Overview

A new narrative and analytic history of the twenty U.S. Army divisions that fought in the Pacific War. Despite the prevailing view that the Marine Corps bore the brunt of the fighting in the Pacific War, the men of the US Army played a decisive role in the conflict. Indeed, GIs did most of the war's heavy lifting on the ground by conducting more amphibious assaults and prosecuting more operations than the Marines. By the end of the war there were 1.77 million U.S. Army troops in the Pacific and Asia, compared to the USMC's 484,000. The Pacific was as much the Army's war as the fighting in the European theater. The U.S. Army deployed twenty combat divisions to fight in the Pacific, including famous ones such as the 1st Cavalry Division and the 25th “Tropic Lightning” Division. Most were infantry, and included Regular, National Guard and draftee divisions. The divisions were deployed and maneuvered by theater, field army, and corps commanders around the Pacific's geostrategic chessboard to battle and defeat the Japanese. The Army may have wanted its divisions to be interchangeable and uniform, but this proved impossible. Their quality and performance depended upon their resources, the geography and terrain on which they fought, experience, leadership, and organizational culture. Historians, though, have made little effort to examine their records in a systematic way before now. In addition, almost all of the Army's divisions, some after admittedly rocky starts, became units capable of winning their engagements. Indeed, not a single Army division fighting the Japanese during the American counteroffensive across the Pacific was completely destroyed in combat. Whatever problems these divisions faced tended to grow out of the society that produced them, not fundamental flaws in Army doctrine. This is a tribute to the Army as a whole and to the twenty divisions that the Army deployed against the Japanese. This new history uses a narrative approach to describe and analyze each division's history, characteristics, and battles during the conflict, concluding with an assessment of their battlefield records, taking into account the innumerable factors affecting their combat performance. AUTHOR: Stephen Taafe is a military historian at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He has written eight books including MacArthur's Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign (1998), Marshall and His Generals: US Army Commanders in World War II (2011), and Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II (2021). SELLING POINTS: . A new narrative and analytic history of the twenty U.S. Army divisions that fought in the Pacific War. . Contrary to popular belief, U.S. soldiers undertook the brunt of fighting in the Pacific. . Covers Guadalcanal, Buna-Gona, New Georgia, Bougainville, Attu, Makin, Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, Peleliu, New Guinea, Leyte, Luzon, the central and southern Philippines, and Okinawa.

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9781636244495

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Reviews

""United States Army Divisions of the Pacific War is a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any WWII enthusiast.""-- ""ARGunners.com""

""Each division gets a fair look at its successes and failures. The author also discusses how they evolved and improved over the course of the war.""-- ""WWII History Magazine"" ""United States Army Divisions of the Pacific War is a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any WWII enthusiast.""-- ""ARGunners.com""

""Taaffe capably addresses the combat employment of the divisions, their relative combat effectiveness, and the reputations they gained as fighting units with professional insight and analysis. For readers with the desire to harvest them, there is a rich crop of lessons on modern organizational and operational challenges that are currently under address by the U.S. Army.""-- ""Military Review"" ""One of the strengths of this book for veteran historians and early-career scholars alike is the appendix. It is a comprehensive listing of each division the army deployed in the Pacific War, including both regular army combat divisions and national guard divisions. At 187 pages, exclusive of endnotes, this book is an easy addition to an undergraduate- or even graduate-level course on the Pacific War.""-- ""Journal of Military History"" ""Each division gets a fair look at its successes and failures. The author also discusses how they evolved and improved over the course of the war.""-- ""WWII History Magazine"" ""United States Army Divisions of the Pacific War is a worthy addition to the bookshelf of any WWII enthusiast.""-- ""ARGunners.com""

Author Information

Stephen Taafe is a military historian at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He has written eight books including MacArthur's Jungle War: The 1944 New Guinea Campaign (1998), Marshall and His Generals: US Army Commanders in World War II (2011), and Commanding the Pacific: Marine Corps Generals in World War II (2021).

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