Eight years ago, doing research for a book called The 25 Best World War II Sites: Pacific Theater, I relied on the works of a pair of U.S. Marine veterans named Robert Leckie and E.B. Sledge to guide me through some of the most horrific battlefields of the war—Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Okinawa.
It’s been particularly fascinating and slightly surreal to watch as the HBO series The Pacific has tracked the same men along the same historic path. I admit to following the series with more interest than most, anxious to see if the quotes, anecdotes, and locations that I drew from Leckie and Sledge to illuminate the war will show up in the HBO series.
Some already have, such as episode one’s climactic battle sequence at Alligator Creek on Guadalcanal.
Others are too good not to be repeated.
From his renowned memoir, With the Old Breed, here’s a bit of classic Sledge imagery describing the fighting between American and Japanese troops on Peleliu Island: “The opposing forces were like two scorpions in a bottle. One was annihilated, the other nearly so.”
In his single-volume account of the entire war, Delivered From Evil, Leckie described Peleliu—focal point of The Pacific episodes five, six, and seven—as “the fiercest, bloodiest battle in the Japanese war.”
On Peleliu, landings at White Beach One were led by legendary Marine officer Lewis “Chesty” Puller, portrayed in the series by actor William Sadler.
I visited White Beach One and wrote about it and Puller in my book. The beach today is overgrown with jungle. There’s little left from wartime to see. About 150 yards inland, however, is an interesting memorial erected after the war—a plaque attached to a rock honoring Marine Captain George P. Hunt, who later served as managing editor of Life magazine in the 1960s. Not the sort of thing you normally expect to find on far-flung rocks in the Pacific.
Finding WWII Sites in the Pacific
The idea behind my book was to introduce readers to the Pacific War by cataloging thousands of extant traces of the conflict that can still be found in the region, from those countless postwar plaques to forgotten invasion beaches to rusting Corsair fighter planes in the middle of the Palauan jungle to sunken Japanese transports in Truk Lagoon to the massive museums and memorials constructed in places like Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and Nanjing.
Because the British are the world’s great historians, the WWII trail in Europe has long been carefully preserved. Beginning with a 1987 hike in Guam, when my brother and I tried in vain to locate a Japanese tank “graveyard” in the central mountains of Yona, I discovered that this hasn’t been the case in the Pacific. Remote island locations and postwar neglect left many of the Pacific’s most important battlefields virtually untouched. And undocumented.
Living in Japan in the 1980s and ’90s, and spending significant time in the Philippines and around region, I worked over fifteen years compiling my Pacific War book with the idea of helping like-minded history geeks locate these historic sites. I did so because no guide covering Pacific War sites existed at the time.
After watching The Pacific, if you want to get to Alligator Creek, Henderson Field, Bloody Nose Ridge, or any of the other locations covered in the series, The 25 Best World War II Sites: Pacific Theater remains a unique resource. My “Smile” and “Hellholes” book shave sold better, but I often think my two World War II books will have more lasting value.
The Pacific book also includes a bit on Shuri Castle, a critical Japanese defensive position on Okinawa. After a protracted battle, victorious U.S. First Marines raised a Confederate flag above the ruined castle in honor of campaign commander Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., whose father had been a Confederate general. I’ll be interested to see if Hanks and company include that nugget of Southern military heritage in their series.
It was a long war and it’s a relatively short series, but I’m still sorry that many major areas won’t be covered in The Pacific. The Marianas. The Philippines. The China-Burma-India theater or “CBI” as it was known, which produced George McDonald Fraser’s astonishing memoir Quartered Safe Out Here.
Fraser went on to fame as the author of the magnificent Flashman series of historical novels. As a smooth-faced Brit foot soldier in one of the most unforgiving environments of the war, however, he found material to fill what military historian John Keegan says ranks “among the classics of military autobiography.” Also one of my favorites.
Okinawa vs. Normandy D-Days
So, what do we have to look forward to in The Pacific? Blood, horror, atrocity, sickness, exhaustion—and plenty of it.
