Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

I purchased this book because of all of the 5 star reviews. I was looking for more after reading "With the Old Breed" by Sledge and "Helmet for My Pillow." Unfortunately I found the book rambling, disjointed, nonlinear and easy to put down because of the constant condescension, disdainful, supercilious attitude toward everything he sees. I managed to get past his description of masturbating to the Whore of War only with complete disgust.

He writes a revisionist history of the cause of the war stating that Roosevelt actually placed ]a vice on Japan in the form of not allowing shipments of scrap iron and oil and freezing of assets in order to get the Japan to start a war with the USA. One would think that after the Rape of Nanking in December 1937 and January 1938 where 300,000 unarmed Chinese civilians and POWs were murdered and women raped and then killed by having their bellies disemboweled (including pregnant women) over a 6 week period that sanctions would be a reasonable response. Manchuria was also annexed and the continued invasion of China that these types of diplomatic moves would have been praised instead of stating that we were "tricked" into the war. Doesn't President Obama use these same sanctions against Iran and Russia in 2014?[[ASIN:0140157344 At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor]]

He claims that sexually transmitted diseases were introduced into the Philippines by the US occupation after the Spanish American War. According to every book and source I have ever read these diseases were introduced into the Pacific by the Spanish, French and even Cooks sailors during exploration voyages prior to the American Revolutionary War. The first Europeans to land in Tahiti were under the Spanish explorer Juan Fernandez in 1576-1577. The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in the Philippines in in 1521 and the first Hispanic colony was established in 1565. [[ASIN:0300100922 The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Encounters in the South Seas]]

This man is full of anger towards everything on the planet. Or perhaps this was written for a 1970's audience? After all, the date of publication was 1979 and was probably published a year or 2 after it was written. The Vietnam War had ended with the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975 and the "Protest Generation" was still an influence?

On page 78 he states that for the Japanese Army "Particularly welcome were the so called 'comfort women,' prostitutes who VOLUNTEERED for service in the battle zones to help ease the tensions and improve the morale among the troops." This is a distortion of the facts. The Japanese kidnaped Korean and Chinese women to use as 'comfort women' and raped them as much as 25 to 40 times a day. The Chinese and Korean governments have been fighting since the end of the war to get the Japanese government to admit to this and compensate the victims. The Japanese government has refused to admit to this atrocity just as they have continued to deny the "Rape of Nanking" ever occurred. (Read the book by Iris Chang "The Rape of Nanking") [[ASIN:0465068367 The Rape Of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust Of World War II]] [[ASIN:0963223151 The Rape of Nanking: An Undeniable History in Photographs]] I am good friends with several Koreans and Chinese and they continue to be outraged at this atrocity.

In his final mass in South Korea on August 18, 2014 Pope Francis met with 7 elderly ladies who had been Comfort Women. As teenagers during World War II they were trafficked by Imperial Japan to be sex slaves. Japan's own military records on the operation of a comfort station show that the girls had to service not only soldiers and sailors but also the Japanese government and corporate officials. They even forced civilian Dutch women including Jan Ruff O'Herne. The truth is that the stories the women tell from the Andaman Islands to New Guinea, by Dutch gentry to Taiwanese are shockingly similar. This information was available in the in the records of the 1947 Batavia War Crimes Trial when Japanese officers were found guilty of entering a civilian internment camp to forcibly select 35 Dutch girls to bring to a military brothel for "forced prostitution" prior to the publication of this book Goodbye Darkness. If this single falsehood is included in the book it points toward poor research or fiction and, by implication, the lack of reliability of the rest of the text. [[ASIN:1490517219 Comfort Women: A History of Japanese Forced Prostitution During the Second World War]] [[ASIN:0991395859 Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story]] [[ASIN:0199373892 Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves (Oxford Oral History Series)]]

At this point I threw the book in the trash.

Don't even open the first page. What a waste.

I am admittedly a Manchester groupie. I had read everything of his except this, and although I served in the USMC 40 years ago (thankfully never shot at) I state without reservation that if I had read this before stepping on the footprints as a young man I might not have made the leap. Harrowing, inspiring, gut wrenching, an epiphany on every page. If you have served, you will appreciate the book. If you have served in combat you may decide to tell your own story... when you can. Manchester is a master at narrative non-fiction. It is difficult to read other work from the Pacific in WWII without recalling the author’s experiences.

This is a self serving account of WWII, starting with the tip off "Let me tell you about the first man I ever killed." Hogwash and sea stories. If you want to read an honest account of WWII in the Pacific by someone who is out to give a realistic account without building a myth around himself, read E. B. Sledge, With the Old Breed.

This book's strengths have been well stated. It is a good read, and it conveys a feeling for combat in the Pacific that comes directly from Manchester's experience.

Or does it? As only one reviewer has already noted, Manchester finally explains as an afterthought, where few will notice it, that most of what he writes about so vividly never really happened to him. He confesses that the narrative "we" that he's employed throughout usually means (I'm paraphrasing) "other Marines not including me" !

This deception (or, if you prefer, "poetic licence") makes "Goodbye Darkness" a most peculiar combination of memoir, history, and, perhaps, an unknown amount of realistic fiction. What gives here? And the subtitle is "A Memoir." That's quite a stretch.

I feel cheated.

After reading, With the Old Breed and Band of Brothers, this book just seems pompous and even offensive.
Manchesters superior attitude and arrogant high handedness was off putting after the honesty and heroism of BoB and WtOB.
I would have given up on it much earlier, but I kept thinking I wasn't giving Manchester a chance to develop his story...that is until I got to the foxhole eroticism. I have read over 100 histories and personal narratives of WW2 and never was sexual release surrounded by the gory remnants of your fellow soldiers a "normal" occurrence.
As the reader, I felt Manchester was trying to manipulate my feelings and I flat out didn't buy that the gruesome event was anything more than a figment of his poetic license.
Skip this one. There are Far more nonfiction accounts of WW2 that are worth your time and emotion.

