The Thousand-mile War (1969. 1995)

The Thousand-Mile War, a powerful story of the battles of the United
States and Japan on the bitter rim of the North Pacific, has been
acclaimed as one of the great accounts of World War II. Brian Garfield, a
novelist and screenwriter whose works have sold some 20 million copies,
was searching for a new subject when he came upon the story of this
"forgotten war" in Alaska. He found the history of the brave men who had
served in the Aleutians so compelling and so little known that he wrote
the first full-length history of the Aleutian campaign, and the book
remains a favorite among Alaskans. The war in the Aleutians was fought
in some of the worst climatic conditions on earth for men, ships, and
airplanes. The sea was rough, the islands craggy and unwelcoming, and
enemy number one was always the weather--the savage wind, fog, and rain
of the Aleutian chain. The fog seemed to reach even into the minds of
the military commanders on both sides, as they directed men into
situations that so often had tragic results. Frustrating, befuddling,
and still the subject of debate, the Aleutian campaign nevertheless
marked an important turn of the war in favor of the United States. Now,
half a century after the war ended, more of the fog has been lifted. In
the updated University of Alaska Press edition, Garfield supplements his
original account, which was drawn from statistics, personal interviews,
letters, and diaries, with more recently declassified photographs and
many more illustrations.