Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

by William Manchester

Book Overview

In this intensely powerful memoir, America's preeminent biographer-historian, who has written so brilliantly about World War II in his acclaimed lives of General Douglas MacArthur (American Caesar) and Winston Churchill (The Last Lion), looks back at his own early life. This memoir offers an unrivaled firsthand account of World War II in the Pacific: of what it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and most of all, what it felt like to one who...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316545015
• ISBN13: 9780316545013
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 401 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.

Customer Reviews

One of only a few books I did not just read, but experienced

William Manchester, a truly epic writer, who I had met through the third volume of his majestic biography of Winston Churchill a few years ago, had, in 1980 (before tackling Churchill), written a memoir of his time serving as a Marine in the Pacific theater of war during WW2 thirty five years earlier. Several years back I had visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in our nation’s capital, which had led to an obsession with the European theater of that same conflict. This was my first venture into the opposite side of the globe. “Goodbye, Darkness” is one of just a handful of books that I can truly call arresting. Over these few weeks I’ve stolen every moment I could to read. And when I haven’t been reading “Goodbye, Darkness,” my heart and head have been mulling over what I’ve read. Beautiful. Atrocious. Inspiring. Heart breaking. Mystifying. Arresting. Today I finished it, and the thought is whispering in my head that I should start from the beginning and experience it again. Whatever I read next will be shallow, colorless, imitation, set-aside-able. Just because it won’t be “Goodbye, Darkness.”

Great writer his life and his thoughts on war

I enjoy Manchester immensely. I loved this reflections on his experience in life and war. Life changes who we are. Reflections of living in the Pacific engaged in WWII is not well chronicled from a soldiers perspective. This book from his literate background is especially meaningful in its description of the event and its lasting impact on individuals who participated.

One of the best war books of the 20th century

In June, 1992, I flew into Guadalcanal to begin research on my great uncle's experience as a Marine during the WWII campaign. My plan was to retrace his steps during the months-long battle fifty years to the day after he took those steps. My six-month-long stay on Guadalcanal was preceded by more than a year of reading every single thing I could get my hands on about the battle. I read every book I could find in the English language -- accounts from Brits, Kiwis, Aussies -- as well as a few translated from Japanese. I spent two weeks at the Marine Corps Historical Museum in D.C. going through my great uncle's unit's combat reports. This book was by far the best I read about our Marines in the WWII Pacific Theatre. Manchester is a writer for the ages, a national treasure. He didn't fight in the battle for the 'Canal -- his struggles came later. But he takes the reader to war like no other book because he takes us inside himself -- his fears, his hauntings and nightmares about what he saw and experienced firsthand. They are deeply personal and he makes them ours. Manchester was/is a Marine; but God has made him a writer first and foremost. As a sample of this man's soaring prose, consider his tribute to those who fought for Guadalcanal: "...[T]o me that struggle was more than a strategic victory. It was, and is, eloquent testimony to the fortitude of man. Men generally do what is expected of them; usually that is very little. On the 'Canal they were asked to do what was believed to be impossible, and the shining response of those Marines on the line is historic. I shall never forget them, nor should you.' Read this book!

A Powerful Memoir that explains the "Greatest Generation"

