I can get through one episode at a time of the Spielberg/Tom Hanks series Band of Brothers, which speaks more to me because my Dad was an Army officer in Europe. Sometimes I can’t get that far in The Pacific. It’s so harrowing that I don’t know how any Marine came home undamaged. I don’t imagine that any did.

I read, many years ago, With the Old Breed, by Eugene “Sledgehammer” Sledge, a character in the miniseries, and the historian/biographer William Manchester’s account of his war service, Goodbye Darkness, and both left me deeply troubled. That’s exactly the impact they should’ve had.

Somehow, thanks to the work of computer artists and the incredible composition, “Honor,” by Hans Zimmer, the opening credits to the miniseries are strangely and surpassingly beautiful.



But it remains a disconnect in my spirit, to imagine what young men from my hometown went through. There were other Marines, but here are five who resonate for me.

Louis Brown, killed on the beach at Saipan in 1942, finally came home to his mother in 2017.
Archie Harloe, son of the schoolteacher, was part of the invasion Saipan. He survived, but Marines watched, horrified, as islanders leaped to their deaths from ocean cliffs. They’d been told the Americans would torture them.
Louis Brown, the son of a Corbett Canyon farmer, an Azorean immigrant, stepped on a Japanese on Iwo Jima. Cause of death: “Burns, entire body.” This is the young man who, on finding his grave, started me writing books. What I owe him is beyond measure.
Lt. Max Belko, a USC All-American football player, became a P.E. teacher and football/basketball coach at Arroyo Grande Union High School–his kids would’ve played in today’s Paulding Gym. He was killed on the beach in the invasion of Guam.

John Loomis, AGUHS ’44, joined the Marines so he could get into the war before it ended. He did, at Okinawa, one of the costliest battles in the Pacific. He survived to raise the daughters and the son who would be among my closest friends growing up.