BOOK REVIEW-TIN CAN SAILORS

This is not, really, a book review, but some observations after reading The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D. Hornfischer. My thanks to Amy W for borrowing the book in my name, it was perfect.

By the end of 1944, the war in the Pacific was pretty much determined, but the details were not. The battles of Midway and the Coral Sea had depleted the Japanese Navy and the Marianas Turkey
Shoot virtually eliminated their air power, and that turned out to be what they desperately needed. Maybe that is why we don’t hear much about the Battle off Samar, part of the “Leyte Gulf” operations that freed the Philippines, but subsequent operations (Iwo Jima and Okinawa come to mind) have been reviewed extensively.

The book reads like a novel, details the lives and exploits of key players and has the benefit of nearly 60 years of scholarship, memories and investigation. Still the US Navy’s down play of the battle is probably traced to its reluctance to skewer a couple of its heroes, Admiral Kinkaid for one, but in particular Admiral “Bull” Halsey who was trumpeted as a hero in the home newspapers before and after the battle, despite his arrogant and obsessive actions that took his powerful fleet out of the battle, far away. If too bright a light had been shone at the time, his failure would have been clearly seen.

Read the book, feel the horror of the carnage and the heroism of men who epitomize the “Greatest Generation.” Their eager call to duty is difficult for me to imagine in today’s climate.

So many of the observations made about the survivors at reunions tap into my experience—long-term bonds with comrades from long ago and an image of self and others that is much younger. I recognize people outside that group as old men and women, but we are forever young.

I should make some sweeping recommendation about “everybody should recognize the sacrifices” but that would be presumptuous and worthless. For me it was another reminder of how lucky we are to have had those men, many stricken down at the start of their lives, who stopped the Nazis and the Japanese. It would have been a different and lesser world today.