No jungle fighting in the Pacific was as savage as it was in New Guinea (episode four). The fetid, steaming jungles there were home to a variety of poisonous plants and tropical diseases. Logistical nightmares, equipment failures, and, above all, rain and mud, bedeviled both sides. The campaign generated one of the highest disease-related casualty rates in American military history.
With Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, Hanks and Spielberg have taught an entire generation about D-Day in Normandy, but with The Pacific I hope the vastly underappreciated amphibious assault on Okinawa finally gets the big-stage respect it deserves. This might happen because Leckie was there and reported on the unparalleled achievement: “Never before had there been an invasion armada the equal of the 1,600 seagoing ships carrying 545,000 American GIs and Marines that steamed across the Pacific. In firepower, troops, and tonnage it eclipsed even the more famous D day in Normandy.”
In Normandy, the Allies moved 155,000 men and equipment across about 100 miles of English Channel. The American force in Okinawa that Leckie called the “monster of consumption” had to be supplied 7,500 miles from the home country’s western shore. No amphibious operation in military history comes close to matching it on a scale of distance and enormity.
The producers of The Pacific say they haven’t glossed over the trauma and deep racist conviction that imbued the war from start to finish. It’s evident, however, that other than dropping a few carefully placed “J” bombs and hurried scenes of torture and dismemberment, American audiences, browbeaten by decades of politically correct training, won’t be given credit for having the stomach to deal with honest depictions of the living nightmares and racial evil that came to fruition on those distant islands.
Then again, how could that terror be recreated? After the unearthly horrors of Peleliu, in which both sides declined to take prisoners and both sides defiled corpses, Sledge wrote, “Something in me died.”
Even today, it’s impossible to walk the Pacific’s battlefields and not come away with an awful, visceral understanding of the devastation and waste of the war. No TV show can communicate that.
Still, it’s strange how from that all of that death, so many stories continue to take life. Leckie and Sledge’s. My own. Hanks and Spielberg’s. And soon enough, those of a new generation, itself already waist-deep in America’s inevitable arena.
I recently put together a TO HELLHOLES AND BACK playlist for Largeheartedboy.com, a great site that, among other things, asks writers to set their books to music. The following playlist is suitable for any occasion, but particularly applicable for a book about confronting traveler paranoia and places with crappy reputations.
Introduction: The Four Horsemen of My Apocalypse
“Are You Man Enough” — The Four Tops
I never tire of this song — I still have the seven-incher I stole from a store in Palm Springs, California in 1973 during my short-lived juvie shoplifting period. Originally a blaxspolitation-era ode to ghetto grit, in the context of “To Hellholes and Back” it functions as a summation of the worry and note of challenge I tried to strike in the intro.
Chapter 1: The Funniest Joke in Africa
“Ndozvamaida” — Thomas Mapfumo
My favorite African pop track of all time. The lyrics are indecipherable to me — tradebit.com says the narrative takes the side of a woman unjustly wronged by her husband — but the propulsive beat and cheerful melody reflect my decision to search for the lighter parts of the Congo, rather than embark on the timeworn quest for the “Heart of Darkness.” This song never fails to put me in a good mood — I hope the woman in it got her revenge.
Chapter 2: In This Way Children Are Fed and Girlfriends Kept Happy
“Picture Me Rollin’” — Tupac Shakur
“Liar’s Bar” — The Beautiful South
My encounter with a 2Pac doppelgänger in Botswana actually occurs in chapter three, but this piece of machismo urban bravado — “Picture Me Rollin’” goes in and out of the top spot in my list of Pac favorites — reflects the attitude one quickly acquires in the Congo as a means for coping with the never-ending series of bribes and confrontations with soldiers and cops.
This is also the chapter in which my slippery Euro fixer Henri really hits his stride, so I also mention “Liar’s Bar,” from the outrageously undervalued catalog of The Beautiful South, whose defiantly British founders Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray are the best pop songwriters of the last 25 years.
