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Guam: The Battle for an American Island in World War II. By James H. Hallas. Published by Stackpole Books. 600 pages.
"Guam: The Battle for an American Island in World War II by James H Hallas is the story of the 1944 battle between the Marines and soldiers of Ш Amphibious Corps (IITAC) and the Japanese defenders on Guam. Guam would be the third piece of American soil-after the Aleutian Islands of Kiska and Attu in 1943-liberated by the United States in World War II. Unlike Kiska and Attu, Guam had the dubious distinction of being the first American soil formally surrendered to an enemy in World War II-and the only one with a significant U.S. civilian population. More importantly, seizure of the Mariana Islands- Saipan, Guam and Tinian- would provide bases for the Army Air Forces B-29s to bomb the Japanese home islands and provide a forward base for the Pacific fleet
Seized in the initial stage of the Central Pacific Offensive, Tarawa and Makin Island in the Gilberts, and Kwajalein and Roi-Namur in the Marshalls were relatively small in size. But the landings in the Marianas, according to Jeter A. Isely and Dr. Philip A. Crowl, authors of The U.S. Marines and Amphibious Warfare: Its Theory, and Its Practice In The Pacific, would present a combination of problems entirely new in the Central Pacific theater. For the first time the invading troops were called on to conduct large-scale operations on a comparatively large land mass. The Japanese considered the Marianas to be extremely important to their strategy.
According to Hallas, given Guam's location-·1,500 miles inside the Marshalls ... 1,000 miles from the Philippines, and 2,500 miles from any base of ours-if and when war came, it would essentially be...