TARAWA AND THE MARSHALLS
The U.S. Marines in World War II
A Pictorial Tribute
by Eric Hammel
Hardcover Edition: $34.95

- The battles for Betio in Tarawa Atoll and Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls in the Marshall Islands were crucial to bringing American air power to bear against the Japanese home islands. Tarawa was one of the fiercest battles of the Pacific campaign, but they were all critical engagements brought vividly to life with 250 photos of U.S. Marines in the heat of island combat. This beautiful book is a shining tribute to the rare courage and heroism that, for the Marines in World War II, were displayed as a matter of course; it keeps their spectacular sacrifices and feats of valor forever before us.

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Midwest Book Review:
Eric Hammel, is an astute student of military history. He is the author of some thirty books about World War 2 in the Pacific theater. He also compiled a very useful chronology about the air war over Europe and North Africa titled "Air War Europa 1942-1945." Here he pens a terse and telling commentary for some 300 photos of the 2nd Marine Division's landing and three day battle for Betio Island in the Tarawa Atoll in the northwest Gilbert Islands at a loss of some 3,000 casualties in November 1943.

Following Tarawa, Hammel turns to The Marshall Islands, just north and west of the Gilberts where the Japanese had fortified Kwajalein and Eniwetok Atolls and built air bases. American 22nd Marines and army personnel quickly brought the Marshall Islands under allied control in February 1944.

Some of the photographs have never been published. All are in black and white and are amazing shots of men in combat. Somehow they make time stand still.

In the last sixty years or so, Americans have found some costly places to fight battles. Tarawa was among the worst.