Kwajalein, an Island Like No Other

Kwajalein, an Island Like No Other
Author: Lynn A. Jacobson
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2014-05-18
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781491007587

In the 1960s, Kwajalein, a remote 900-acre Pacific island leased from the Republic of the Marshallese for reentry missile tests, was characterized by sharks, water rationing gone wrong, Dear John letters gone even more wrong, incomes on steroids, ship diving, Chinese satellites, gazillion-dollar radars, lovelorn bachelors, Russian multi-radar “fishing” trawlers, and local interceptor missile launches. Kwaj was home to an elite core of 2,000 expat scientists and engineers (including families); a small military contingent handling island logistics; 3,000 highly paid, seriously female-deprived, lonely bachelors; and several hundred Marshalleses who commuted each day by ferry from their nearby home island. These 5,000 inhabitants with too much money, too little opportunity to spend it, too few available women, no cars, no TV, no overseas phone service, and too much isolation proved that they were also far too human. Who better to tell the collective stories of their lives, their quirks, their heartbreaks, and their adventures than author and MIT engineer Lynn A. Jacobson. In his book, Kwajalein, an Island Like No Other, Jacobson details his time on Kwaj, which included two tours with family (including the birth of a daughter) and one as a bachelor, where he was more privy than most to the happenings on the island.

Coral and Concrete

Coral and Concrete
Author: Greg Dvorak
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824855213

Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak’s cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple “atollscapes” of Kwajalein’s past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between “little stories” of ordinary human actors and “big stories” of global politics—drawing upon the “little” metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the “big” metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past. Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into conversation with Micronesians’ recollections of colonialism and war. This transnational history—built upon a combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies—thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as well as Dvorak’s own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.

Just Another Day in Paradise

Just Another Day in Paradise
Author: none
Publisher:
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9780692379103

History of Kwajalein principally from 1944 to present. Includes construction, schools, newspapers, recreation activities, brief overview of current and past military programs located there.

Kwajalein Stories

Kwajalein Stories
Author: Michael Adam Leptuch
Publisher: Rj Communications
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2012-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780578071817

An action-filled espionage novel set in the crucial years between World War II and the Korean War. The hero here is a Polish-American combat veteran who fought with distinction in the U.S. Army during the second world war and continues his service in the postwar years as an intelligence operative. The operative -- who uses the name Tony Williams along with other aliases -- goes undercover in military facilities across the world to tangle with both Soviet spies and rogue Americans who abuse their power. Leptuch (James Hedges. Discreet Inquiries. Private Investigations., 2014, etc.) bookends his novel with Williams' missions to the Kwajalein Atoll during the American testing of nuclear bombs in the area, but Williams also finds time for other adventures: skirmishing with FBI agents involved in the Roswell coverup, chasing spies at the Presidio in Monterey, flying stealth missions over the Soviet Union, and in the book's most riveting section, Williams' getting shot down near the Aral Sea. Leptuch demonstrates impressive knowledge of each location and historical situation. The skipping from mission to mission can feel episodic at times, but Williams' tough, knowledgeable and clever first-person narration holds the novel together. As engaging as Williams' voice is, though, secondary characters can feel a bit one-dimensional. Many seem to function as nothing more than straight men for William's admittedly enjoyable banter, and the occasional third-person reporting of other characters' perspectives is disorienting. Some readers may also be frustrated with the frequent, lengthy passages of exposition regarding historical, military or technical subjects, which can detract from the action's pace; however, readers with interest in these subjects will appreciate the levels of research and detail. Leptuch's attention to historical context enhances the story's complexity, going beyond the significant pleasures of action and adventure. As readers follow Williams' story, they'll also be treated to a sophisticated understanding of the Cold War's early escalation. A well-researched adventure novel about an overlooked period in U.S. military history.

Marshall Islands Legends and Stories

Marshall Islands Legends and Stories
Author: Daniel A. Kelin
Publisher: Bess Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781573061414

Preserving the qualities of oral storytelling - in fifty stories recorded from eighteen storytellers on eight islands and atolls - the tales in this collection relay the importance of traditional Marshallese values and customs. The collection includes profiles of the storytellers, a glossary, and a pronunciation guide.

