Although most people associate the term D-Day with the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944, it is military code for the beginning of any offensive operation. In the Pacific theater during World War II there were more than one hundred D-Days. The largest -- and last -- was the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945, which brought together the biggest invasion fleet ever assembled, far larger than that engaged in the Normandy invasion.
"D-Days in the Pacific" tells the epic story of the campaign waged by American forces to win back the Pacific islands from Japan. Based on eyewitness accounts by the combatants, it covers the entire Pacific struggle from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Pacific war was largely a seaborne offensive fought over immense distances. Many of the amphibious assaults on Japanese-held islands were among the most savagely fought battles in American history: Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, New Guinea, Peleliu, Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.
Generously illustrated with photographs and maps, "D-Days in the Pacific" is the finest one-volume account of this titanic struggle.

Jonathan Osorio investigates the effects of Western law on the national identity of Native Hawaiians in this impressive political history of the Kingdom of Hawai'i from the onset of constitutional government in 1840 to the Bayonet Constitution of 1887, which effectively placed political power in the kingdom in the hands of white businessmen. Making extensive use of legislative texts, contemporary newspapers, and important works by Hawaiian historians and others, Osorio plots the course of events that transformed Hawai'i from a traditional subsistence economy to a modern nation, taking into account the many individuals nearly forgotten by history who wrestled with each new political and social change. A final poignant chapter links past events with the struggle for Hawaiian sovereignty today.

The Things We Value takes as its subject the creativity and cultural heritage of Solomon Islands, focusing on the kinds of objects produced and valued by local communities across this diverse country in the south-west Pacific. Combining historical and interpretive analyses with personal memories and extensive illustrations, the contributors examine such distinctive forms as red feather-money, shell valuables, body ornaments, war canoes, ancestral stones and wood carvings. Their essays discuss the materials, designs, manufacture, properties and meanings of artefacts from across the country. Solomon Islanders value these things variously as currency, heirlooms and commodities, for their beauty, power and sanctity, and as bearers of the historical identities and relationships which sustain them in a rapidly changing world. The volume brings together indigenous experts and leading international scholars as authors of the most geographically comprehensive anthology of Solomon Islands ethnography yet published. It engages with historical and contemporary issues from a range of perspectives, anthropological and archaeological, communal and personal, and makes a major new contribution to Pacific Islands studies.

Almost one-quarter of the world's languages are (or were) spoken in the Pacific, making it linguistically the most complex region in the world. Although numerous technical books on groups of Pacific or Australian languages have been published, and descriptions of individual languages are available, until now there has been no single book that attempts a wide regional coverage for a general audience. Pacific Languages introduces readers to the grammatical features of Oceanic, Papuan, and Australian languages as well as to the semantic structures of these languages. For readers without a formal linguistic background, a brief introduction to descriptive linguistics is provided. In addition to describing the structure of Pacific languages, this volume places them in their historical and geographical context, discusses the linguistic evidence for the settlement of the Pacific, and speculates on the reason for the region's many languages. It devotes considerable attention to the effects of contact between speakers of different languages and to the development of pidgin and creole languages in the Pacific. Throughout, technical language is kept to a minimum without oversimplifying the concepts or the issues involved. A glossary of technical terms, maps, and diagrams help identify a language geographically or genetically; reading lists and a language index guide the researcher interested in a particular language or group to other sources of information. Here at last is a clear and straightforward overview of Pacific languages for linguists and anyone interested in the history of sociology of the Pacific.

Koburger argues that the many battles that constituted the campaign for the Solomons were the key to victory in the Pacific for the U.S. Navy--not the battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of Midway. Segments of the campaign--Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville--have been written about extensively. But never before has the entire campaign been put together so lucidly and interpreted so well. The descriptions of the naval battles make for compelling reading. Even in World War II, Koburger argues, the important naval struggles took place in the narrow seas.

