Ocean State Libraries

Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. This book takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant...

On Iwo Jima, one of the bloodiest and most brutal battles of World War II, nearly 7,000 Marines were killed and 22,000 were wounded in thirty-six grueling days. MacCallum takes us from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima through the lives of these men of valor; among them is Harry Gray, a member of her own family. Their stories, told through letters and recollections are woven into the larger history of what American military leaders rightly saw as an eventual...

Although most people associate the term D-day with the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, it is military code for the beginning of any offensive operation. In the Pacific theater during World War II there were more than one hundred D-days. The largest-and last-was the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, which brought together the biggest invasion fleet ever assembled, far larger than that engaged in the Normandy invasion. D-Days in the Pacific tells...

World War II was the largest war in history, with battles taking place throughout Europe, North Africa, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In this book, readers will learn about the varied military campaigns that took place in the Pacific, from Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor to its surrender nearly 4 years later. The use of timelines effectively outlines the major events of World War II-both in the Pacific as well as in Europe and North Africa....

"In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, and their fellow victors, the questions of justice seemed clear: Japan's leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against citizens in China, the Philippines, Korea, and elsewhere; rampant abuses of POWs....

The most gripping, intimate, and inspiring account of Pearl Harbor, the first memoir ever published by a USS Arizona survivor. At 8:06 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Seaman First Class Donald Stratton was consumed by an inferno. A million pounds of explosives had detonated beneath his battle station aboard the USS Arizona, barely fifteen minutes into Japan's surprise attack on American forces at Pearl Harbor. Near death and burned across two thirds of...

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction in 2003, The Caprices is a collection of stories artfully told across the theatre of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. An Anglo-Indian cavalryman, his homeland on the brink of revolution, finds himself in Malaysia fighting to protect British interests. Two soldiers lost in the jungle with a Japanese prisoner confront their prejudices toward each other, and the nature of being American. An island witnesses...