Up here...dey is only heroes.

Who says best sellers never receive the Pulitzer? Like The Color Purple, Tales of the South Pacific has its own musical ( Rodger and Hammerstein no less). It was a great book, although I find it hard to imagine military men randomly bursting into song and dance, but I guess there isn't much to occupy your time while you fight a war of waiting.

Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener (1948) is a novel of short stories with interlocking characters and one narrator. According to Wickipedia, the stories are based on observations and anecdotes he collected while serving as lieutenant commander for the Navy on the island of Espiritu Santo. While the stories are fiction, they are based in truth, focusing mainly on the characters and not on the war itself.

My favorite line in the book comes from an African American ensign working in an American Cemetery on the island of Konora. "Up here... dey is only heroes." The men fighting World War II in the south pacific did a great deal of waiting. Waiting to fight, waiting to go crazy, waiting for a war that seems so immanent and yet so far away. They occupied their time investigating the islands and the natives that live there, swapping war stories that belong to someone else, or writing letters back home to girls they may or may not love. The chronological stories cover the building of an airstrip before the Battle of the Coral Sea and ultimately ending in the invasion of the fictional island Kuralei through a planned attack code-named Alligator, covering the time span of 1942 to 1944 roughly.

While reading this novel, I happened to be in North Carolina visiting family. Especially two members who fought bravely in various battles of World War II, my grandfather and my Great Uncle Howard. My grandfather, a member of the Navy, was wounded at the age of 18 by a kamikaze pilot who crashed into his ship. About 10 years ago he had a piece of the plane removed from his arm, a bolt measured in metric. Uncle Howard was an Army Ranger and has only recently starting talking about some of the things that he experienced, the things he was asked to do. I hold them in the highest regard for what they did for our country and others. Members of my grandparent's generation are known as "The Greatest Generation," and perhaps they are. But there is still a residue of hatred that remains. I heard my uncle refer to Japanese people using what I would consider a racial slur in conversation. My heart cringed. There I sat, someone who works with International Students on a daily basis, and I didn't say a thing. Should I have?

At one point the narrator questions who will replace the Commander Hoags? It is difficult to fill the shoes of great leaders. And the past always seems better, easier than the present. But is that generation much different than this one? A different "enemy" perhaps, but war is war. However, how many people take the time to support the troops that are fighting overseas? How many people take the time to pray for the souls that are lost... on both sides of the war? I don't. My heart breaks when I hear about lives lost on the news. I cry when I watch new reports of brave men and women leaving their families to serve our country. But then I turn off the TV, take my daughter to school, and I go about the daily act of living... with little thought to what it cost.

Perhaps I digress... but it is amazing to me that the more of these Pulitzer Prize winning books I read, the more I find their relevance today. I guess to plan for the future we must learn from the past; however, isn't history doomed to repeat itself.

Up next, The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1953).

Happy reading, everyone.