This fascinating, richly illustrated survey of all aspects of the Pacific war, from Pearl Harbor to Japan's surrender in Tokyo Bay, offers something unique among World War II histories: an extensive color portfolio of dramatic wartime relics that have survived decades on most of the Pacific island battlefields. Rusting American landing craft and tanks still can be found on the treacherous reefs and beaches where they were tragically stopped by enemy fire so long ago; aircraft of both sides lie hidden in the jungles where they crashed; battle-scarred Japanese pillboxes and artillery emplacements still stand sentinel; and packed-coral landing strips remain as good as new.
Such evocative memento mori have been beautifully captured on film by Jerry Meehl, probably the only photographer to have sought out these far-flung battle sites, many of them still dangerous underfoot and now off-limits to travelers. The authors also searched official archives for pictures that show the real terrors of combat and often found images displaying the very tanks and amtracs now decomposing on distant invasion beaches. They also found captured prewar photos of newly built Japanese pillboxes and gun emplacements, which they contrast with images of their current war-torn condition.
But Pacific Legacy is far from just a "then" and "now" picture book. Each of the more than twenty photo essays of particular battles features a lively narrative that relies heavily on the firsthand accounts of men who were there, archival pictures shot during the actual fighting, and color photographs of the remaining Japanese bunkers and gun emplacements, all of which help the reader visualize what hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific war must have been like.
Rex Alan Smith is a veteran of 36 months with the Army Engineers in the Pacific, where he was third mate and navigator of the USS Dan Kingman, an Army dredge ship. He's the author of Moon of Popping Trees, about the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre, One Last Look (Abbeville), about the 8th Air Force in World War II, and The Carving of Mount Rushmore (Abbeville). Elected to the South Dakota Hall of Fame and known as a great storyteller, Smith is a very popular speaker at veterans' gatherings. Gerald Meehl, the author of more than 90 articles, has traveled extensively in the South Pacific over the last three decades and has photographed every major island battlefield as well as other Pacific sites connected to World War II. Joe Foss, Medal of Honor winner at Guadalcanal, was the Marine Corps' Ace of Aces, with 26 confirmed kills, the first American fighter pilot to surpass Eddie Rickenbacker's record set in World War I. He went on to serve as a two-term governor of South Dakota and to be named the first commissioner of the American Football League, where he was the driving force behind founding the Super Bowl.
