Books: W. W. II: Up Front and Back Home

LONELY VIGIL: COASTWATCHERS OF THE SOLOMONS by WALTER LORD 322 pages. Viking. $12.50.

Walter Lord has told his readers what it was like to go down with the Titanic (A Night to Remember), to fight at the Alamo (A Time to Stand) and to wake to the World War II overture one Honolulu morning in 1941 (Day of Infamy). As a popular chronicler of historic days and nights, the bestselling author relies heavily on eyewitness accounts from participants and survivors. Incredible Victory, his narrative of the Battle of Midway, crackled with aging voices from both sides. For Lonely Vigil: Coastwatchers of the Solomons, the author traveled 40,000 miles (including a rugged three-day bivouac on Guadalcanal) to assemble this story of the men and women who flashed reports of Japanese ship and plane movements and rescued more than 100 downed pilots. A number of foundering sailors also owe their lives to the coastwatchers. One was a 26-year-old lieutenant (j.g.) named John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose torpedo boat had been karate-chopped by the hull of a Japanese destroyer.

The saga of coastwatching has been swamped by the gross tonnage of war books launched in the past 30 years. Yet, as Lord describes it, vital Pacific island victories were won with the eyes and ears of clandestine observers: ex-planters, Micronesian guides, Australian mavericks, priests and nuns, who provided intelligence essential to understanding the enemy's battle plans.

The Japanese were resourceful warriors. On the island of New Georgia, they cleared palm trees for an airstrip but left the tops suspended on wires. Beneath this camouflage, the field was completed before U.S. reconnaissance photos could detect the ruse. In 1941-42 the Japanese had island-hopping plans of their own. From their major base at Rabaul, just off New Guinea, they moved to Buka and Bougainville—the most northerly of the Solomons. From there, they established bases southward on other islands, including Guadalcanal.

The U.S. naval victory at Midway Island stopped the Japanese tide in the Pacific and enabled Americans to take the initiative. On Aug. 7, 1942, Marines landed virtually unopposed on Guadalcanal and captured a vital airstrip that was renamed Henderson Field, after a pilot killed at Midway. Already ashore for many months were teams of coast-watchers who had taken to the wild highlands, where they played hide-and-seek with Japanese patrols and relayed information about enemy installations.

Changing Fortunes. As the unlikely spies demonstrated, fortunes of the Pacific war could change as quickly as the tropical weather. A daring Japanese sea attack at Savo Island gave the U.S. Navy one of the worst beatings in its history and left Marines on Guadalcanal stripped of support. A year later, the island and its airstrip were dramatically saved—a rescue made famous by Richard Tregaskis in his book Guadalcanal Diary (1943) and by Lloyd Nolan, William Bendix, Anthony Quinn, et al., in the movie version.