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By Root 1095 0

seas, the formidable size of the imperial Japanese fleet, and the priority of the United States in defeating Nazi Germany first, all meant that the odds were often with the enemy. In particular theaters the Japanese had advantages over the Americans in numbers, choice of terrain, and even supply. We now might underestimate the wartime technology of imperial Japan, forgetting that it was often as good as, or even superior to, American munitions. On both islands Sledge writes in detail of the singular Japanese mortars and artillery that wheeled out, fired, and then withdrew in safety behind heavy steel doors. Especially feared was “a 320-mm-spigot-mortar unit equipped to fire a 675-pound shell. Americans first encountered this awesome weapon on Iwo Jima.”

As Sledge relates, the heat, rugged coral peaks, and incessant warm rain of the exotic Pacific islands, so unlike the European theater, were as foreign to Americans as the debilitating tropical diseases. Land crabs and ubiquitous jungle rot ate away leather, canvas—and flesh. “It was gruesome,” Sledge the biologist writes of Peleliu, “to see the stages of decay proceed from just killed to bloated to maggot-infested rotting to partially exposed bones—like some biological clock marking the inexorable passage of time.” He adds of the stench, “At every breath one inhaled hot, humid air heavy with countless repulsive odors.”

The awfulness was not just that the fanatical nature of the Japanese resistance meant that America's Depression-era draftees were usually forced to kill rather than wound or capture their enemy. Rather, there grew a certain dread or even bewilderment among young draftees about the nature of an ideology that could fuel such elemental hatred of the Americans. On news of the Japanese surrender after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the veteran Sledge remained puzzled: “We thought the Japanese would never surrender. Many refused to believe it. Sitting in stunned silence, we remembered our dead. So many dead. So many maimed. So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.”

E. B. Sledge's story begins with his training as a Marine in Company K, 3d Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. The memoir centers on two nightmarish island battles that ultimately ruined the division. The first was at Peleliu (Operation Stalemate II, September 15-November 25, 1944), where in 10 weeks of horrific fighting some 8,769 Americans were killed, wounded, or missing. About 11,000 Japanese perished—nearly the entire enemy garrison on the island. Controversy raged—and still does about the wisdom of storming many of the Pacific islands—whether Gen. Douglas MacArthur really needed the capture of the Japanese garrison on Peleliu to ensure a safe right flank on his way to the Philippines.

Yet such arguments over strategic necessity count little for Sledge. His concern is instead with the survival of his 235 comrades in Company K, which suffered 150 killed, wounded, or missing. And so there is little acrimony over the retrospective folly of taking on Peleliu. Sledge's resignation might be best summed up as something like, “The enemy held the island; we took it; they lost, and we moved on.”

Operation Iceberg (April 1, 1945-July 2, 1945) the next year to capture Okinawa was far worse. Indeed it was the most nightmarish American experience of the entire Pacific war—over 50,000 American casualties, including some 12,500 soldiers and sailors killed, and the greatest number of combat fatigue cases ever recorded of a single American battle.

My namesake Victor Hanson, of the 6th Marine Division, 29th Regiment, was killed near the Shuri Line, in the last assault on the heights, a few hours before its capture on May 19, 1945. His letters, and those of his commanding officer notifying our family of his death, make poignant reading— including the account of his final moments on Sugar Loaf Hill. Indeed, the very name Okinawa has haunted the Hanson family, as it had Sledge's and thousands of other American households, for a half century hence. For decades in the United States no one