Chapter 3: The Most Beautiful City in the Congo
“Kupanda” — Madilu System
This is from a CD I bought just after a couple of teenagers tried to rob me in the streets of Matadi. In an effort to re-establish some good vibes and keep Matadi off my shit list, I found a CD seller on a nearby street and began chatting him up about local music. Madilu System — a heavyset Congolese dude — was among his recommendations.
I buy a lot of local music wherever I go and this one turned out to be my favorite from Africa. It’s from a CD called “La Bonne Humeur.” Madilu System is associated with “soukous,” the genial dance music of Congolese origin sometimes called “African rumba.”
Chapter 4: We Have a Winner
“A Change is Gonna Come” — Sam Cooke
History comes into clear and unsettling focus when you come face to face with people whose ancestors we know primarily as terrible statistics from history texts and cinematic recreations of the slave trade. All across the continent, I was consistently moved by the unexpected familiarity of the African people and the instant “American” kinship we shared. In a weird way, this often made me feel at home in a very foreign place.
“Talk to Me” — the Don Cheadle biopic about Washington, D.C. deejay Petey Greene — showed on my Delta flight home from Johannesburg. This Sam Cooke song was used to great effect during scenes of the DC riots after MLK’s assasination — it was also used in the movies “Malcolm X” and “Ali” — and provided a surprisingly emotional airplane moment for me on the flight home. The whole difficult trip kind of came flooding back at me during this scene. Outstanding movie, by the way.
Chapter 5: Heretics in the Temple
“Milan” — Karsh Kale
India intimidates in a lot of ways — terrorism, rampant GI viruses, fried curd balls — but guys like Karsh Kale keep alive the wanderer’s dream of hypnotic Indian wonder. This swirling, orchestral instrumental runs 8 minutes and 54 seconds, yet every time I hear it I think it ends too soon.
Chapter 6: The Unyielding Indian Workforce
“In the Wild” — Hoodoo Gurus
Crossing the Thar Desert in the dead of summer with the windows of your Tata hatchback rolled down is pretty much like sitting in a rolling pizza oven while someone blasts your face with a hair dryer. The only thing worse than making this journey with a Hindu fatalist behind the wheel cranking the Best of Bollywood Duets for seventeen straight hours is making this journey with a Hindu fatalist behind the wheel cranking the Best of Bollywood Duets for seventeen straight hours while your wife is in the backseat starting her period.
And, yes, I know, the brilliance of Bollywood, but spend all day in a car where the only CD is the above-mentioned collection of screechy “classics” and I promise the tune you’ll be singing when it’s over won’t be “When the Mango Harvest Comes and the British Twats Are Dead, I’ll Ululate For Thee.” The Aussie guitar blitzkrieg on this Hoodoo’s road-trip narrative comes as close as I can find to a sonic tribute to the Thar Desert epic recounted in chapter six.
Chapter 7: Sex, Rain and 100 Percent Cotton
“Bhangra Fever” — MIDIval PunditZ
I thought about Robbie Williams’ “Monsoon” here because I think he’s unfairly maligned in the states. And everywhere else, for that matter. But, great as “Monsoon” is, it really has nothing to do with the swampy downpour I endured alongside the trusty Baiju, one of the coolest guys I met in India.
Almost as cool is this classical-Indian-raga-meets-electronica track from New Delhi-based MIDIval PunditZ. I was sent a review copy of this CD in 2002 and it’s never fallen completely out of my rotation. I wasn’t ever able to interest any publication in a review of the disk, but I’ve since included this song on a dozen or so mixed CDs I’ve made for friends. No complaints yet.
Chapter 8: Red Fighters, White Tequila and Cruz Azul
“A Matter of Time” — Los Lobos
“Nogales” — Climax Blues Band
About the plight of Mexicans crossing the border to look for work in the United States, “A Matter of Time” offers gut-wrenching Mexican underclass perspective on the immigration debate. It’s one of the most heartbreaking songs I know. Included here to reflect the outrage surrounding America’s border policies that fuel a lot of the fear and paranoia many Americans harbor about Mexico.
