Osprey- COMBAT:  Saipan, Guam, and Peleliu, 1944

US Marine vs. Japanese Soldier

Out with their newest book in the Combat series, Osprey Publishing has a book covering the Pacific war during WWII.  This book covers the important struggles between the US Marines and the Japanese soldiers that they encountered.  The book is a color/black & white printing that is 9.75 inches X 7.25 inches wide. It consists of 80 pages of paper weight that is pretty substantial in thickness and quality.  Throughout the book, there are illustrations of maps, battles and color plates of what the soldiers were wearing along with the type of gear they would have had..

Let's dive into this review.  This book consists of the following chapters:

Conclusion

I found the book to be very enjoyable to read.  One of the really great things of this book is that it goes into the history of the Pacific conflict from the USMC's point of view. Nice to see were the bonus maps of where these conflicts took place.  Not every battle was covered, only some.  But those were just enough to peak my curiosity into knowing more.

From an armor perspective, I didn't see very many examples of armor in the pages of this book.  It's more designed and put together from an infantry soldier's point of view.  There are nice examples of weaponry used by both sides as well as uniform examples which comes in very handy if you want to get that right in terms of painting.  The Analysis chapter that starts on page 71 is really nice as that breaks down the reasons for how the Japanese would become the eventual losers of the war.  The author, Gregg Adams, lists 4 reasons why the Japanese lost and I won't spoil the book by going into them but, they are interesting points of view.  The section "Aftermath" which comes next after the analyzing section, is very poignant and leaves you with a feeling about the destructive nature of these conflicts.  For me, it made me think about the sacrifices on both sides during their struggles against each other and the hell that cost must have been.

I thought this book was a good source of information from a very high level, with some better insights into the battles for Guam, Peleliu and Saipan.  The book is really well thought out with pictures and diagrams for referencing those battles which were pivotal in the Pacific war.

Highly Recommended for Beginner to Advanced builders if you are looking for library material concerning the Pacific War.  I do not know of how useful this book will be in referencing material for working on models, but, this book would be great in getting the overall history of these battles correct, the units involved as well as the overall struggle.  That knowledge can lend a hand to modeling a model during those battles with marks to represent vehicles from those units.  I would purchase this book for the intrinsic value of the Pacific battles which is what interests me most, therefore, I am very happy to have this review sample now in my library.

Thanks goes out to Osprey Publishing for the chance to review this wonderful book.

Reviewed by GLEN MARTIN

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