Suburban Empire

Suburban Empire
Author: Lauren Hirshberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2022-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520289161

Suburban Empire takes readers to the US missile base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at the matrix of postwar US imperial expansion, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the tide of anti-colonial struggles rippling across the world. Hirshberg shows that the displacement of indigenous Marshallese within Kwajalein Atoll mirrors the segregation and spatial politics of the mainland US as local and global iterations of US empire took hold. Tracing how Marshall Islanders navigated US military control over their lands, Suburban Empire reveals that Cold War–era suburbanization was perfectly congruent with US colonization, military testing, and nuclear fallout. The structures of suburban segregation cloaked the destructive history of control and militarism under a veil of small-town innocence.

Island Victory

Island Victory
Author: Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1944-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780803283251

An on-the-spot history of a fight in the Pacific during World War II, Island Victory was the first battle history written by then?Lieutenant Colonel S. L. A. Marshall, a veteran of World War I who would serve in Korea and Vietnam and become a brigadier general in the process. After the Seventh Infantry Division drove across Kwajalein Atoll in the first days of February 1944, successfully wresting control of the strategic southern tip from the Japanese, Marshall was charged with producing an accurate and comprehensive account of the fight. His solution: bring the front-line soldiers together at once and interview them as a group, tapping the collective memory of a platoon fresh from battle. ø In this book, readers get a rare, firsthand sense of all the emotions that soldiers in combat experience. Numerous maps and photographs help us visualize precisely what took place. A compelling work of military history, and the first book of its kind, Island Victory is itself an important chapter in the history of how military exploits are described and recorded.

Island Victory: The Battle Of Kwajalein Atoll

Island Victory: The Battle Of Kwajalein Atoll
Author: Lt.-Col. Samuel L. A. Marshall
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2015-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786257017

An on-the-spot history of a fight in the Pacific during World War II, Island Victory was the first battle history written by—then Lieutenant-Colonel—S. L. A. Marshall, a veteran of World War I who would serve in Korea and Vietnam and become a brigadier general in the process. After the Seventh Infantry Division drove across Kwajalein Atoll in the first days of February 1944, successfully wresting control of the strategic southern tip from the Japanese, Marshall was charged with producing an accurate and comprehensive account of the fight. His solution: bring the front-line soldiers together at once and interview them as a group, tapping the collective memory of a platoon fresh from battle. In this book, readers get a rare, first-hand sense of all the emotions that soldiers in combat experience. Numerous maps and photographs help us visualize precisely what took place. A compelling work of military history, and the first book of its kind, Island Victory is itself an important chapter in the history of how military exploits are described and recorded.—Print Ed.

A Life Like None Other

A Life Like None Other
Author: Joseph E. Walther
Publisher:
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781928946045

"Auto biography of Dr. Joseph E. Walther, Jr. Rounder or Winona hospital. Indianapolis, Indiana, and the walther cancer institute."

Unbroken

Unbroken
Author: Laura Hillenbrand
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2014-07-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812974492

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more. In boyhood, Louis Zamperini was an incorrigible delinquent. As a teenager, he channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics. But when World War II began, the athlete became an airman, embarking on a journey that led to a doomed flight on a May afternoon in 1943. When his Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean, against all odds, Zamperini survived, adrift on a foundering life raft. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. Appearing in paperback for the first time—with twenty arresting new photos and an extensive Q&A with the author—Unbroken is an unforgettable testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit, brought vividly to life by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand. Hailed as the top nonfiction book of the year by Time magazine • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography and the Indies Choice Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year award “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Magnificent . . . incredible . . . [Hillenbrand] has crafted another masterful blend of sports, history and overcoming terrific odds; this is biography taken to the nth degree, a chronicle of a remarkable life lived through extraordinary times.”—The Dallas Morning News “An astonishing testament to the superhuman power of tenacity.”—Entertainment Weekly “A tale of triumph and redemption . . . astonishingly detailed.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “[A] masterfully told true story . . . nothing less than a marvel.”—Washingtonian “[Hillenbrand tells this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Hillenbrand [is] one of our best writers of narrative history. You don’t have to be a sports fan or a war-history buff to devour this book—you just have to love great storytelling.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks