A former history professor, Tom Miller
is a novelist and essayist. His most recent
novel is Full
Court Press (2000). His reviews
and essays have appeared in numerous books,
journals, and newspapers, including The
Encyclopedia of Southern History, American
History Illustrated, the Chicago
Tribune, and the Des Moines Register.
He also is a former Army officer and Vietnam
veteran.
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Historian and novelist -- A Storm in Flanders; Forrest Gump -- Groom turns his attention to the dark months following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor when America faced an uncertain future. "It was," as Groom asserts, "the most perilous of times," and in the end "defined the war itself."
Unlike its adversaries, America was unprepared for war in 1941 and suffered the consequences in 1942. In the six months following the devastating attack at Pearl Harbor, little went right for the U.S. After a desperate struggle against overwhelming odds, the American garrison on Wake Island fell. The Marines' heroic resistance earned Wake the sobriquet "Alamo of the Pacific," but it couldn't change the reality of the defeat. Elsewhere across the Pacific, the Japanese juggernaut rolled on, crushing the opposition. Fortress Singapore, which the British naively believed was impregnable, fell in January. And, the Philippines, after a gallant defense, surrendered in June. Their commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, however, was long gone, having fled on March 12 for Australia. (He would return, of course, two years later. By then, the survivors had suffered through the infamous Bataan Death March and the notorious Camp O'Donnell. Ten thousand American POWs died on the Death March alone -- another example of what Groom calls the "studied cruelty" of the Japanese.)
The news was just as gloomy on other fronts. In the Atlantic, German U-Boats represented "a real-life nightmare," sinking 380 merchant ships between January and June -- often in view of coastal cities. In North Africa, British troops were on the defensive, and German General Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox of newspaper headlines, was driving toward the Sueq Canal, England's lifeline to India and the gateway to the Middle East and its oil. And in the East, the Soviet Union was reeling in the wake of Hitler's invasion.
The tide began to turn, however, in mid-year as the U.S. recovered from the early shocks and mobilization got under way in earnest. At Midway Island -- America's final outpost in the western Pacific -- in June, the U.S. won its first important victory. Outnumbered eighty-four ships to twenty-five, the U.S. fleet dealt the Japanese navy a devastating blow, sinking four aircraft carriers.
In July, the Japanese occupied Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and established an airbase that threatened Australia and Allied shipping in the southern Pacific. In August, the U.S. launched its first offensive of the war, landing the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal. The fighting on the island would continue until the Japanese finally withdrew their forces on Feb. 4, 1943. For the Marines, Guadalcanal was a nightmare -- a vicious slugfest in a tropical hell -- but the Marines persevered, and the balance of power swung to the Allies.
And, in North Africa, the Americans finally got into the game with Nov. 8 landings in Morocco and Algeria. The North African campaign would drag on into early 1943, but a beginning had been made. Assessing the situation, Groom concludes that "a year that began in shock and anxiety for the Allies had ended on a note of high confidence ... "
1942 makes for compelling popular history. Groom is an excellent writer and brings a novelist's skill to his non-fiction endeavors. Relying exclusively on published sources, he breathes new life into a familiar story and adds illuminating anecdotes about unlikely heroes and heroines -- spies Claire Phillips and "Cynthia" and POW Columbus Darwin Smith for example. Groom admits that he didn't write 1942 for the military historian or specialist, who will find little new here, but for "the average American reader." In 2005, another era that finds America in the early stages of a global war, 1942 is a reminder of what Americans can accomplish in the face of peril and adversity.
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Winston Groom is best known for his novel Forrest Gump, which was made into a hugely popular movie. His first novel, Better Times Than These, which evolved out of his experience as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam is less known. It is set in the war's early days -- early enough that the fictional unit took the slow boat to Indochina instead of a commercial jet charter -- and never has attracted the attention it deserves. His most recent work of popular history is the widely-praised A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918: Tragedy and Triumph on the Western Front.