Honorable mention to “Nogales” by the Climax Blues Band. Not by any stretch CBB’s best work, but a funny song about gringos getting tossed in a Mexican prison, another classic fear for traveling yanquis.
Chapter 9: The Electric Shanghai Bob Margarita Acid Test
“Gringo Honeymoon” — Robert Earl Keen
From my all-time favorite Texas songwriter (maybe tied with Willie), “Gringo Honeymoon” works because chapter nine is dominated by the dauntless Shanghai Bob — Blackguard of the Orient, Man of Indiscreet Solutions — who, in addition to sharing my enthusiasm for Keen, appeared at least momentarily headed for his own gringo honeymoon.
At Plaza Garibaldi, while mariachi bands blared and dollar beers popped, an exceptionally good-looking, twenty’ish Mexican woman in low-cut, pube-teaser jeans and tight green top leaped into Shanghai Bob’s arms with a feral take-me-now shriek. He spent a couple hours squiring her around the plaza before revealing an unappreciated side of himself — returning her with courtly decency to her nervous parents’ arms.
Chapter 10: To Sneer or Not to Sneer
“Dreams I’ll Never See” — Molly Hatchet
A lyrically dark, Floridian three-guitar rumble to stand as counterpoint to the “Make Your Dreams Come True” sloganeering invoked like a Profession of Faith so ceaselessly across Disney’s Sunshine State dominion that its recipients no longer seem able to distinguish between crude salesmanship and old-fashioned greed. If “following your dream” or “reaching for the stars” involves a payoff, financial or otherwise, that’s called ambition, not cockeyed optimism. The desire to become a rock star or a millionaire is not a dream. It’s an economic aspiration.
Epilogue
“Still Wishing To Course” — Camper Van Beethoven
A quasi-psychedelic number as tricky to describe as the places in this book. If I’d have thought of it when I was writing, I might have cribbed some of the lyrics:
Wishing in the nightmare, thought’s a possibility
Realizing action, courting all the difficulty
What a band. Off the top of my head, my mini-Camper Van mix would go something like: “Good Guys and Bad Guys,” “She Divines Water,” “Sweethearts,” “We Saw Jerry’s Daughter,” “Change Your Mind,” “Still Wishing To Course,” “One of These Days,” “Where the Hell is Bill?” “The History of Utah,” “Take the Skinheads Bowling,” “Life is Grand” and a couple Cracker tracks like “Teen Angst” and “Get Off This.” Hmmm, next time maybe a whole soundtrack employing only CVB songs?
The first chapter of “To Hellholes and Back” introduces a running theme of the book’s Africa section — my month-long effort there to uncover the funniest joke in Africa.
Reader Chuck Hafter has submitted a better Congo joke than I was able to uncover.
Told to him in the 1980s by a friend from Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Hafter’s joke nevertheless remains painfully accurate, as I discovered in a town called Matadi in an episode covered in chapter 3.
Hafter’s joke:
Reagan, Brezhnev and Mobutu are taking the same plane together. They fly into a very thick cloudbank.
“I wonder where we are,” says Reagan.
“I will tell you,” says Brezhnev. He opens a window and sticks his hand out. “We are flying over Moscow.”
“How can you tell?” asks Reagan.
“I felt the top of St. Basil’s Cathedral,” says Brezhnev.
Later, they fly into another cloudbank.
“I wonder where we are,” says Brezhnev.
“I will tell you,” says Reagan and he opens a window and sticks his hand out. “We are over Washington D.C.”
“How can you tell?" asks Brezhnev.
“I felt the top of the Washington Monument,” says Reagan.
Later, the biggest cloudbank of all.
“I wonder where we are,” say Reagan and Brezhnev.
“I will tell you,” says Mobutu and he opens a window and sticks his hand out. “We are over Kinshasa.”
“How can you tell?” ask Reagan and Brezhnev.
“Somebody stole my watch,” replies Mobutu.
