Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

Autumn 1944. World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made...

On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared -- Lt. Louis Zamperini ... Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a floundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft and beyond, a trial even greater. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended...

"Brown ... sits down with [Jerry] Yellin, now ninety-three years old, to tell the ... story of the final combat mission of World War II. Nine days after Hiroshima, on the morning of August 14th, Yellin and his wingman 1st Lieutenant Phillip Schlamberg took off from Iwo Jima to bomb Tokyo. By the time Yellin returned to Iwo Jima, the war was officially over--but his young friend Schlamberg would never get to hear the news. [This book] is a ... first-person...

Examines the military campaigns of World War II in the Pacific, from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the fall of the Philippines to the United States attacks on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and the Japanese surrender.

The experiences of three men and their fellow Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain forests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day.

"Fate is a ship. As the shadows of World War II gather, the SS Lichenfield is westbound across the Pacific carrying eighty thousand barrels of highly explosive naphtha. The cargo alone makes the journey perilous, with the entire crew aware that one careless moment could lead to disaster. But yet another sort of peril haunts the Lichenfield. Even beyond their day-to-day coexistence, the lives of the crew are mysteriously intertwined. Though each has...

When Nick Nardini enlists in the Marine Corps' new paratrooper combat unit at the start of World War II, he has to talk his best friend, Zachary Klecko, into joining him in what he sees as an adventure--but from boot camp on it is clear that Zach is much more serious about the war than Nick is, at least until they are assigned to one of the POW recovery teams on the Japanese mainland.

A history of World War II in the Pacific Ocean contends that the conflict was not in the best interest of either side, discussing key military figures, America's ill-preparedness for the war, and Japan's knowledge that they could not win.

"For fans of All the Light We Cannot See and Orphan Train, the author of the "thought-provoking" (Library Journal, starred review) and "must-read" (PopSugar) novel The Gilded Years crafts a captivating tale of three young people divided by the horrors of World War II and their journey back to one another. During the turbulent months following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, twenty-one-year-old Emi Kato, the daughter of a Japanese diplomat, is locked...

A memoir of the veteran author's experiences as a member of the famed K/3/5 First Marine Division during the pivotal invasion of Guadalcanal describes his command at Peleliu and losses of several friends.