This was a very disappointing "memoir". I had just finished With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge and was so moved that I started searching for other Pacific memoirs. If you are looking for a combat memoir, this is not it. Combat only comprises about 5% of the book's content. If you are looking for a memoir, this is not it. If, however, you are looking for beautiful, current descriptions of the islands in the Pacific, this is it. If you are looking for chapter after chapter reading about the lifestyle of the local natives, this is it. Extremely boring, extremely misleading, extremely non-combat, extremely not worth the money.

Most Americans have been exposed to "Saving Private Ryan" and HBO's exceptional series "Band of Brothers," and many of us have read "Ghost Soldiers." All are excellent ways for us to learn of the sacrifices our fathers made on behalf of our own, personal freedoms during WWII. To say one enjoys those films and that book is somewhat of a mis-statement. It is difficult to enjoy recollections of personal suffering and sacrifice. We do, however, appreciate the personal courage of the men's experiences and stand in awe of them to the nth degree.

As much as I appreciated the likes of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Band of Brothers" among other books and films on WWII, no book on the subject has touched my soul like William Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness." Through the book, Manchester returns to the Pacific and visits the islands that were the sites of the greatest carnage of WWII. He comments on what he sees during his visit in 1978 or so, but is continually drawn back in time to the events that occurred there that ultimately led to the defeat of the Japanese Empire. Noticeably, Manchester rarely uses the word "Japenese," rather he refers to "Japs" and "Nips." In today's politically correct environment, Manchester's references would be considered totally unacceptable. However, as you read his recollections of the engagements he and thousands of other Marines participated in, and you tally up the tremendous loss of human life in the process, you will excuse him for his political incorrectness. Manchester makes the most convincing case to justify the deployment of the atom bomb to bring an end to the conflict. Neutral on the topic prior to reading this book, I am now convinced that the use of nuclear arms to end the war with Japan was justified in a way that can only be appreciated after reading this book.

"Goodbye Darkness" should be required reading for all high school students. I watched O'Reilley the other night and heard the segment on UNC making a book on the Quaran mandatory reading for incoming freshmen. Poppycock! Make them read "Goodbye Darkness" so that each can truly appreciate the sacrifices his forefathers made. This is a must read for every American today and in future generations.

If anyone really wants to know what it meant to be a Marine "grunt" in WWII, or any other war, there are two "outstanding" memoirs they need to read.

Manchester's "Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific" is one. E.B. Sledge's "With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa" is the other.

No "John Wayne" stuff in either book. Just a couple of very articulate enlisted Marine "grunts" serving their time in Hell and living to tell about it.

Fast forward to Korea, Vietnam and Iraq and nothing much has changed --- except the geography, the climate and the face of the enemy. The horror of combat is still the same. Both memoirs should be read by anyone considering joining The Corps in time of war.

Both are now in the "Read Again" section of my personal library. Semper Fi, Marines.

First off I'm going to quote: "No infantryman fought on all, or even many, of the Pacific islands. Deployment of troops, casualty figures, and tropical diseases laid down impossible odds against that". That being said, the author does a very good job of describing living and dying in the jungles and battlefields of the Pacific. There is no definite timeline, dates and battles move around as the author travels island to island recalling or retelling events that happened. His own action was in Okinawa, of which the horrors are recalled toward the end of the book.

Let me also mention he is not the poster boy for the Marine Corp. If you want the "U-Rah: Gung Ho" version from a solider, look elsewhere. That's not to say he's a coward, just educated and placed in a small outfit of misfits with other intellectuals. You'll read no stories of him pulling grenade pins with his teeth and throwing them while Thompson blazing down Jap's all the while yelling preposterous things. Nope. Courageous actions of others - absolutely. Not only that, you get a great dose of geography, history, weapons, tactics, and anecdotes. Very light on the comedy, as some other veterans have wrote absolutely hysterical lines (Bloody Skies: Melvin McGuire).

There is lot of death, let me restate that - there is more death here than in any other book of war I have read. Here I thought Iwo was the bloodiest conflict - nope. There are countless stories of friends and other Marines who met their end. You think you know what war's like - wrong (Unless of course you were there - and I salute you if you were, on any front). Manchester gives you the gritty and awful scope of a battlefield. 250 Men charge up a hill and two come back. That was Okinawa. Until I read this book I never had any idea just how many men met their fate on those islands -abhorring by today's standards. Okinawa was 52X as costly as 9-11. Well he was there and he's not over it yet - that's to say he's definitely bitter and although he never mentions it, he certainly has PTSD. That being said, I can't say it's exactly a good read, or you'll really like the author, but it is his story. Bitter always and himself complicated to the core, it is at least a noble course to read and understand history.

Four Stars - Everyone loves a Hero.

I read the other reviewers who gave it 1 star and I agree with all of them. I was expecting to read a book about the Pacific War battles, but instead I am reading about the authors description of what the Islands now look like. WTF!?! If I wanted to read about the tourist sites on Guadacanal, I would have bought "Conde Naste, Traveler Magazine." I was hoping to read about the authors personal experiences in battle, but he mostly talks about the natives and the unfriendliness of the jungle. I was very put-off when he talked about failed attempts in losing his virginity..Huh?? what does that have to do with the PTO?? The most annoying part is when he starts quoting sentences in french or some other language, but doesn't tell those who do not speak the language the meaning of what he just said! I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK!!! Complete disappointment!! NOT ABOUT THE PTO!! More like boring tourist book..