Pacific Time on Target: Memoirs of a Marine Artillery Officer, 1943–1945

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Pacific TimE on Target Christopher S. Donner Jack H. McCall Jr. Edited by As a married man and Stanford graduate student nearing thirty, Christopher Donner would likely have qualified for an exemption from the draft. Like most of his generation, however, he responded promptly to the call to arms after Pearl Harbor. His wartime experiences in the Pacific Theater were seared into his consciousness, and in early 1946 he set out to preserve those memories while they were still fresh. Sixty-five years later, Donner’s memoir is now available to the public. During the spring of 1943 Donner joined the Marines’ 9th Defense Battalion and saw his first combat service in the campaign for New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. With the end of Japanese resistance in the Central Solomons, Donner’s battalion was dispatched in June 1944 to serve in the liberation of the U.S. territory of Guam. When his unit was deactivated and its veterans sent home, Donner was not so fortunate. In early 1945, Donner was reassigned to the 11th Marines, the 1st Marine Division’s field artillery. His new commander decreed that Donner would serve as a field artillery forward observer—just in time for the invasion of Okinawa. Teeming with close calls and near misses, frank yet sensitive observations of the brutality visited on Okinawa’s civilians, and the horrors of frontline combat, Donner’s account of his service with the “Old Breed” on Okinawa forms the core of his memoir. Miraculously unscathed by the Okinawa bloodbath, Donner was en route to California for his first opportunity for leave when he learned of the atomic bombs and the war’s end. Besides providing a candid, moving contemporary record of the combat experiences of a Marine Corps officer, Pacific Time on Target is an invaluable account of the harrowing life of an artillery forward observer, as few of these men survived to tell their stories. It will appeal to military historians and general readers alike. Christopher S. Donner was born in Philadelphia in 1912. After graduation from Princeton University, he embarked on a career in academics and teaching. He served as a Marine officer in the Pacific Theater during World War II, later retiring as a Major in the Marine Corps Reserve. After the war, Donner resumed his academic endeavors, serving as a high school teacher and university and college professor for many years. Jack H. McCall Jr. is an attorney in Knoxville, Tennessee. A former Regular Army officer, his articles on legal and military history topics have appeared in numerous publications, including Foreign Affairs, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and the Journal of Military History. Cover photo courtesy USMC. “Christopher S. Donner’s World War II journal, Pacific Time on Target, written during the war and later superbly edited by Jack H. McCall Jr., was a pleasure to read. Moreover, McCall ’s riveting introduction sets the stage for allowing readers to understand how and why Donner came to write this journal in the first place and includes some highly interesting vignettes that occurred during three major Marine Corps campaigns in World War II—New Georgia, Guam, and especially bloody Okinawa. Donner’s journal is also a rarity among other published veteran accounts as it is one of the few that focus on the highly effective but often unsung Marine Corps Defense Battalion. His fast-paced narrative tells of the horrors of war from the perspective of a Princeton and Stanford educated junior officer who was thrust into combat at the relatively late age of 30. This book should be required reading for all serious students of World War II history.” Dr. Charles P. Neimeyer, Director and Chief, USMC History Division, Quantico, VA “The three-month battle for Okinawa became a slaughterhouse for the opposing forces and the civilians caught in the crossfire. Lieutenant Donner’s personal memoir—written a year after the battle and brought to light 66 years later by Jack H. McCall Jr.—recounts the searing experiences of a Marine artillery officer serving as a forward observer with front-line infantry units of the U.S. Tenth Army during incessant rain and relentless high explosives from enemy and ‘friendly’ fire. Tautly written, painstakingly honest, and exacting in detail, Donner’s memoir chronicles his frustrations in striving to deliver precise fire support in chaotic amphibious assaults, from the Solomons to Okinawa, the climactic battle of the Pacific War.” Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (ret.), author of Storm Landings: Epic Amphibious...