Guadalcanal: A Name that will Endure in Honor--Richard Frank, 35th Annual Nimitz Symposium

"Guadalcanal: A Name That Will Endure in Honor" Marines splashed ashore on the obscure island of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific to start the first American offensive of World War II on August 7, 1942. This ignited a six-month, see-saw struggle with almost continuous combat on land, sea, and air. Crisis followed crisis. The outlook became so bleak in mid-October 1942 that Washington sought to prepare the public for defeat. The peaks and troughs of fortune every month riveted the American public. They increasingly perceived it as more than one battle. It rose to symbolize the first fair test of whether the generation that would have to fight toe to toe with the Axis powers for years possessed the deep reserves of physical strength and courage to win the war. Later James Jones--who fought there—set his powerful novel, The Thin Red Line, on Guadalcanal. He declared it was for his whole generation “very special” as their first and most important test. Speaker bio: Richard B. Frank is an internationally recognized leading authority on the Asia-Pacific War. He published his first book Guadalcanal in 1990. His second work, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, appeared in 1999 and has been called one of the six best books in English about World War II. Both Random House books won awards and became main selections of the History Book Club. In 2007, he completed MacArthur as part of the Palgrave Great Generals series. Besides his numerous appearances on television and radio, he was a consultant for the epic HBO miniseries, “The Pacific.” He serves on the Board of Presidential Councilors of the National World War II Museum, including a term as head of that body. The first volume of his trilogy on the Asia Pacific War 1937-1945, Tower of Skulls, published in March 2020, was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History 2021.