Guadalcanal: The U.S. Marines in World War II: A Pictorial Tribute

by Eric Hammel

On August 7, 1942, a scant nine months after Pearl Harbor, the Marine Corps struck back against Japan on a small island half a world away: Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. The stakes were high. The Japanese had been running roughshod across Asia and the Pacific and even into the Indian Ocean. If the Marines failed in the Solomons, New Guinea would almost certainly fall, mortally threatening Australia.

The victory of the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal, told here in pictures for the first time, ranks with the most heroic, dramatic, and enduring of military history. The six-month long Guadalcanal campaign was by far the longest and most complicated operation the Marines faced in the Pacific War. It began with the weapons and tactics of the Marine Corps 1918 combat in France and ended with the revised weapons and tactics that would sweep aside the Japanese defenders of numerous formidable bases all across the wide Pacific--bringing the United States armed forces to total victory in the Pacific in World War II.

This book is a fitting tribute to the men who sacrificed so much in winning this first stepping stone on the path to Tokyo Bay and victory over Japan.

Genres: History

160 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2007

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

[Sleepy Boy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent photo essay of the USMC in the Guadalcanal campaign. Hammel points out that the USMC didn't do much combat footage towards the beginning of the war and as such he had to rely heavily on private collections.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of photographs from the Guadalcanal campaign. Since there weren't as many photographers as later campaigns, virtually all of the pictures are non-action shots. The photos cover a wide range: aerial shots, post-bombardment damage, destroyed tanks and fortifications, piles of dead bodies, various American and Japanese commanders and troops, and lots of photos of Henderson Field and its surroundings. Some of the post-battle photos are pretty graphic, but the overall quality of the photographs is really high. Many of the photographs are ones which I've not seen before, and I've read several books on Guadalcanal. The book also contains a nice amount of text covering the events and battles of the first few months of the campaign, but the primary focus of the book is the photographs. Another fine book on the U.S. Marines in World War II from author Eric Hammel and a definite "must-have" for anyone interested in the battle for Guadalcanal.