Carmen M. Ganser Illinois State University

Sledge's horrific memoir of the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa in the Pacific theatre during World War II details the everyday life of a U.S. Marine. My initial reaction to this book was one of distance and disdain for the racism felt by Sledge and his fellow soldiers. But after participating in the discussion following my reading, I realize that this book is one element in a complicated and contentious dialog about war and World War II in particular.

While I was reading I noticed in several places where the author referred to Japanese speech and language as "jabbering", "blabbering", or "chattering", often "incoherently." It is hard to overlook this insensitivity toward a culture, especially when I assume those Japanese soldiers were speaking logical sentences, but in Japanese. I could dismiss this insensitivity as inexcusable racism. However, after listening to Lynn Simpson, an army veteran from the war, discuss his feelings towards Japanese people, it suggests that this racism is not as easily shed as one would hope. He stated during the colloquium, "If anything keeps me out of heaven it will be my hatred for the Japanese. I've tried to get rid of it, I've tried and I just can't." He explained as did others that this hatred is rather pervasive throughout veteran populations.

We as teachers can pass this complicated issue on to our students. Although the book is too long for a high school class to cover in its entirety, teachers can use sections of the text to help students understand the pain, fear, and misery that soldiers went through during battle. They can convey the emotions that soldiers felt knowing death was just around the corner, these young people who were not quite men at the time, and that these Japanese soldiers would rather kill every single one of them (reciprocally felt by the Marines for the most part) than surrender. Simpson suggested that perhaps it would be better after all the veterans from World War II have passed away so that their accounts are not contrary to current historiography about the war. However, their accounts are important and necessary for providing differing points of view about the war and to teach young people that war is a complicated, sticky issue that will not go away soon enough.

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