Book title: True Stories of The Second World War
Author: Paul Downswell
Publication year: 2006
Publisher: Usborne Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 9780746088210
Price: RM69.90
The battle of Iwo Jima 1945 has always fascinated me. It was a story of an epic war between the US Marines and the Imperial Army of Japan during the Second World War (WWII). It was fought over Japan’s military base of Iwo Jima, which lies roughly halfway between American Army Airforce bases in the Mariana Islands and the Japanese islands.
The base on Iwo Jima gave the Japanese an ability to send early air raid warnings to the Japanese mainland and launch fighters from its airfields to intercept raids. So the American invasion was led for the purpose of capturing the island with its two airfields: South Field and Central Field.
As a child growing up in the 80s era, I still vividly remembered sitting in front of a vintage television waiting for my dad to start the power generator so that we could watch our favourite shows together. Of course, while my dad was watching TV with my brother and I, he would introduce us to a lot of documentaries and movies especially those related to WWII.
There was one clip from a documentary that caught my eye, an image of several men clad in US army uniforms raising an American flag over some sort of mountain on an island in Japan.
The image stucked in my head up until today.
Years ago, to be exact in 2006, I bought a book, that puts together remarkable true stories of the second world war by Paul Dowswell. All 12 thrilling true stories compiled inside this book are set during WWII.
The stories include real life tales of epic naval battles, monumental battles and duels between solitary snipers for control of Stalingrad amongst other tales of bravery and heroism. Stories are illustrated with maps and line drawings and there are notes on sources and ideas for further reading.
Amongst the stories that stand out to me was about the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.
I believe that most people still remember and recognise the iconic photo taken by Joe Rosenthal that showed six US Marines, with their uniforms stained and dusty from three days continual combat, raising a fluttering stars and stripes on a long iron pole.
The tales about Iwo Jima inside the book begins with a quote by the photographer, who described the fierce combat with enemy troops on the beach as: “Not getting hit was like running through rain and not getting wet…”.
The US Marine, upon their landing on Iwo Jima’s beach on February 19, 1945, were met by the Japanese sturdy footing. The battle for supremacy on the island lasted for for weeks.
Rosenthal’s shot became an icon, millions of prints were sold around the world. He took the photo four days after the Marines landed at Iwo Jima, and the American people saw Rosenthal’s photo as a potent symbol of victory.
Some of the other topics include the battleship Bismarck, women aviators in the Soviet Air Force, the Nazis involved in the “final solution”, British spies, and the development of the atomic bomb and its use by the United States to end the war.
All of the stories are fairly short, running from 10 to 20 pages or so, enough to develop the main theme without too much detail. Sections at the beginning and end discuss the start and end of the war, providing a background to reference the stories against. One strength of this book is that the stories are often sprinkled with first-person memories of the people associated with the story.
This helps readers to grasp the impact of those troubled times on the people involved in the conflict. It includes stories that will be familiar to historians, but are probably unknown in the current era. Any reader interested in learning more about the Second World War will find that this book covers a wide variety of topics in a clear and simple language.
This book fascinated me as a reader. The chapters not only focused on the conflict, the struggles of the military and ordinary people, but its ability to inspire, educate and display humanity’s remarkable ability to self-destruct. The stories are real, and the first-person perspective increases their interest to the reader.
