| View Larger Image | With the Fifth Army Air Force: Photos from the Pacific Theater | Hardcoverby Mr. James P. Gallagher (Author), Professor Eric Bergerud (Foreword)
| List Price: | $38.00 | |
| | Binding: | Hardcover | | Publisher: | The Johns Hopkins University Press | | Page Count: | 192 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 31, 2001 | | Sales Rank: | 617,011th |
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
In 1942, Baltimore native James P. Gallagher enlisted in the Army Air Force and a year later was on active duty in the Southwest Pacific Theater as a communications officer. Among the personal belongings he took was a Baldaxette camera. An amateur photographer, Gallagher hoped one day to put together a scrapbook of his overseas tour. The army made no objections to its airmen taking pictures as long as they avoided radar equipment and Americans killed in action. Fifty years later, Gallagher's photos have been collected in With the Fifth Army Air Force, an absorbing and highly personal photographic record of America's war in the Pacific. These pictures reveal a different side of the war than do the works of either official military photographers or photojournalists. Through Gallagher's lens, we see the everyday life of the airmen stationed on a Pacific airbase, from the poor living conditions to such routine activities as watching movies on a sheet strung between two trees, playing volleyball, or decorating planes with paintings of pinups. Other photos capture the raw experience of the war: the terrible beauty of nighttime attacks and the vast destruction wreaked upon the jungle islands. After the war's end, Gallagher was stationed in occupied Japan, where he recorded the devastation suffered by the enemy. But he also found places untouched by the war and still serene; he caught fascinating shots of Japanese civilians apparently happy to see the Americans. One photograph records an extraordinary softball game between American and Japanese troops only weeks after the Japanese surrender. With the Fifth Army Air Force traces Gallagher's—and the American military's—progress from New Guinea and New Britain to Leyte, Lingayen Gulf, and Okinawa. Accompanied by Gallagher's charming, often drily and darkly comical recollections of his wartime experiences, these photographs offer a refreshing new perspective on the hardships, hazards, and camaraderie of America's war in the Pacific. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 3 reviews)
|
A Forgotten Corner of WW II by R. E. Spalinger (Lee, MA USA)  4 Stars
July 02, 2009
In a nutshell this book is just about priceless. From a youthful amateur photographer, these images from the SWPA capture some real history from a theater not known to the general reader.
Gallagher soldiered with the USAAF (5th AF) from 1943 until the end of the war - from all along New Guinea on up to Japan. Along the way he used his camera & film to the best advantage imaginable. Since this is about the USAAF, the collection concentrates on that branch - especially aircraft - but Gallagher has included observations that range wider than that. He concentrates on his radio/ground control companions, and nearby aircraft. But, civilian, native, enemy and other service images are included in this picture collection.
The book itself is a fime example of excellent narration, good image reproduction, and fine composition. All of this is presented in a backwards looking perspective of over 40 years. The reader/viewer will find that they will return many times to this book to obtain insight into what it was like to be sent to a strange forgotten corner of the world to help fight the Japanese war machine.
| |
Excellent buy ! by B. Jean (France)  5 Stars
February 05, 2008
Excellent choice of well printed B&W photographs.
Aircraft, trucks, boats AND men from the Fifth; but also japanese people and weapons.
Haven't read the text yet, but already worth having !
| |
Photos from a forgotten area of WWII by N. Trachta (Colorado Springs, CO United States) 4 Stars
January 27, 2007
Mr. Gallagher's book is the beautiful story of his experience in the Fifth Army Air Force. To tell his story (that of a simple communications officer), Mr. Gallagher has many personal photo's. While the text does a great job of telling Mr. Gallagher's experience in the Southwest Pacific, the photo's expand things greatly. Mr. Gallagher's photo's show the simple day-to-day life, the natives that helped, and a quite impressive listing of the aircraft used by the Fifth Army Air Force. Most importantly these photos are unique (I've never seen them prior to owning this book. My personal favorites are two with allied aircraft that have markings for the planes they've shot down. On has 5 Germans, 1 Italian, 1 Japanese, and 1 American, the other shows another ace's plane with 1 Australian flag. Also, the nose art is to die for.) and provide interesting insight into the war that took place in the Southwest Pacific.
Rating wise, for me this was a solid 4.5 star book due to the photo's. The down side was that the text is a little thin (but they're his experiences, not those of a historian bringing together many different sources). Because of the text being thin, I decided to only give the book 4 stars. Depending on which is more important to you, this book could be a 3 star book (if interested in personal accounts) or 5 star book if you're interested in the photo's.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| MacArthur's Eagles: The U.S. Air War Over New Guinea, 1943-1944
by Lex McAulay (Author)
| 
| The Grim Reapers at Work in the Pacific Theater: The Third Attack Group of the U.S. Fifth Air Force
by John P. Henebry (Author)
| 
| Fire In The Sky: The Air War In The South Pacific
by Eric M Bergerud (Author)
In the first two years of the Pacific War of World War II, air forces from Japan, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand engaged in a ruthless struggle for superiority in the skies over the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Despite operating under primitive conditions in a largely unknown and malignant physical environment, both sides employed the most sophisticated technology available at the time in a strategically crucial war of aerial attrition. In one of the largest aerial campaigns...
| 
| Combat Recon: 5th Air Force Images from the Sw Pacific 1943-45
by Robert Stava (Author)
From shipping strikes, to strafing runs on airfields, step back in time and into the violent days of World War II in the Southwest Pacific. Based on Fifth Air Force photographer John Stava's collection, and undiscovered until the mid-1990s, captured here is a broad scope of the war in the Southwest Pacific, from mundane and ordinary moments to white-knuckle combat rides. Follow he and his 5th AF colleagues as they traverse the war from the turning point days of early 1943 in New Guinea with the...
| | | 5th Air Force
by Turner Publishing (Author)
|
|
|
