Their Backs Against the Sea

The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II

Contributors

By Bill Sloan

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$17.99

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$22.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around June 27, 2017. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

In the midst of the largest banzai attack of the war, US Army Lt. Col. William O’Brien, grievously wounded and out of ammunition, grabbed a sabre from a fallen Japanese soldier and flailed away at a small army of assailants, screaming to his men, “Don’t give them a damn inch!” When his body was recovered the next day, thirty dead enemies were piled around him.

The Battle of Saipan lasted twenty-five hellish days in the summer of 1944, and the stakes couldn’t have been higher. If Japan lost possession of the island, all hope for victory would be lost. For the Americans, its capture would result in secure air bases for the new B-29s that would put them within striking distance of the Japanese homeland. The outcome of the war in the Pacific lay in the balance.

In this gritty, vivid narrative, award-winning author Bill Sloan fuses fresh interviews, oral and unit histories, and unpublished accounts to describe one of the war’s bloodiest and most overlooked battles of the Pacific theater. Combining grunt’s-view grit with big picture panorama (and one of the ugliest inter-service controversies of the war), Their Backs against the Sea is the definitive dramatic story of this epic battle — and an inspiring chronicle of some of the greatest acts of valor in American military history.

Genre:

  • "Sloan expertly weaves the key events of the twenty-five-day battle with account of individual and unit heroism into a fast-moving, dramatically told epic battle."
    On Point: The Journal of Army History

On Sale
Jun 27, 2017
Page Count
304 pages
Publisher
Da Capo Press
ISBN-13
9780306824722

Bill Sloan

About the Author

Bill Sloan is a renowned military historian and the author of more than a dozen books. His narratives of World War II’s Pacific War have been praised by readers, reviewers, and veterans alike for their accuracy and their vivid writing. A former investigative reporter and feature writer, Sloan lives in Dallas, Texas.

Learn more about this author