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Reviewed by Burl Burlingame
bburlingame@starbulletin.comA Foxhole View -- Personal Accounts of Hawaii's Korean War Veterans, edited by Louis Baldovi (University of Hawaii Press, $21.95)
This is no glossy memoir. It's rough, dirty, scary and at times profane. It's probably pretty accurate when it comes to recalling the stresses of combat after a leavening period of half a century.
Baldovi, himself a veteran of the 45th Infantry, has assembled the memories, good and bad, of dozens of Hawaii veterans of that "Forgotten War" -- per capita, Hawaii had more fighting men in Korea than any other state -- and arranged them in chronological order.
It's a harrowing journey without any sugarcoating. Although this is labled an "oral history," it doesn't meander or get off-track; I suspect that some of these "orals" were written or Baldovi edited strongly. That's to the book's credit. This is an excellent addition to the growing body of literature about the Korean conflict.
"A Foxhole View" is lightly illustrated with a few of Al Chang's brilliant wartime photographs -- I wish there were more of them.
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