A Historian at War: The Unpublished Guadalcanal Diaries of Herbert Christian Laing Merillat

This guest post is by Manuscript Division historian and military and diplomatic history specialist Sherri Sheu. Readers are advised that this blog post includes quotes that may contain language and/or content that is outdated, offensive, or potentially harmful.

Fought between August 1942 and February 1943, the World War II Guadalcanal Campaign in the Solomon Islands launched the Allied ground offensive in the Pacific Theater. At the end of six months of brutal land, air, and sea fighting, 7,100 Allied and 31,000 Japanese servicemembers lay dead. Allied forces gained a crucial foothold in the Pacific that included the strategically critical Henderson Airfield on Guadalcanal, and greatly weakened the vaunted Japanese Imperial Army.

Among the tens of thousands of American servicemembers who fought at Guadalcanal was a former Treasury Department lawyer named Herbert Christian Laing Merillat. His story was unique: He was sworn in as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps just a week before shipping out with the First Division. The former Rhodes Scholar joined under a new program in the Marine Corps Public Relations Division. He was officially designated a press officer, tasked with working with the civilian press and suggesting story ideas to them. By design, he received only a rudimentary week of training so that he could not be “snatched away to lead a platoon into battle.” Merillat later described his role as “a civilian in uniform.”

During the Guadalcanal Campaign, Merillat focused on gathering information for an eventual unit history, which Houghton Mifflin published during the war in 1944 under the title The Island: A History of the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal, August 7-December 9, 1942. Like many other wartime histories, it was censored before publication to remove sensitive or classified information and to limit the impact on national morale. A New York Times review explained that while the book was not the official history — though Merillat was an active-duty Marine — “it will do until that is written and released. For this is the real story, soberly, honestly, authoritatively told.”

Merillat returned to the subject again in 1982 for the fortieth anniversary of the campaign, when he published Guadalcanal Remembered, which was based on his diaries. In fact, he considered the book “a heavily annotated diary” of his time on Guadalcanal.

In Guadalcanal Remembered, Merillat did not include several entries which documented his struggles with his roles in the military and in the war. Perhaps he considered this text extraneous to the historical narrative or too personal to publish. As the following excerpts from his original manuscript diaries show, however, these raw reflections capture his thoughts and insecurities in the weeks leading up to the ground attack and in the first couple months of the campaign, revealing some of the burdens of recording history as it happened.

May 16, 1942: “Will my assets for civilian life be assets for military life?”

In his first few days in the Marines, Merillat pondered his role in the war effort and the challenges he would encounter. As a newly minted officer with minimal training, Merillat questioned whether he could make the transition into the military.

“I write this on the train to New River [North Carolina]—feeling that I am the greenest officer who ever set off on an important fighting expedition—the greenest in any war in any age. I have been so immersed in the business of making physical preparations for the expedition that I have scarcely begun to think of the nature of my new duties, the danger and excitement I face, or the seriousness of my work and position.”

“Will my assets for civilian life be assets for military life?”

May 23, 1942: “It seems that the Marine is a highly romantic creature”

Merillat spent much of May and June 1942 aboard the troop transport ship Wakefield (AP-21) on the way to New Zealand, where the First Division would spend eight weeks before deploying to Guadalcanal. As an officer, Merillat had the unenviable task of censoring mail written by Marines to loved ones back home. Although he found the task of ensuring against the leakage of sensitive information dull, reading the mail provided him with an opportunity to make wry observations about the moods and outlooks of enlisted Marines.

“I have been censoring mail today—a dull task with bright moments. It seems that the Marine is a highly romantic creature. Either he thinks he is madly in love, or he thinks there is some virtue in pretending he is in love. His expatiation on this subject is profuse, if not imaginative. Letters are either of this sticky sweet variety, to sweethearts, or in a fully affectionate and reassuring vein, to parents and families. I like the letter in which the Marine told his gal to ‘keep your chins up’—a dig which cannot have been intentional if one is to judge by the effusive lyricism of the rest of the letter.”

June 3, 1942: “Is there any other place in all God’s universe where this is going on?”

As he sailed on the Wakefield across the Pacific towards New Zealand, Merillat found wonder in the southern skies. In this entry, he pondered the war and his place in the universe.

“I saw the Southern Cross for the first time last night… As I leaned on the rail before the deck house, watching the bow cut into an inky sea & the rigging roll to & fro against the Milky Way, for a vivid moment I felt what madness war is. A luxury liner, one of the most amazing mechanical achievements of man, rushing through a Pacific night, not a light showing, with 5000 husky men aboard—headed in secrecy and urgency for a rendezvous where those 5000 will be hacked to bits—dashing along on a great body of water on a planet which seems infinitesimal—which is infinitesimal—under the Milky Way. Is there any other place in all God’s universe where this is going on?”

July 21, 1942: “I do feel certain my work is more important than most about me realize.”