To me "Goodbye Darkness" although on one level a memoir of the author's service in the US Marine Corps in the Pacific Theatre during World War II is really a journey of discovery of who the author is and the belief system that formed him during the 1930's and 1940's. The literary device he uses of revisiting the battlefields where he fought and rediscovering the memories he had suppressed for thirty years makes this one of the most powerful books I have ever read. The book bears more than a superficial resemblance to another favorite book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," that is also a journey into darkness to discover the author's shadow self. Both books are written in first person, both recount a journey each author makes to places he had been before, both describe the memories that each author rediscovers during the journey, and both books end with the startling realization that the younger protagonist of the book and the author are one and the same. While Pirsig makes a motorcycle trip to Montana to a college where he taught before he had a nervous breakdown and was subjected to electroshock treatments that caused him to "lose" his memory, Manchester tells the story of his journey thirty years afterwards to the battlefields where he fought and of the battle wound that had made his subsequent memories "unreliable." There were a wealth of insights from "Goodbye Darkness" but three bear special mention. First, as a member of the baby boom generation (born in 1949), I grew up in the shadow of the "greatest generation" and have tried to understand the historical forces that formed my father's generation - the great depression and World War II. Manchester's memoir has helped me understand what it was like to grow up as a product of those two defining events of the 1930's and 1940's and why the world they returned to became so different from the one they had left. My second insight from the book was an appreciation of the strength of the bond Manchester formed with the men in his platoon and the process of group cohesion that formed the bond that would motivate the men in his unit to fight not for their country, not for ideals, but for each other. It is a truism that the men who returned from WWII rarely discussed the experience they had undergone on the battlefield. Manchester is the exception in his desire and his ability to explain why men fought. By the end of the book I knew each of the men in his platoon and understood the process that made their loyalty to each other so strong. I had seen the process of group cohesion myself in the 1970's to a lesser degree when I went through an intense fifteen month month training regimen followed by two years service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in South America when I formed friendships with my fellow volunteers that have lasted thirty years. I am now at the same age as Manchester when he made his journey to the Pacific that resulted in this book and his memoir has given me the idea

Poetic and Haunting

If one could read two accounts of the Pacific War written from the perspective of Americans this book and Sledges "With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa" would be the best that one can get. There are a lot of very good narrative history books on all aspects of the Pacific War, but the poet-gone-to-war genre is something that really the British usually do much better than the Americans. That is why when I stumbled upon Manchester's memoirs I was immediately sucked into the guts of wartime experience.Manchester writes with passion borne from desperation and experience of long times in the firing line. He waxes from the lyrical experiences of a fireside chat on the battle-line with a student of philosophy (himself?) regalling the troops with an exposition on the nature of time. One is left with the images of hard worn veterans from small American towns, experiencing the wonder of ideas for the first time on the eve of battle. Their far off, empty stares as the philosopher marine finishes his exposition in sheer silence is something that one can almost feel. That very same night they cut up a large Banzai charge on Guam --- one can cut the atmosphere of the book with a knife. Manchester can then go on an describe his visceral uncomfortable feelings of being close to the Japanese today. Their inability to admit to former attrocities is something that Manchester admits, planted the seed of dislike deeply inside him. Try as he might he cannot shake it and we are at least amazed with his honesty. This contrasts with the cerebral, fair-minded Manchester we all know from his biographies. I have read more than 200 narrative histories and memoirs of the Pacific War, British, American, Japanese, Indian and Chinese, Australian, Canadian ... and this is one of the best. Like all good books, it stays with you for a long time....

Good Battle Detail

This book reminds me of the movie Full Metal Jacket somewhat - not that it was that dark, just that it gives the reader of view of what it was like in boot camp and then into the battle. The author does a very good job with this work. He is known for telling other peoples tails, but he does a great job with his own story. The battle information is top of the class and the details on a Marine beach assault, teaches the reader everything you need to know. This is more then an old solder telling you about the letters he received, it passes for a very good start to the pacific theater with background as to why a battle was taking place. He also does a great job of describing the battles from a solders point of view, in the class of Black Hawk Down. I would recommend this book before a larger comprehensive history, it will get you excited to take them on.

straight talk from a pacific war vet

anyone who's parent was a pacific war vet should read this book. Manchester tells how it was, how it worked and how he delt with it in his life. He fills in some of the history, laid out as he revisits some of the islands taken by the marines, fleshes that out with good and bad memories of his experiences in marine life and combat on Guadalcanal and okinawa. it is a very personal story, much like any vets story who survived that theater of operation, more upbeat than say Robert Graves Goodby to all that, and not so combat specific as Wheelers book about 3 days on Iwo Jima. If you like personal stories, this is for you.