The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and Another Changed America

James Campbell

May 2012 · Sold by Crown

About this ebook

From the acclaimed World War II writer and author of The Ghost Mountain Boys, an incisive retelling of the key month, July 1944, that won the war in the pacific and ignited a whole new struggle on the home front. 

In the pantheon of great World War II conflicts, the battle for Saipan is often forgotten. Yet historian Donald Miller calls it "as important to victory over Japan as the Normandy invasion was to victory over Germany." For the Americans, defeating the Japanese came at a high price. In the words of a Time magazine correspondent, Saipan was "war at its grimmest." 

On the night of July 17, 1944, as Admirals Ernest King and Chester Nimitz were celebrating the battle's end, the Port Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot, just thirty-five miles northeast of San Francisco, exploded with a force nearly that of an atomic bomb. The men who died in the blast were predominantly black sailors. They toiled in obscurity loading munitions ships with ordnance essential to the US victory in Saipan. Yet instead of honoring the sacrifice these men made for their country, the Navy blamed them for the accident, and when the men refused to handle ammunition again, launched the largest mutiny trial in US naval history.

The Color of War is the story of two battles: the one overseas and the one on America's home turf. By weaving together these two narratives for the first time, Campbell paints a more accurate picture of the cataclysmic events that occurred in July 1944--the month that won the war and changed America.

Ratings and reviews

In this very emotional and inspiring true story (which is really two stories) of the World War II era, readers will be horrified at the harm that was suffered in the struggles to neutralize the Japanese in the Pacific. One of the stories is of a victory that turned the tide in the War in the Pacific and the other a really sad commentary on the relationships between black and white during wartime, when all should have been fighting for the same goal. When the United States was attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941 the President called for war against Japan and tons of young men and women showed up at recruiting stations all over the country. The local recruiters filled the heads of these young people with tales of hope and glory of standing on the front lines with rifles ready to blow the enemy away or serving on a ship that would go into battle in the Pacific. Many young African-Americans did just that along with their white counterparts but things didn’t work out all that well for them. If the recruit went into the Marines, they were kept in the states working with a unit in the swamps or sent away to Saipan, an island nation in the Pacific, to work in a supply depot. Many of the recruits decided that they would join the Navy and work in San Francisco at an ammunitions depot; a place that would remind one of a prison camp or a plantation where white officers order the black troops to handle the ammunitions. Getting a little ahead in the story, it is the night of July 17, 1944 and two American Admirals, Ernest King and Chester Nimitz, have just won a victory in the Battle of Saipan. This is a little known battle in the war but according to historians was "as important to a victory over Japan than the Normandy Invasion was to victory over Germany." As the two Admirals were celebrating the end of the battle in Saipan, the Port of Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot near San Francisco blew up with the force of an atom bomb. Most of the men who perished in this conflagration were black sailors, who worked extremely difficult hours loading ships with these deadly ammunitions that had been essential in the battles for the Pacific Islands. The US Navy did not talk about the sacrifice that these men and their families had made to the armed forces and blamed them for the accident. When the men who were left were ordered to start loading the weapons again they refused and the Navy brought them to trial on charges of mutiny. The men were found guilty and Thurgood Marshall, a future Supreme Court Justice, handled an appeal for the accused that was one of the beginning salvos in this country’s civil rights battles to come. Although World War II went on for another year, things started to change in the methods of the fight. During that last year there were many serious battles, there was the coming of the B-29 that carried the largest amount of ammunition and, of course, the Atomic Bomb. Quill Says: It’s too bad that the bad guys (Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, etc.) get all the press about WWII as there were tons of books, and still are, written every year about this era. Now, at last James Campbell has written about some of the little guys who worked to save the country and never got any credit for it whatsoever. (Reviewed by Mary Lignor for Feathered Quill Book Reviews)

About the author

JAMES CAMPBELL is the author of The Final Frontiersman and The Ghost Mountain Boys. He has written for Outside magazine and many other publications.