ISLANDS OF HELL
The U.S. Marines in the Western Pacific
1944–1945
Eric Hammel
Large Format Hardcover: $50.00

Marine infantrymen and airmen traveled a long and difficult road during the island-hopping campaigns of 1942, 1943, and early 1944, carving a deadly path from Guadalcanal through the Solomons into the Bismarck Archipelago and from Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands through the Marshall Islands. The South and Central Pacific campaigns forged undertrained Marines into battle-hardened veterans ready to continue westward across the Pacific, from Saipan to Tinian, to Guam, to Peleliu, to Iwo Jima, and then to Okinawa. These final stepping stones to Japan would not come easy; in spite of being better-equipped and combat-tested, months of brutal combat lay ahead for the Marines conquering these islands of hell.

The mid-1944 campaign in the Marianas would bring Japan’s industrial heartland, including Tokyo, within the range of B-29 bombers by capturing the airfields of Saipan and Tinian. Retaking Guam, which fell to Japan at the start of the war, its Marine garrison taken captive, would be payback for the Marines.

Peleliu, in late 1944, was a most brutal fight, with more than a third of the 1st Marine Division on the casualty list. Iwo Jima, halfway between the Marianas and Tokyo, was vital to the land-based bombing campaign that would support the planned invasion of Japan in the autumn of 1945.

By late March 1945, the pathway to Japan had been secured but for the very doorstep of the enemy’s homeland—Okinawa. Its airfields were a key component of the bombing campaign that would precede the invasion of Kyushu, and it would also base the scores of Marine and U.S. Army Air Forces tactical units that would soften the island and guard the approach of the invasion fleet.

Islands of Hell is an intense pictorial record of the United States Marines in action in the western Pacific during the grinding last year of the Pacific War. It is an unflinching tribute to the young men who died there, as well as to the old warriors still living, and the sacrifices they all made to defeat the Empire of the Sun.

Eric Hammel is a critically acclaimed military historian and author of nearly forty narrative and pictorial histories, including Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War, Marines in Hue City: A Portrait of Urban Combat, Tet 1968, and How America Saved the World: The Untold Story of U.S. Preparedness Between the World Wars. He has written many titles on U.S. Marine operations in World War II, such as Bloody Tarawa, Pacific Warriors, Iwo Jima, and his U.S. Marines in World War II series—Guadalcanal; New Georgia, Bougainville, and Cape Gloucester; and Tarawa and the Marshalls.