An immigrant's tale of an untamed country
Alexander Gibson, my father, was a young Englishman who with his brother settled in Australia in the 1920s. The brothers each married one of the Solomon sisters just prior to the Great Depression. The Taciturn Man begins just after the Second World War when Alexander took up a rough bush sheep-grazing block in isolation among the tall trees of New England (New South Wales).
I was born in 1937, and so I was just three years old when my father went to war, and age eight when he returned. Fortunately, by then I was old enough to absorb much of the material for this collection which I hope you will now enjoy.
Praise for "The Taciturn Man"
"A delightful memoir with all the emotions of life itself-seriousness, humor, joy and sadness and more. The author's observations of people and lively writing style make it a great bedside book to be savored, rather than hurried through."
--Deborah K. Frontiera, author of Fighting CPS: Guilty Until Proven Innocent of Child Protective Services Charges
"The Taciturn Man is a trip through Australia's countryside that feels like a nostalgic summer breeze as Gibson's personal narrative reveals its beauty, culture, and history through his own experiences and unique voice."
--Susan Violante, author of "Innocent War: Behind an Immigrant's Past"
About the Author
Geoffrey Gibson grew up in rural Australia in the 1940s, earned his keep as a jackeroo (farmhand), had a brief stint in the Army, followed by thirty years as a suburban real estate agent in Sydney. He has dabbled in politics, and in retirement now spends his time writing, surfing and mucking about with friends on the state's South coast.
From the World Voices Series www.ModernHistoryPress.com
Available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook Editions
BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography: Personal Memoirs
LCO005000 Literary Collections: Australian & Oceanian
HIS004510 History: Australia & New Zealand - Australia

The British cultural history of the Gallipoli campaign has been overlooked until now - this is a significant book as it offers the first real opportunity for this important campaign to be included in undergraduate courses on WWI. The commemoration of war is a particularly vibrant area of study - Anzac Day, commemorating the landings that began the Gallipoli campaign, is central to Australian national consciousness and this book examines why. A crucial argument in the cultural history of the First World War was sparked by Paul Fussell's contention that the war signified a profound cultural rupture; in widening the debate from the Western Front, this book supports the counter argument that romantic modes of expression retained resonance and utility. In Australia, the renewal of the story of Gallipoli by historians and film-makers (notably Peter Weir's 1981 film starring Mel Gibson) has profoundly altered the national sense of identity and society's perceptions of the armed forces; the authors explains how the writing of this particular event has developed and achieved this central position. An essential volume for those interested in British military and Australian history, postcolonialism and nation building, from academics and students through to the general reader. -- .

An exploration of the little-known yet historically important emigration of British army officers to the Australian colonies in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The book looks at the significant impact they made at a time of great colonial expansion, particularly in new south Wales with its transition from a convict colony to a free society.

Preserving much rare and disintegrating information, this comprehensive chronology and fact book provides day-to-day records covering a third of the Pacific war for the first time. Recounts events in the North Pacific between August 1943 and September 1945, revealing the activities of the Allies, including the Soviet Union and the Japanese. It identifies the location and activities of the various units, their landings, and battles. Short biographies make participants "come alive." Appendices provide a glossary, and give key information about prisoners of war, American internees, Army Air Forces, U.S. Navy, Japanese North Pacific Forces forces, Soviet Forces, U.S. units and bases, and American and Japanese personnel. This account shows how events in the North Pacific had an impact in the South and Central theater of the war. The record shows how Admiral Chester Nimitz's offensive actions before major operations, his bombings and bombardments and false radio broadcasts helped bring about later victories and how his destruction of the Japanese fishing fleet set out to shorten the war. A bibliography, index, maps, charts, and photographs further enrich this little-known history for all interested in understanding this now forgotten conflict.

Fiji by the year 1900 after a generation as a British Crown Colony was a multi-racial nation with a combined indentured and free Indian component, which was about to expand on a large scale, and contest political predominance with indigenous Fijians and a small but dominant European minority among other ethnic groups. Drawn from primary sources, and packed with original quotations and statistics, "Fiji and the Franchise" illuminates the history of the struggle that followed. This book introduces modern readers to life in the Fiji islands from 1900 to 1937, when the ultimate question for its inhabitants was how political representation should be achieved, and on what basis. "Fiji and the Franchise" was Dr. Ali's eminently readable and well-grounded Australian National University doctoral thesis. It was presented in 1973 but still remained unpublished when he suddenly became ill on a visit to India and, as bravely as he had always lived, passed away in 2005. Now, Dr. Ali's work lives on as a tribute to and record of this amazing island nation.

