Saturday, December 29, 2018

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Think of the movie Saving Private Ryan but only if Private James Ryan did most of the talking. If he started his story from his signing up for military service and he talks of his experience from battle to battle; the friends and comrades he had lost, often violently; till finally he talks of his experience again only this time as an old man visiting the old battlefields.

William Manchester, the author, talks about his military service as a Marine in the 29th Regiment operating in the Pacific. For extra added value he also talks of the Pacific War in general; game some opinions of it, how it was overshadowed by Europe. How even without trenches that made World War I a static war the thick jungles and the weather of those islands hopped by American forces, it might as well be.

There are flash forwards and flashbacks. He would be an old man in some sections hopping from island to island on a personal tour of the Pacific Theater of Operations as they are in the present. This overlaps with supposed experiences on the island during the war.

Surprisingly it was only in the Author’s notes that I did find it confusing. Manchester admits to at this juncture that he has only served combat in Okinawa and the use of as he describe as legerdemain in the recreation of the spirit of those events. His Wikipedia page calls it a literary device.

I can give him that. There is beauty in a first person point of view than echoing back the experiences from soldiers whom he might have interviewed. The author’s notes are full of names and books that he took his research from. Changing from person to person would have been jarring and having read this it feels like you’re in the story from start to finish; innocent to what, a shell shocked ‘older’ man.

One perspective. Manchester writes it so well. The pacific war as if you were on the very ground. But I dunno, after having read that author’s notes, literary device, something doesn’t sit as well with me. Maybe I’m being unfair so you be the judge.

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