Pacific Legacy: Image and Memory from World War II in the Pacific

The gripping story of World War II in the Pacific, told through fascinating then-and-now photographs and eyewitness accounts

Pearl Harbor • Wake Island • the Bataan Death March • Guadalcanal • Tarawa • Guam • Saipan • Tinian • Peleliu • Iwo Jima • Okinawa • and more

“No Marine’s library should be without this stunning volume.” ―Leatherneck magazine

Pacific Legacy tells the story of World War II in the Pacific as it was for those who were there―combining fascinating then-and-now photographs with a gripping text based on eyewitness accounts.

Original photographs by Gerald A. Meehl offer an unprecedented record of the relics of World War II that have survived on the islands of the Pacific: American landing craft rusting on the reefs where they were stopped by enemy fire; shell-pocked Japanese fortifications; fallen aircraft overgrown by jungle; packed-coral landing strips still as good as new. These evocative color images are paired with archival photographs that show the same tropical battlegrounds as they appeared in wartime.

The text covers the entire war in the Pacific, from the attack on Pearl Harbor to Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay. The principal battles are recounted hour by hour, drawing heavily on the authors’ interviews with veterans of the Pacific Theater, as well as with the Pacific Islanders whose homelands were transformed into battlegrounds. This vivid narrative helps the reader visualize what it was really like to be at war in the Pacific, doggedly island-hopping to victory.

In this second edition of Pacific Legacy, a new preface by Meehl examines recent developments in the commemoration of the Pacific war, including the ongoing search for the remains of MIAs and sunken ships.

Rex Alan Smith (1921–2010) was a veteran of thirty-six months with the Army Engineers in the South Pacific., where he eventually became third mate of the USS Dan Kingman, an army dredging ship clearing harbors and channels for ships of the advancing American Fleet. He was also the author of Moon of Popping Trees, about the Wounded Knee Massacre; One Last Look (Abbeville), about the 8th Air Force in World War II, and The Carving of Mount Rushmore (Abbeville).

Gerald A. Meehl, has traveled extensively in the South Pacific, photographing every major island battlefield as well as most other Pacific sites connected to World War II. His interest in the war came from hearing stories told by his father, a B-17 crew chief, and three uncles who also fought the Japanese. He is the author or coauthor of several other books on the war, including Fast Boats and Fast Times, One Marine’s War, A Shanghai American, and One Small Town Boy.

Joe Foss, Medal of Honor winner at Guadalcanal, was the Marine Corps’ Ace of Aces, with twenty-six confirmed kills, the first American fighter pilot to surpass Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record. He went on to serve as a two-term governor of South Dakota and first commissioner of the American Football League, where he was the driving force behind founding the Super Bowl.