Word: morisons
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...Morison just keeps rollin' along, writing the most fascinating serial about World War II that anybody has yet, with the single exception of Winston Churchill. Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls is Volume VII in Morison's history of U.S. naval operations in World War II, and marks the halfway mark in the Harvard professor's long literary voyage. "Now that the outward passage is ended," he says comfortably, "we shall be homeward bound shortly." After Volume XIV, tentatively titled The Liquidation of the Japanese Empire, Morison expects to put into port at 71, a reasonable retirement...
...Admiral Morison's new volume begins. in the Aleutians, which "might well be called the Theater of Military Frustration." No admiral or general, Japanese or American, won fame in the North Pacific except possibly Rear Admiral "Soc" (for Socrates) McMorris, whose achievement was that he did not lose the naval battle of the Komandorskies-and Morison fails to make much of a case for him (Admiral Hosogaya turned away when he might have murdered McMorris' inferior, crippled force...
...Coral Seedbed. Volume VII was to have been called "The Conquest of Micronesia"; Morison had to put the reconquest of the Aleutians in somewhere, and his present gazetteer title was the result. But once he washes his hands of the melted snow of the North, Morison launches into the great drive across the Central Pacific, beginning in the Gilberts. Here was the testing ground for all future amphibious operations, the sine qua non of Japan's defeat...
...accurate or heavy enough; preliminary air bombing was poorly executed; amphibious tractors were too few, and unarmored. So the 2nd Marine Division had to wade through 500 yards of Japanese machine-gun fire to the bloodiest beachhead in the Corps' 176-year history. This they did. Morison gives the back of his hand to General Holland Smith, who says of his own troops' victory: "Tarawa was a mistake," claiming that the Marshalls should have been invaded first...
...thousand marines who died in Tarawa's 76 hours Morison says convincingly: "Not one died in vain, nor did the 2,101 men wounded in action and who recovered, suffer in vain. Every man there, lost or maimed, saved at least ten of his countrymen as the Navy plunged deep into enemy waters and sailed irresistibly through Micronesia. All honor, then, to the fighting heart of the United States Marine. Let that small stretch of coral sand . . be remembered as terrible indeed, but glorious, and the seedbed for victory...