ISBN: 9780230274365    Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Year of publishing: 2010     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 304        

Bloody Pacific tells the real story of the attitudes and behaviour of American fighting men in the war against Japan, revealing much about the nature of this terrifying conflict that has until now remained unknown. Based on years of research and using countless unpublished diaries and letters, Schrijvers sweeps across the battlefields, from the desperate stand at Guadalcanal to the tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis, and from the daunting spaces of the China-Burma-India theatre to the fortress islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In a manner that is often unsettling, Bloody Pacific brings to life the GIs' epic struggle with suffocating wilderness, debilitating diseases, and Japanese soldiers choosing death over life. Amid the frustration and despair of this war, American soldiers abandoned themselves to an escalating rage against nature and man -- and prayed for the bombs that would wipe away Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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PETER SCHRIJVERS teaches American and International History at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. He is the author of The Crash of Ruin: American Combat Soldiers in Europe during World War II, The Unknown Dead: Civilians in the Battle of the Bulge and Liberators: The Allies and Belgian Society, 1944-1945. His work on World War II has received international acclaim and been made a selection of the History Book Club in the US.
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