Thanks to Hafter also for emailing me a nice note despite his strong disapproval of my predictably pissy take on soccer in the Mexico City chapter. Per Hafter’s request, I did indeed check out a few Lionel Messi highlights on YouTube. Impressive, but I’m not yet willing to concede the larger points of my “down with nimble-footed nimrods” position. Still, when next in Spain, I’ll have a look at La Liga.
In response to occasional queries regarding the whereabouts and well-being of several of the more notable figures who traipse through the pages of Smile When You’re Lying — and to confirm to at least two e-mailers that, yes, these people do in fact exist — the last days of this Smile-flavored website feel like the time to offer a quick update. (In a month or two this site should undergo a makeover to more effectively coerce you into buying copies of To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies and the Art of Extreme Tourism, on sale December 8, with an excerpt running in Penthouse in January 2010.)
Robert Glasser
I spent most of this past July and August in Hong Kong and during this period in the East was able to convince Robert Glasser to undertake his first trip outside of Japan in six years. The co-star of chapter four obligingly flew over from his sprawling Kyushu estate for a weekend to show me Old Hong Kong in the grand Glasser manner.
We kicked off at Hutong restaurant in Kowloon. On the 28th floor of a skyscraper overlooking Victoria Harbour, Hutong is famed for what my friend Brian Brink would not hesitate to call its panty-dropper view of the Hong Kong skyline at night. As this was our first meeting since the publication of Smile When You’re Lying, I graciously picked up the tab by way of thanking Glasser for allowing me to ransack his reputation and former anonymity in the service my own greater literary glory.
Few things in this world go together better than overpriced Chinese food, lots of very cold white wine and the free-form musings of Glasser. His rambling memory of the purchase of a pair of cashmere socks in Hong Kong circa 1987 formed the basis of a running theme in the evening’s conversation. (Hard-earned wisdom: cashmere socks, high-maintenance women and electric dryers are a recipe for disaster.) I flinched, but not too badly, when the $350 check arrived.
This would have made for a fine once-a-year splurge had I not allowed Glasser to choose the venue for the following day’s happy hour.
“Martinis at the Mandarin?” he suggested in the way you or I might float the idea of the Taco Bell drive-thru.
A-hundred-and-twenty dollars later we departed the Mandarin-Oriental’s august lobby drinking chamber. And so it went. I wasn’t necessarily glad to see Glasser return to Japan — but I was able to finance pens and porridge for the rest of the month. Just.
Shanghai Bob
Despite torrid negotiations, chapter-four co-star Shanghai Bob and I were unable to reconcile conflicting schedules and so missed seeing each other in Southeast Asia. Bob is recently back in Thailand after a sabbatical in the Indian Ocean — I’m not allowed to say exactly where, for Shanghai Bob reasons best left shrouded in mystery. We have, however, vowed to get together when I’m back in Hong Kong for seven weeks this fall. For those disappointed by the lack of fresh Bob news, I can reveal that the illustrious Bobster makes a notable appearance in To Hellholes and Back, in Mexico City, of all places.
Randy
Buddy Randy, from chapter two, continues to live the man’s man existence in Alaska. Returning stateside from the densely packed cubicle realm of Hong Kong I headed with Randy directly to the nearly people-free realm of the unorganized territories of the Yukon.
I’m not being disrespectful, that’s what they call the area where we put in for a 192-mile, six-day canoe paddle down the Teslin and Yukon Rivers. (And by the way, how kickass is a territory with a Malamute standing atop its coat of arms? Love the Yukon.) On the trip we encountered moose, bear, fox, elk, Germans, even a gray wolf from close range, a rare sight in the wild, assuming you aren’t sitting next to Sarah Palin in a helicopter with .270 Remington on your lap.
Steroids Strange that no one talks about steroids in the NBA. Personally, I don’t see how you can’t speculate. Compare players with those of ten or fifteen years ago. Forget Dwight Howard’s twin pythons. Even today’s bench scrubs look ready to strap on for the Lorry Pull or haul the Atlas Stones at a WSM comp.
