A fast-moving, smartly detailed story of an environmental disaster compounded by the Corps’ broken promise—“We take care of...
The National Journal’s managing editor investigates “the largest and worst incidence of a poisoned water supply in history.”
Its coastal perch, rivers and swamps, tangled forests and humid climate made 152,000 undeveloped acres in North Carolina perfect for the establishment, in 1941, of an advance-force training base. From Camp Lejeune, the Marines would practice landings that culminated in heroics in foreign wars. Over the decades, however, the base also became a dump for diesel and gasoline, cleaning solvents, chemical weapons, gas cylinders, insecticides, waste oil and battery acid, pesticides, grease and mercury. Burn dumps for garbage, pits containing industrial waste, construction debris, ordnance and mortar shells all dotted the landscape and bubbled into a toxic stew that seeped into an already precarious water supply. Magner (Poisoned Legacy: The Human Cost of BP’s Rise to Power, 2011) chronicles the resulting catastrophe—heartbreaking stories of infant deaths, a wide range of grisly birth defects and an alarming array of cancers—by interleaving his narrative with intimate portraits of affected Marines and their families. Nearly as shocking, though, is his tale of the Marine Corps’ slow awakening to the problem, its unconscionable foot-dragging, its unwillingness to answer questions or to study the adverse health effects linked to the chemicals found in the water. Only the persistent, organized efforts of “a highly motivated group of former Marines,” Lejeune victims whose lives were capsized, first by the Corps’ negligence and then by its indifference, led to action that culminated in a 2012 federal law authorizing medical care to Lejeune Marines and their families. Efforts to broaden that statute, as well as a variety of lawsuits, continue.
A fast-moving, smartly detailed story of an environmental disaster compounded by the Corps’ broken promise—“We take care of our own”—to the men who served and suffered.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-306-82257-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.
A firsthand account of how the Navajo language was used to help defeat the Japanese in World War II.
At the age of 17, Nez (an English name assigned to him in kindergarten) volunteered for the Marines just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Growing up in a traditional Navajo community, he became fluent in English, his second language, in government-run boarding schools. The author writes that he wanted to serve his country and explore “the possibilities and opportunities offered out there in the larger world.” Because he was bilingual, he was one of the original 29 “code talkers” selected to develop a secret, unbreakable code based on the Navajo language, which was to be used for battlefield military communications on the Pacific front. Because the Navajo language is tonal and unwritten, it is extremely difficult for a non-native speaker to learn. The code created an alphabet based on English words such as ant for “A,” which were then translated into its Navajo equivalent. On the battlefield, Navajo code talkers would use voice transmissions over the radio, spoken in Navajo to convey secret information. Nez writes movingly about the hard-fought battles waged by the Marines to recapture Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and others, in which he and his fellow code talkers played a crucial role. He situates his wartime experiences in the context of his life before the war, growing up on a sheep farm, and after when he worked for the VA and raised a family in New Mexico. Although he had hoped to make his family proud of his wartime role, until 1968 the code was classified and he was sworn to silence. He sums up his life “as better than he could ever have expected,” and looks back with pride on the part he played in “a new, triumphant oral and written [Navajo] tradition,” his culture's contribution to victory.
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-425-24423-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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