BATTLE REPORT: Vol. IV

This, the fourth volume of the official record, is subtitled The End of an Empire, and holds up to the high standard of the preceding volumes. The material is based on records, personal and official, on exhaustive study of the daily communiques, on reconstruction of the multitudinous details into an integrated pattern. Factually and technically accurate, the story emerges in very human terms, stories of men and ships. It starts with the cleaning up process in the southwest- New Guinea and Rabaul, the launching of the offensive with the campaigns of the Marshall Islands, the Gilberts, the Carolines, the Marianas, Saipan, etc. Then the Philippine return, and the collapse of the Japanese fleet. It is an overall record of amphibious warfare, of the cost of victory, of the mistakes as well as the successes. Credit is given to the Japs for not knowing when they were licked, for courage to the point of foolhardiness, for better torpedoes than the American ones. Here and there are included factual accounts of such dramatic episodes of the war as Tweed, who refused to surrender and lived throughout the war in Guam, virtually under the nose of the enemy. An important book- for future record.