Tales of the South Pacific. James Michener.

Tales of the South Pacific
James Michener
New York: Fawcett
1946 (1974)

Why read it? Series of short stories based on incidents experienced by the author when he served in the South Pacific during WWII. The theme is waiting, the endless waiting, to see action. The waiting occurred because the islands leading toward the Japanese mainland had to be staffed and prepared for the string of attacks on islands nearer the Japanese mainland. In fact, the planning, including the medical planning in anticipation of certain types of wounds, is absolutely amazing. It made me think that what won WWII was superior planning and organizing.

The author describes the beauty of the South Seas, the characters, the interaction between the military and the natives, the courage of people like the British “remittance man,” who reported on Japanese troop and ship movements to the U.S. military until he was tracked down and butchered by the Japanese. The battle scenes are vivid and memorable and so are the actions of soldiers, sailors and air men doing the job they were asked to do.

And then there was the Japanese honor graduate of Cal Tech who planned the Japanese defense of the island of Kuralei and the mad Japanese soldier who held a hand grenade to his chest and blew not only himself but Commander Hoag, a leader whom his men respected, into the next world. And the Christmas Eve service where the men were told that they were going to be the group to hit the next beach and the men cheered.

The experience of WWII in the Pacific is best summed up by Michener on page 12: “They will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific…. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.”

But this book will keep these men and women who served in the South Pacific and the environment in which they lived alive as long as people will read it.

Some sample ideas:
“I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.” “ ‘Why hell!’ the major snorted. ‘Seems all he did was sit on his ass and wait.’ ‘That’s exactly it!’ I cried….” “The tropics never left you, and in time you accustomed yourself to them. They were a vast relaxation, nature growing free and wild.” “ ‘I know how you feel, Bill,’ the chubby, jovial Old Man said. ‘You want to get out and win the war. We all do. And maybe we’ll get the chance…later.’ ” Dinah: “No wonder I never got married. I guess God made a mistake and gave me a brain.”

“Great lights flashed through the dark waters. Japs and their ships were destroyed without mercy. Our men did not lust after the killing. But when you’ve been through the mud of Guadal and been shelled by the Japs night after night until your teeth ached; when you’ve seen the dead from your cruisers piled…and your planes shot down and your men dying from foes they’ve never seen; when you’ve seen good men wracked with malaria but still slugging it out in the jungle….” The “remittance man,” a nondescript, but courageous Englishman, a coast watcher who reported to the Americans on Jap troop and ship movements is shot, tortured and slaughtered by the Japs: “American peoper! You die!” Suicide runs—you get some Nips, but you lose some bombers and their crews. And eventually, you can bomb with impunity—they’re the milk runs. It cost $600,000 to save one pilot who has been shot down. “But it’s sure worth every cent of the money. If you happen to be that pilot.”

The incredible, detailed preparation for the invasion on the island of Kuralei. “With thousands of men for every white woman, with enlisted men forbidden to date the nurses, it was to be expected that…terrible things would occur.” Flying to an island to get vegetables, Bill Harbison’s plane went down in flames and all hands were reported lost. “It was horrible to think of a man so young and able dying so uselessly. In that moment Nellie found that war itself is understandable. It’s the things that go along with it, things that happen to people you know, that are incomprehensible….” It was then learned that Harbison had been saved in a life raft. He spent most of his time expressing his desire to fight the Japs. But when his unit was about to be moved up to take the island of Kuralei, he arranged in four days to have himself sent back to New Mexico for “rest and rehabilitation.” He thus avoided the slaughter.

“Is it true that most white men in the tropics are running away from something?” “I believe that is true…. As a matter of fact…is not each of you running away from something? …. I don’t think it wise to inquire too closely into reasons why anybody is anywhere.” Chaplain: “Brave people are dying throughout the world. And brave people live after them.” The universal question: “What am I doing here?” Officer, Captain Kelley, creates the discipline that will help when the men are involved in war. “We will shortly be faced with responsibilities almost beyond our capacity to perform. At that time there will be no place for weaklings.” But he uses humiliation and “chicken shit” as his preponderant tool for achieving that discipline. In the process, he breaks the spirit of the unit. “Now it was night! From all sides Japs tried to infiltrate our lines. When they were successful, our men died. We would find them in the morning with their throats cut. When you found them so, all thought of sorrow for the Japs burned alive in the blockhouse was erased. They were the enemy, the cruel, remorseless, bitter enemy. And they would remain so, every man of them.”

Quote: “If you sit at home and read that two hundred and eighty-one men die in taking an island, the number is only a symbol for the mind to classify. But when you stand at the white crosses, the two hundred and eighty-one dead become men: the sons, the husbands and the lovers.”

Quote: “…I wondered where the men would come from to take Commander Hoag’s place. Throughout the Pacific, in Russia, in Africa, and soon on fronts not yet named, good men were dying. Who would take their place? Who would marry the girls they would have married? Or build the buildings they would have built? Were there men at home ready to do Hoag’s job? And Cable's? And Tony Fry’s?”

Quote: “They will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific…. They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives. After that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure them until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.”