New book on bloody WWII battle inspired by NY veteran
ALBANY, N.Y. — When military history author Bill Sloan sought inspiration for his new book on World War II in the Pacific, he found it in a then-96-year-old combat veteran from upstate New York who survived one of the war’s bloodiest battles.
John Sidur rescued two hometown buddies during Japan’s largest banzai attack of the war, near the end of the Battle of Saipan in July 1945. Sidur’s Army regiment, part of the New York National Guard, was nearly wiped out in the attack.
“If one person could be identified as the reason I wrote this book, John Sidur of Cohoes, New York, is that person,” writes Sloan at the end of “Their Backs Against The Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II.”
The book, being published this month by Da Capo Press, tells the story of the fight for Saipan in the Mariana Islands that began June 15, 1944. The latest in a series of American island-hopping campaigns in the Pacific drew less attention back home because it started just nine days after the D-Day landings at Normandy.