Hardcover. NY, Crown , 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket, 478 pages. B&w illustrations. When the Marines' campaign to wrest the remote Southwest Pacific island of Guadalcanal from the Japanese began in August 1942, few knew how to conduct it--and no one expected it to last six months. Hammel collects the stories of more than 100 participants on both sides to brilliantly tell one of the most bitter campaigns of World War II in the Pacific. Clean copy.