated tactics, but they instead relied in direct frontal assaults that resulted in heavy casualties. Such losses against targets of often questionable strategic value sometimes called into question the Marine Corps' doctrine, mission, and the quality of its combat generals. Despite these difficulties, Marine combat commanders repeatedly overcame challenges and fulfilled their missions. Their ability to do so does credit to the Corps and demonstrates that these generals deserve more attention from historians than they have so far received.

Faithful Warriors is a memoir of World War II in the Pacific by a combat veteran of the 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division. Written with award-winning author Steven Weingartner, Col. Ladd’s book recounts his experiences as a junior officer in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, during the amphibious invasions of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. Ladd's recollections and descriptions of life--and death--on the far-flung battlefronts of the Pacific War are vividly rendered, and augmented by the personal recollections of many of the men who served with him in his wartime journey across the Pacific. This vividly written memoir will stir the memories of those who lived during these trying times and will help future generations of readers to understand the realities of the Pacific War.

These memoirs of a retired Marine artillery officer are among the finest military autobiographies of the decade. A 1941 graduate of Annapolis, Parry served at Guadalcanal and Okinawa, commanded an artillery battalion at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, and ended his career in a key position on General [William] Westmoreland's staff in Vietnam. Along the way he accumulated a wide variety of both professional and personal experiences, which he relates frankly, literately, and with a great many insights into problems ranging from military marriages to the strategic errors in Vietnam. A perceptive self-portrait of the best sort of professional soldier and a welcome profile of the U.S. Marines over a period of nearly two generations.

If the U.S. Marines gave birth to a legend in the halls of Montezuma in the nineteenth century, they added glorious luster to it with their heroism and victories against the Japanese in World War II. For this vivid, foxhole view of the Marines' war, Richard Wheeler draws extensively on frontline eyewitness accounts of Marines and combat journalists and backs up their stories with official U.S. action reports and captured Japanese materials. First published in 1983, the book has earned praise as a popular, one-volume history of all the battles fought by the Marine Corps in the Pacific campaign. The book describes in fascinating and exciting detail the heroic defense of Wake Island against an overwhelming enemy assault force. It traces the long bloody battle for Guadalcanal that brought the Marines their first victory and gave America and its allies control of the strategically important Soloman Islands. It follows the painful, island-by-island counterattack toward the Japanese homeland when the Marines created new legends at such places as Bougainville, Saipan, Tarawa, Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Here are the remarkable exploits of the Marines holding off Japanese assault waves at Heartbreak Ridge, storming across coral reefs, and struggling up the slopes of Mount Suribachi to raise the Stars and Stripes. Some sixty-five photographs enhance the book, which is now available in paperback for the first time.

This “important comprehensive study” of WWII in the Pacific examines the high-level decision-making and strategy that led to victory (Roanoke Times). Once the stories have been told of battles won and lost, most of what happens in a war remains a mystery. So it has been with accounts of World War II in the Pacific, a complex conflict whose nature is often obscured by simple chronological narratives. In The Pacific War, William B. Hopkins, a Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific war and respected military history author, opens the story of the Pacific campaign to a broader and deeper view. Hopkins investigates the strategies, politics, and personalities that shaped the fighting. His regional approach to this complex war conducted on land, sea, and air offers an insightful perspective on how this multifaceted conflict unfolded. As expansive as the immense reaches of the Pacific, and as focused as the most intensive pinpoint attack on a strategic island, Hopkins’ account offers a fresh way of understanding the hows—and more significantly, the whys—of the Pacific War.