The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War against Japan (United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services, Quartermaster Corps Volume 3)

xv, 358 pp. Green cloth, gilt titles. Includes 3 maps, 29 illustrations, bibliographical note, glossary, and index. "This book is an analytical history of quartermaster activities in three great U.S. theater commands in the war against Japan: the Southwest Pacific, South Pacific, and Central Pacific Areas. Since Army elements were most numerous in General MacArthur's command, the Southwest Pacific is treated at greater length than the others... The narrative includes the efforts of quartermasters in 1941 to equip the Philippine Army for a hostile attack, an undertaking largely frustrated by time and the initial American strategy of meeting invasion at the beach line... Complementing The Fall of the Philippines, the volume then recounts the ingenious efforts on Bataan to stave off starvation by fishing, harvesting local rice crops, and slaughtering carabao and the brave but tragic attempts to break through the strangling Japanese blockade and bring in food from the southern Philippines and from Australia and the Dutch East Indies. The narrative then focuses on food-importing Hawaii... The corps was also confronted with extraordinary difficulties of supply over the long lines running from depots in the United States to widely scattered bases in territory that lacked the basic facilities for storage and distribution. The author describes how these difficulties were surmounted and troops on tiny atolls and jungleclad islands were supplied, giving close attention to interruptions of supply to bases and troops." (United States Army in World War II Reader's Guide, pp. 124-8).