Merillat’s unique role in the war made him a strange figure among these thousands of men preparing for war. While others would focus on contributing to immediate military victory, Merillat’s efforts could not be appreciated until the end of the war afforded the benefit of historical perspective.

“All this seems very trifling when I consider that the main business at hand is to get a fighting machine into shape. Everyone who will kill a Jap[anese soldier] is more important now than I am—or is he? I don’t know. I do feel certain my work is more important than most about me realize.”

August 22, 1942: “It’s a strange hard world I don’t fit into.”

At the time, Merillat maintained his philosophical distance from the war. He could not understand American violence towards captured Japanese soldiers and instead considered the Japanese to be products of poverty and obedience to military orders when other Marines dehumanized them.

“Two Jap[anese] wounded were being tended by corpsmen while I was there. One, wounded in at least four places, was perfectly impassive as they dressed his wounds. Looked about him calmly as though nothing of particular interest was taking place. Heard several Marines coming up remark ‘we ought to shoot [him]. . . It’s an attitude hard to understand—the Jap[anese] had fought hard to the death, bravely if foolishly, but these men spoke as though they were less than human for daring to fight. The ignorant Jap[anese] peasant soldier fights on orders as ours do, and with amazing daring. Though their cause is hateful to us, why blame a peasant lad laying helpless in the sand, beyond practicing the treachery drilled into him, for the awfulness we are embroiled in. In battle kill the Jap[anese] to the end of the fight, as long as they constitute a menace—by all means. But when the battle is over, & a man lies helpless at your feet, why call him a [name] & propose to shoot him through the head. It’s a strange hard world I don’t fit into.”

Four decades later, however, Merillat defended the mindset of the Marines he observed at Guadalcanal, writing that “in the Battle of Tenaru, several Japanese wounded had waited until an approaching American came within range, then tossed a grenade or fired a pistol at him. The ‘kill-‘em-in-cold-blood’ attitude, then, often was justified, and became common on both sides.”

August 31, 1942: “This has not worked out well”

Merillat was often his own harshest critic, blaming his reserved personality for limiting his progress on his unit history. But even during despondent periods, he took solace in the potential impact his work would have in the future.

“This has not worked out well & I might as well face it. I haven’t the brass or the back-slapping, good fellow facility that a war correspondent (i.e., police reporter) needs to get along. I need to interview people who are friendly and civil, who meet me half way. In such an exchange I can do well, I know. But I find little friendliness here, and few who meet me half way. The officers with who I must deal are for the most part cold—discouraging rather than encouraging, regarding me as a strange intruder in their little clique.”

“All that sustains me is the thought that these are painful times for everyone & I may as well suffer here as anywhere. Some day I hope to return to life & loves—I have neither here. If only I felt I was doing something useful it would be so much easier. Perhaps I am doing something useful. I know (what many of those here seem not to know or realize) that when this war is over the history of this Division will seem very important, and be of tremendous interest to those who were in it during the war.”

September 30, 1942: “There are so many scores of heroes here.”

Two months into the Guadalcanal Campaign, Merillat was tasked with writing citations for military awards that Admiral Chester W. Nimitz would bestow. The number of awards were limited not by the number of meritorious actions that occurred, but by the number of medals available.

“I wouldn’t like the responsibility of having to pick out the most deserving cases—there are so many scores of heroes here.”

Merillat donated his original diaries to the Library of Congress in 2000, where they form part of the H. C. L. Merillat Papers.  The diaries became publicly available for research upon his death in 2010. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Do you want more stories like this? Then subscribe to Unfolding History – it’s free!

 

“A civilian in uniform…” Herbert Christian Laing Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered (New York: Dodd, Meade & Company, 1982; repr., Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 11.

“It will do until that is written…” Foster Hailey, “‘George’ and—Captain Merillat—Report on Guadalcanal,” New York Times, October 29, 1944.

“A heavily annotated diary…” Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered, 3.

“Will my assets for civilian life…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, May 16, 1942, unbound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“It seems that the Marine…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, May 23, 1942, unbound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“Would spend eight weeks…” For a history of the Wakefield, see its entry on the digital version of the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

“Is there any other place…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, June 3, 1942, unbound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“More important than most about me realize…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, July 21, 1942, bound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“It’s a strange hard world…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, August 22, 1942, bound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“It’s a strange hard world…” Merillat included an edited version of this entry in Guadalcanal Remembered but omitted the discourse on Japanese bravery and orders. Historian John Dower’s classic volume War Without Mercy (W. W. Norton & Company, 1986) explains more about the process of dehumanization in the Pacific Theater.

“In the Battle of Tenaru…” Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered, 106.

“This has not worked out well…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, August 31, 1942, bound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“There are so many scores of heroes…” H. C. L. Merillat, diary entry, September 30, 1942, bound war journal, H. C. L. Merillat Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

“But by the number of medals…” Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered, 158-159.