It’s not just the bodies. The hyper-aggressive play, barely controlled wrestling matches that pass for post positioning, and utter inability to control emotions suggests something more than natural jock passion heightened by bruising competition. According to msn.foxsports.com, 115 technical fouls have already been called in this year’s playoffs. Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard each have six playoff techs heading into the Finals. One more for either results in a game suspension. Simply for being an un-tethered rage-a-holic. Normal? I don’t recall Magic and Larry Legend leading their teams this way.
For the moment, no one seems to be paying attention to the possibility of artificially enhanced performance — the same way everyone pretended not to during that ridiculous 1998 home run chase between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.
Don’t blame LeBron. But why not? One week ago, the Cleveland Cavaliers were the most dominant team in basketball. With the consensus best player in the league in MVP LeBron James, they were expected to cruise into the NBA Finals where they would dispatch the Los Angeles Lakers with their putative second-best player in the league, Kobe Bryant. Few pundits publicly doubted this outcome and the reasoning made a sort of sense. The Cavaliers had the best record in the league this season (66-16) and were nearly unbeatable at home (39-2), where they’d be playing most of their games in the playoffs. While the Cavs barely broke a sweat in the first two rounds of the playoffs (8-0 against Detroit and Atlanta), the “soft” and “unfocused” Lakers struggled a little against Utah (4-1 series win), a lot against Houston (4-3 series win), and almost as much against Denver (4-2 series win). The numbers supported the idea that Cleveland was primed to win its first NBA title, but the real fuel powering the Cav hype was LeBron James, the “international brand” the league and its fans long-ago anointed “the King.” Now, it appeared inevitable: the King would finally be fitted for his crown.
Interesting how quickly the narrative has changed now that LeBron and the Cavs have been run out of the playoffs by the Orlando Magic. The popular explanation for this unexpected turn of events? NOT LEBRON’S FAULT! He simply hasn’t got a quality supporting cast. The team can’t match up to the rest of the league. Cleveland’s management has failed to surround LeBron with good players. Forget the 66 wins, the home court dominance, and the two playoff sweeps. This team sucks! Except, of course, for The Bron, whose MVP reputation and endorsement-friendly status shall be maintained at all costs, even while the clearly superior Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard prepare to duke it out in the Finals.
“Good for the League” The knee-jerk instinct to protect LeBron’s image is related to a strange fascination that has come to consume fans across the spectrum of sports, wherein discussion of games, events, and peripheral developments are cast within a framework that asks them to consider whether or not something is “good for the game” or “good for the league.” A LeBron-Kobe Finals, for example, would obviously have been “good for the league,” whereas an Orlando-Nuggets Finals obviously would not have been. Stanley Cup games involving any of the NHL’s “Original Six” teams are widely considered good for hockey. The stateside arrival of David Beckham a couple years ago was supposed to be good for the terminally pathetic performance of U.S. soccer. The drama surrounding jockey Calvin Borel’s bid to win this year’s Triple Crown aboard different horses is being trumpeted as “good for horse racing.” The wondrous ascendance of Manny Pacquiao is an absolute godsend for boxing. Etc., ad nauseum.
Amazing that sports fans have been trained to give a shit about the financial well being of millionaire businessmen and their partner media networks. Me, I couldn’t care less about whether ratings for the Lakers-Orlando series will be lower than they would have been for a Kobe-Lebron showdown, just as I don’t care what the handle at the track will be for this week’s Belmont Stakes. I’m a fan. I watch games. I care about results on the field, not at the box office or with Nielsen wonks. Media naturally care about the popularity (i.e., financial health) of the leagues and events they cover and sponsor. This doesn’t mean the rest of us need to treat this self-interest as a genuine story. Are we really that fascinated by accounting ledgers?
Twenty-second Timeouts Click a stopwatch the next time someone calls a “twenty-second timeout” in an NBA game. It’ll run between two and three minutes before play resumes. Sometimes longer. Can the NBA stop with the “twenty-second timeout” charade? If the Association can’t even be honest about something as measurable and inviolable as time, how can we trust that it’s telling the truth about any of the topics discussed above?
