The Storm on Our Shores, Mark Obmascik
The Storm on Our Shores, Mark Obmascik
6 Rating(s)
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

The Storm on Our Shores
One Island, Two Soldiers, and the Forgotten Battle of World War II

Author: Mark Obmascik

Narrator: John Bedford Lloyd

Unabridged: 9 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/09/2019


Synopsis

This “engrossing” (The Wall Street Journal) national bestseller and true “heartbreaking tale of tragedy and redemption” (Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers) reveals how a discovered diary—found during a brutal World War II battle—changed our war-torn society’s perceptions of Japan.

May 1943. The Battle of Attu—called “The Forgotten Battle” by World War II veterans—was raging on the Aleutian island with an Arctic cold, impenetrable fog, and rocketing winds that combined to create some of the worst weather on Earth. Both American and Japanese forces tirelessly fought in a yearlong campaign, with both sides suffering thousands of casualties. Included in this number was a Japanese medic whose war diary would lead a Silver Star–winning American soldier to find solace for his own tortured soul.

The doctor’s name was Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi, a Hiroshima native who had graduated from college and medical school in California. He loved America, but was called to enlist in the Imperial Army of his native Japan. Heartsick, wary of war, yet devoted to Japan, Tatsuguchi performed his duties and kept a diary of events as they unfolded—never knowing that it would be found by an American soldier named Dick Laird.

Laird, a hardy, resilient underground coal miner, enlisted in the US Army to escape the crushing poverty of his native Appalachia. In a devastating mountainside attack in Alaska, Laird was forced to make a fateful decision, one that saved him and his comrades, but haunted him for years.

Tatsuguchi’s diary was later translated and distributed among US soldiers. It showed the common humanity on both sides of the battle. But it also ignited fierce controversy that is still debated today. After forty years, Laird was determined to return it to the family and find peace with Tatsuguchi’s daughter, Laura Tatsuguchi Davis.

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mark Obmascik “writes with tremendous grace about a forgotten part of our history, telling the same story from two opposing points of view—perhaps the only way warfare can truly be understood” (Helen Thorpe, author of Soldier Girls).

About Mark Obmascik

Mark Obmascik is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author of The Big Year, which was made into a movie, and Halfway to Heaven. He won the 2009 National Outdoor Book Award for outdoor literature, the 2003 National Press Club Award for environmental journalism, and was the lead writer for the Denver Post team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Denver with his wife and their three sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Boudewijn on January 09, 2023

I’m the one who killed your father When Dick Laird visited Laura Davis, a Japanese woman living in California, it was not an everyday encounter. Dick Laird was a veteran of the little-known World War II battle of Attu, which was attacked and occupied by Japanese troops and subsequently recaptured by......more

Goodreads review by Mark on May 10, 2019

Before he died, the journey of Paul Nobuo Tatsuguchi was already unusual. And epic. Raised in Hiroshima as a Christian, he fell in love with the United States, proposed to his Japanese girlfriend in Yosemite National Park, included Niagara Falls on his honeymoon itinerary, and earned his medical deg......more

Goodreads review by Louis on December 21, 2021

A work of history that reads like a mystery, this book focuses on the most forgotten American campaign of World War II. When the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands, The U.S. responded, sending forces to repel them from an area that many considered Godforsaken. The battle on the island of Attu in......more

Goodreads review by A.L. on October 03, 2022

Alaskan history + WWII. Those of you who know me shouldn’t be surprised at all that this book caught my attention. The Storm on Our Shores focuses on two men who fought on opposites sides in Attu, one of the small, storm-prone islands on the far western end of the Aleutians that was captured by the......more

Goodreads review by John on September 19, 2019

Two lives interconnect: a Japanese army surgeon and a West Virginia coal miner turned army Sargent. Place: An extremely inhospitable Aleutian island during WW2. Diaries and reminiscences from both reveal the traumas and fears of servicemen. This is not an official history book, but I like it as I do......more