In the early postwar era, Britain enjoyed a very close relationship with Australia and New Zealand, through their common membership of the Sterling Area and the Commonwealth Preference Area. This book examines the breakdown of this relationship in the 1950s and 60s, and the various economic factors involved. Special emphasis is given to the implications for Australia and New Zealand of Britain's proposal for a European free trade area, and of Harold Macmillan's unsuccessful bid to join the EEC in 1961-3.

"Stirring Australian Speeches" is the definitive collection of speeches and public addresses from Australian public life. Politicians, scientists, judges, explorers, artists, the famous and the infamous, comment on the great issues and figures of their day. The speakers range from Governor Arthur Phillip to Sir William Deane, Louisa Lawson to Germaine Greer, Peter Lalor to Pauline Hanson. The subjects stretch from white settlement to the Mabo decision, Eureka to Gallipoli, the banning of the Communist Party to the 2002 bombing in Bali, the art of Sheffield Shield cricket in the nineteenth century to the state of arts funding in recent times.

First published in 2006. A traveller's tale set in the islands of Samoa with the legendary traveller Robert Louis Stevenson as guide, this book is valuable not only for its enjoyment as a tale of adventure, but also for its record of Stevenson himself - a literacy figure more commonly seen as author and not subject.

Kragur village lies on the rugged north shore of Kairiru, a steep volcanic island just off the north coast of Papua New Guinea. In 1998 the village looked much as it had some twenty-two years earlier when author Michael French Smith first visited. But he soon found that changing circumstances were shaking things up. Village on the Edge weaves together the story of Kragur villagers' struggle to find their own path toward the future with the story of Papua New Guinea's travails in the post-independence era. Smith writes of his own experiences as well, living and working in Papua New Guinea and trying to understand the complexities of an unfamiliar way of life. To tell all these stories, he delves into ghosts, magic, myths, ancestors, bookkeeping, tourism, the World Bank, the Holy Spirits, and the meaning of progress and development. Village on the Edge draws on the insights of cultural anthropology but is written for anyone interested in Papua New Guinea.

In 1908, Arthur Maurice Hocart and William Halse Rivers Rivers conducted fieldwork in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in Island Melanesia that served as the turning point in the development of modern anthropology. The work of these two anthropological pioneers on the small island of Simbo brought about the development of participant observation as a methodological hallmark of social anthropology. This would have implications for Rivers' later work in psychiatry and psychology, and Hocart's work as a comparativist, for which both would largely be remembered despite the novelty of that independent fieldwork on remote Pacific islands in the early years of the 20th Century. Contributors to this volume-who have all carried out fieldwork in those Melanesian locations where Hocart and Rivers worked-give a critical examination of the research that took place in 1908, situating those efforts in the broadest possible contexts of colonial history, imperialism, the history of ideas and scholarly practice within and beyond anthropology.

A new interpretation of imperialism and environmental change, and the anxieties imperialism generated through environmental transformation and interaction with unknown landscapes. Tying together South Asia and Australasia, this book demonstrates how environmental anxieties led to increasing state resource management, conservation, and urban reform.

The Institute of Pacific Relations was a pioneering intellectual-political organization that shaped public knowledge and both elite and popular discourse throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond during the inter-war years. Inspired by Wilsonian internationalism after the 1919 formation of the League of Nations, it grew to become an international and national non-governmental think-tank providing expertise on Asia and the Pacific. This book investigates post-League Wilsonian internationalism with respect to two critical issues: the nation state and the conception of the Asia-Pacific region; both issues broach a range of contentious subjects including colonialism, orientalism, racism and war. Akami's study of the Institute of Pacific Relations offers insight into the formation of the dominant ideologies and institutions of regional and international politics in the Pacific during the inter-war years, and provides an interesting perspective on Japan's relations with countries including the USA and Australia.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203165535

Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45 explores the queer dynamics of war across Australia and forward bases in the south seas. It examines relationships involving Allied servicemen, civilians and between the legal and medical fraternities that sought to regulate and contain expressions of homosex in and out of the forces.

Nearly 50 years after Japan's attack, this text takes a fresh look at the air raid that plunged America into World War II. Michael Slackman scrutinizes the decisions and attitudes that prompted the attack and left the US unprepared to mount a successful defence.