U.S. Marines in WWII: Tarawa and the Marshalls

by Eric Hammel

On November 20, 1943, the 2d Marine Division hit the beach on tiny Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, expecting that its defenses has been “pounded into coral dust” by naval and air bombardment.  They found instead that the Japanese had survived and held largely intact defenses.  Three days of intense fighting secured the island at the cost of one thousand dead Marines and more than two thousand wounded.
By early 1944 the Americans’ westward drive across the Pacific required airfields in the Marshall Islands at Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls. In late January, the 4th  Marine Division and U.S. Army troops wrenched control of Kwajalein Atoll in three days of fighting. Then, beginning on February 18, the 22d Marine Regiment landed on three islands in Eniwetok Atoll. The newly rebuilt airfields would support future operations in the Mariana Islands as the Marines continued their island-hopping campaign to victory in the Pacific.
Military historian Eric Hammel has delved deeply into the government photo archives and discovered a treasure trove of  rare, many never-before-published combat photos taken during these campaigns, unearthing hundreds of images. More than 200 photos and captions, alongside Hammel’s concise narrative, serve as both historical record and lasting tribute to the Marines who fought their way across the South Pacific.re-published combat photos taken during these campaigns, unearthing hundreds of images. More than 200 photos and captions, alongside Hammel’s concise narrative, serve as both historical record and lasting tribute to the Marines who fought their way across the South Pacific.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2013

About the author

Eric Hammel was born in 1946, in Salem, Massachusetts, and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Central High School of Philadelphia in January 1964 and earned a degree in Journalism from Temple University in 1972. His road to writing military history began at age twelve, when he was stuck in bed for a week with a childhood illness. Eric's father bought him the first paperback book he ever owned, Walter Lord's Day of Infamy. As he devoured the book, Eric realized that he wanted to write books exactly like it, what we now call popular narrative history. Lord had pieced together the book from official records illuminated with the recollections of people who were there. Eric began to write his first military history book when he was fifteen. The book eventually turned out to be Guadalcanal: Starvation Island. Eric completed the first draft before he graduated from high school. During his first year of college, Eric wrote the first draft of Munda Trail, and got started on 76 Hours when he was a college junior. Then Eric got married and went to work, which left him no time to pursue his writing except as a journalism student.

Eric quit school at the end of his junior year and went to work in advertising in 1970. Eric completed his journalism degree in 1972, moved to California in 1975, and finally got back to writing while he operated his own one-man ad agency and started on a family. 76 Hours was published in 1980, and Chosin followed in 1982. At the end of 1983 Eric was offered enough of an advance to write The Root: The Marines in Beirut to take up writing books full time. The rest, as they say, is history.

Eric eventually published under his own imprint, Pacifica Press, which morphed into Pacifica Military History and IPS Books. At some point in the late 1990s, Eric realized he had not written in five years, so he pretty much closed down the publishing operation and pieced together a string of pictorial combat histories for Zenith Press. Eric nominally retired in 2008 and took up writing as a full-time hobby writing two novels, 'Til The Last Bugle Call and Love and Grace. Fast forward to 2018 and Eric was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and on August 25th 2020, Eric passed from this life to the next at the age of 74.

Reviews

[Reese Richter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was boring because it talked more about the different strategies and not about action packed battles. Almost all of it was talking about how the Marines used flanks and naval bombardments to clear out the enemy from there bunkers and then once the Marines finally got there there wasn't much of a fight. It also had a lot of black and white pictures that gave you a picture in your mind about what was happening. These pictures show that the pacific war was boring and there wasn't a lot of new inventions. The Japanese were also really bad a t making guns and plane so there were no cool guns or planes to look at.