Description
Title: The War Diaries of Eddie Allan Stanton
Author: Stanton, Eddie Allan and Nelson, Hank
Condition: Near Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 1999
ISBN: 1864480645
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 374 pages
Comments: Eddie Allan Stanton arrived in Port Moresby in 1942, just before the first Japanese bombs fell on the town.
Drafted into the army, he was posted to the Trobriand Islands. The debris of the battle of the Coral Sea washed up on the beach, Japanese ships passed close in shore and Japanese aircraft flew overhead. Intensely private, sceptical and intelligent, Stanton kept a diary during his four and a half years in Papua and New Guinea.
Through his engaging prose, the reader shares the excitement of the early months of the war when invasion of was imminent and encounters with Japanese survivors of wrecked aircraft and ships were likely. As the war moved north Stanton’s confrontations were with thousands and thousands of Americans. Recorded with great honesty, the entries in Stanton’s diary reveal his experiences, his reactions to stress, his judgements and prejudices they reinforce the significance of race in the Pacific war.
He was working alongside and administering Papuans, his enemy was Japanese, and he encountered black and Hispanic Americans. A product of White Australia, Stanton can be a disturbing reminder of past attitudes.
