Purpose and Intent of this website

This website, or travel blog, is designed for two purposes. The primary purpose is to serve as a platform for posting photographs and travel dispatches from the many places around the world that Blythe and I visit or have visited. We have been fortunate to travel to many parts of the world and to have amassed a large volume of excellent photographs of our travels. I began this website last year when Blythe and I took our first trip around the world. Blogging was very new to me, but it was fun and I think it turned out well as an efficient way to allow family and friends to vicariously travel with us; to see the places we visited and to learn about the history, geography, art, and architecture of the places we visited. That trip (2019) can be found under the menu heading Travel Dispatches>Around the World #1. Our second trip around the world is under the menu heading Around the World #2. We hope to continue to add to this part of the website with future travels.

Eventually, given enough time and if I can find the time, my goal is to add photos from some of the many beautiful places we have visited in the past. There will, of course, be little in the way of travel dispatches with these photos since these are trips from the past, but there are lots of photographs from these trips that I will post with appropriate captions.

U.S. Marines of the 28th Marines, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945. I chose this photograph to represent the Pacific war because it is the most reproduced photograph of the war and very likely the most reproduced of all time. It is also the battle that germinated my interest in the war when I began talking to my Uncle Jim Craig about his experience in this battle when he led the 3rd Platoon of the 24th Marines into battle and that eventually culminated in my first book, The Last Lieutenant. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)

The secondary purpose of this site is to provide a photographic and historical background to the battlefield tours that I lead each year. This will eventually be under the menu heading: World Travel, but this may change as I become more familiar with the mechanics of website design. I am clearly on the steep part of the preverbal learning curve when it comes to website design, but it is fun, and I enjoy daily writing dispatches and posting photographs of the fascinating places we visit on our travels.

I hope to have a site with photographs, maps, and battle descriptions from the tours I lead to the Pacific Theater of Operation of World War II. These sites are primarily intended for the passengers who will go with me to places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and other battlefields that may get added to my list in the future. This will give them an idea of what to expect and a photographic and descriptive overview of these battles. Much of this part of the website is just a big idea swirling around in my head. But, given enough time, it will become a reality. With improvement in my understanding of website design, who knows what I will be able to add as part of the study of the Pacific war.

As always, it is my intent to educate and entertain (and not necessarily in that order). I hope you enjoy the site and learn with Blythe and me as we travel the world and as I guide tours to the battlefields of the Pacific war.

March 21, 2019

My friend Brian Joseph reminded me of an old traditional Navy blessing that I have always liked. It seems fitting as a bon voyage benediction for our upcoming cruise:

“Fair Winds and Following Seas…”

March 24, 2019

The tranquil scene in the photo at the top of this page was taken from Tulagi, a small island 20 miles north of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain in the South Pacific. The land mass on the far left is Cape Esperance of Guadalcanal, the land mass on the far right is Florida Island, and the island in the center of the photo is Savo Island. This scene was not always so tranquil. If you had been standing where I took this photo during the night of August 8-9, 1942 you would have witnessed the Battle of Savo Island in which the Imperial Japanese Navy inflicted a stinging defeat on the United States Navy. In that battle the Allies suffered the loss of 4 heavy cruisers: 3 American ships and one Australian ship. It was the worst defeat in US Navy history eclipsing even the losses at Pearl Harbor. Even though it was known as the Battle of Savo Island, there was never any fighting on the island, just in the seas around it. The waters between Guadalcanal and Florida Island, which you can see in the photo, are known as Iron Bottom Sound for all the wrecks that litter its floor from the many naval battles fought here during the six-month battle of Guadalcanal. The Battle of Savo Island was the first surface action between the IJN and USN. Half of he wrecks are Japanese and half are, with the exception of the Australian cruiser, HMAS Canberra, American. One day of our tour of the battlefields of Guadalcanal is spent on Tulagi. We cross Iron Bottom Sound at a sedate pace (and nobody shelling or launching torpedoes at our little boat) and spend the whole day visiting the battlefields of Tulagi before recrossing the sound during the early evening. We are usually treated to beautiful sunsets over Savo and a view of the Southern Cross in the night sky over Guadalcanal. If the seas are calm many of us nod off after a rigorous day of tramping the hills and battlefields of Tulagi. The uncropped photo of Savo Island and Iron Bottom Sound is provided below.