American Samurai: Myth and Imagination in the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division 1941-1951

by Rondo Cameron and Craig M. Cameron

Book Overview

American Samurai offers an innovative approach to military history by linking battlefield dynamics of the Pacific War to cultural, social, and institutional myth among marines of the First Division. Although it has elements of each, the book is neither a detailed campaign history nor a traditional unit history. It moves in roughly chronological order, but is organised thematically to explore how myth and imagination shaped the marines' actions. It...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521441684
• ISBN13: 9780521441681
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 316 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Too academic for the average reader

I was a student of Prof Cameron at Old Dominion and it amazes me that people advocate book burning just because they disagree with his ideas. He was decried as a racist on campus and these fools denounce him for sitting in an ivory tower. This book is written as an academic work and should be treated as such. It has to be taken dispassionately, I'm a former Marine and not did not see anything revisionist in his work. If you are too afraid to hold a mirror to yourself don't read this book---stick to Clancy-he uses small word and easy sentences.

Its about time

Finally someone has the guts to admit what actually occured in the Pacific war in WW@. Both my uncles were Marines involved in the battles of Peleliu, Okinawa and Tarawa, and their experiences are mirrored exactly in this book. It was almost a ritual for the Marines, once after killing Japanese soldiers, to harvest various body parts, including teeth, ears, and even cutting off the heads and boiling the flesh off dead Japanese soldiers and sending them back to families in the states to use as cigarette trays! My uncles were taught from the first day of boot camp that the Japanese weren't even human and deserved such treatment. I congratulate the author for being brave enought to withstand the obvious charges of "revisionism" and "political correctness" that his book would elicit.