Iwo Jima: World War II Veterans Remember the Greatest Battle of the Pacific
An experienced interviewer of veterans (Beyond Glory, 2003; The Few and the Proud, 2006) now turns to survivors of Iwo Jima. There is no shortage of material on that brutal battle, but this book has one virtue that sets it slightly apart. Smith has cast his net widely and generated interviews with a wide range of veterans, so his book affords a broader-than-usual view of the battle. Marine riflemen are well to the fore, and leading them is Medal of Honor winner Hershel Williams. But navy medics, leaders of heavy weapons units, Navajo talkers, sailors on the ships offshore—especially men on those unglamorous but essential logistics mainstays, the LSTs—and air-force pilots who flew missions from Iwo Jima’s runways before the guns, and the Japanese, had cooled are all called to testify. Eminently readable and historiographically useful. --Roland Green--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.