Robert J. Fitzgerald Olympia High School

On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs on the industrial Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later the second was dropped on Nagasaki. Within a week of the second bomb, an armistice was signed by the Japanese and an end to hostilities in the Pacific Theatre of World War II commenced. These events tend to be what is remembered by most students when studying this period in the history of the United States. Yet there is so much more to the Pacific War than what is told in the history textbooks. This is where the memories of veterans of this conflict must be publicized and shared with students of history. In his personal account, E.B. Sledge offers an insightful look into the non?textbook history of the war in the Pacific.

My initial reaction to reading this book was the thought that this was going to be another self-serving dissertation on one individual's experiences in World War II. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. Sledge's account of the battles for Peleliu and Okinawa are eye-opening in that they give the reader a small sense of the nature of the war in the Pacific and how it impacted an individual's emotions. This is the hardest thing for non-combatants to understand. The personalization of characters, from Gunnery Sergeant Elmo Haney to Captain Andrew Haldane, force the reader to recognize that they are real people and not just a name on a muster role or number on a casualty statistic that might be given in the textbook edition of the history of these engagements.

Sledge's account also gives the reader a solid interpretation of the Japanese intent to fight to the finish and prolong the war as long as it would take to achieve victory. Comparison of casualty figures at Peleliu and Okinawa prove such statements as made by Sledge like, "In fighting the Japanese, surrender was not one of our options" (118). By assessing this information, any reader might gain a more informed understanding into the decisions made by our executive branch and military in the last months of the war.

The history of war tends to be sugar coated by many textbooks. With The Old Breed eliminates any notion that you may have about the nature of war and its impact on individuals and their emotions.

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