A Life Disturbed: My Pacific War Revisited

by Merrel Clubb

An exceptional storyteller with an analytical eye, Merrel Clubb has gathered the letters he sent his parents from the Pacific Theater of World War II and his subsequent reflections on that war and on his life into a kind of then-and-now memoir. The letters are a treasure trove of humor, anxiety, and hope, revealing a young man thrust into a war that he does not understand. Through this exceptional portal on the past, we learn of the tragic absurdity...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295985364
• ISBN13: 9780295985367
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Professor's Pacific War Memoir...

With World War II in full swing, author Merrel Clubb chose to join the U.S. Navy and become an officer with the intent of serving aboard ships at sea. However, shortly after Officer Cadet Training at the University of Notre Dame (where he had to salute the priests), he found himself attached to the U.S. Marines and the Army as a naval gunfire support spotter, subsequently on the ground in four brutal land campaigns, including the battle of Iwo Jima. In this memoir, Clubb uses his wartime letters home to his parents in Stillwater, Montana, as his framework, and elaborates extensively on the events in those letters throughout the book. Clubb's letters home are admittedly circumspect with regard to the harsher aspects of battle, but his subsequent descriptions fill us in on the horrors he witnessed. Even so, he is careful in drawing the distinction between his role as a naval gunfire spotter and that of the frontline infantryman who was engaged in close combat with the Japanese, often just a few yards away. His descriptions of wartime Honolulu, San Francisco and San Diego, and of the adventures of young Naval officers on leave in these locales, are colorful and illuminating. The author, who is professor emeritus of English at the University of Montana, is a firm opponent of the atomic bombings of Japan. He devotes a considerable portion of his book to the defense of his position, even debunking the often-heard "because I was there..." defense used by many American Pacific War veterans (they really saw only a small part of the big picture). Conspicuously absent from his arguments is any mention of the attitude and condition of the U.S. populace after over three years of bloody war in Europe and the Pacific, particularly after the increasing losses suffered by American families as a result of the Pacific island battles of early 1945. What he fails to acknowledge is that without an Iwo Jima and an Okinawa, there might not have been a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki.