Books published by University Press of the Pacific

This book is a collection of accounts describing the combat action of small Army units-squads and platoons, companies and batteries. These are the units that engage in combat, suffer the casualties, and make up the fighting strength of the battalions, regiments, divisions, corps, and finally, of the field army. Combat is a very personal business to members of such a small unit. Concerned with the fearful and consuming tasks of fighting and living, these men cannot think of war in terms of the Big Picture as it is represented on the situation maps at corps or army headquarters. Members of a squad or platoon know only what they can see and hear of combat. They know and understand the earth for which they fight, the advantage of holding the high ground, the protection of the trench or hole. These men can distinguish the sounds of enemy weapons from those of their own; they know the satisfying sound of friendly artillery shells passing overhead and of friendly planes diving at an objective. They know the excitement of combat, the feeling of exhilaration and of despair, the feeling of massed power, and of overwhelming loneliness. The author has tried to describe combat as individuals have experienced it, or at least as it has appeared from the company command post. In so doing, much detail has been included that does not find its way into more barren official records. The details and the little incidents of combat were furnished by surviving members of the squads and companies during painstaking interviews and discussions soon after the fighting was over. Conversely, many facts have been omitted from the narrative presented here. The accounts tell only part of the complete story, intentionally ignoring related actions of cause and effect in order to keep one or two small units in sharper focus. The story of action on Heartbreak Ridge, for example, describes fighting that lasted only one or two hours, whereas the entire battle for that hill went on for several weeks. Sometimes there are obvious gaps because important information was lost with the men who died in the battle. Sometimes the accounts are incomplete because the author failed to learn or to recount everything of importance that happened.

This book is based upon a PhD dissertation written by an Air Force officer who studied at the University of Denver. Currently an Associate Professor of History at the Air Force Academy, Major Osur's account relates how the leadership in the War Department and the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) tried to deal with the problem of race and the prejudices which were reflected in the bulk of American society. It tells a story of black racial protests and riots which such attitudes and discrimination provoked. The author describes many of the discriminatory actions taken against black airmen, whose goal was equality of treatment and opportunities as American citizens. He also describes the role of black pilots as they fought in the Mediterranean theater of operations against the Axis powers. In his final chapters, he examines the continuing racial frictions within the Army Air Forces which led to black servicemen protests and riots in 1945 at several installations. Despite these problems, the author concludes that the Army Air Forces made substantial progress in race relations and in opening up additional career opportunities for black airmen in the post-1945 period. JOHN W. HUSTON, Maj. Gen., USAF Chief, Office of Air Force History

"Cloning seems to be one of those words and concepts that seems to inspire a lot of dread in people, visions of an apocalyptic world marching lockstep. However, as is the case with many medical technologies, it is not cloning that is the problem, but some of its potential applications. For example, we are all concerned about the sale of human organs or the transplant of organs from executed prisoners, but few people argue that the solution to these potential problems is to ban organ transplantation. "The truth is that there is bad cloning and good cloning, I believe. Bad cloning is human cloning, the creation of carbon copies of whole human beings. Good cloning is nuclear transplantation to produce stem cells. "There is broad agreement across our society, in Congress and in the scientific, medical and religious communities, that we should ban human cloning. Such cloning is scientifically unsafe, morally unacceptable, and ethically flawed. "However, at least to me, it is also clear, and I think to the overwhelming majority of the scientific and medical community, that we should not ban nuclear transplantation to produce stem cells. Many doctors and scientists have argued that we must protect our ability to use cloning techniques to try to save and improve the lives of those ravaged by disease and other ailments. "In fact, nuclear transplantation offers enormous potential for providing cures to diseases such as cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and heart disease, as well as conditions such as spinal cord injuries, liver damage, arthritis, and burns. This technique could allow the creation of bone marrow for transplants to leukemia victims, islet cells for the pancreas of a diabetic, heart or liver tissue to repair the damage caused by heart attacks or hepatitis, healthy skin for grafts for burn victims, and many other potential cures and treatments for a variety of diseases and ailments. - Senator Dianne Feinstein

Nearly 80 years ago, Aldous Huxley wrote his literary masterpiece Brave New World. In that book he posited a future where genetic engineering is commonplace and human beings, aided by cloning, are mass produced. Controllers and predestinators replaced mothers and fathers. The words themselves considered smut. As the new authors of human life in an uncompromising search for human happiness and stability, the possibility of human individuality had been entirely jettisoned. For most of its 80 years, Brave New World could be seen as a disturbing work of science fiction. That is no longer the case. The possible cloning of human beings is now relegated to the world -- not relegated to the world of fiction. The question we must now ask is this: what should we do with this science? Several scientists claim that they are poised to take the fateful next step and actually produce a human clone. We in this subcommittee will focus not only on the scientific, but on the moral and ethical questions raised by the astonishing possibility that an exact copy of a human being might be cloned in the near future. Although federally funded human cloning research is prohibited, such privately funded research is not. In fact, no definitive Federal statute governs privately funded human cloning experiments. Experimentation in science has outpaced the law on the underlying issues raised by human cloning. The FDA has asserted that it has jurisdiction over human cloning, based on the Public Health Service Act and the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Is this a sufficient safeguard? Although there is no Federal ban on human cloning, a number of states, 26 other countries and the United Nations have seen the need to enact some form of ban on human cloning. But to craft a meaningful and reasonable statute that is both sound in its scienceand consistent with human dignity, the Congress needs to ask the hard questions posed by human cloning research. This committee has a responsibility to ask these difficult questions because we are dealing with the most profound of human responsibilities, the future of our species. The witnesses we have assembled represent a broad cross section of opinions and expertise on these complex issues. We will hear from experts in animal cloning research and bioethics, the FDAand the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, among others. We will also hear from controversial witnesses. We hope to learn from their testimony whether the projects they envision are credible scientifically. Other esteemed bodies can hold meetings and write reports and issue voluntary guidelines, but only the Congress can write the laws for our nation.

It is a beginning. Over forty-five years have elapsed since the X-15 was conceived; 40 since it first flew. And 31 since the program ended. Although it is usually heralded as the most productive flight research program ever undertaken, no serious history has been con-assembled to capture its design, development, operations, and lessons. This monograph is the first step towards that history. Not that a great deal has not previously been written about the X-15, because it has. But most of it has been limited to specific aspects of the program; pilot's stories, experiments, lessons-learned, etc. But with the exception of Robert S. Houston's history published by the Wright Air Development Center in 1958, and later included in the Air Force History Office's Hypersonic Revolution, no one has attempted to tell the entire story. And the WADC history is taken entirely from the Air Force perspective, with small mention of the other contributors. In 1954 the X-1 series had just broken Mach 2.5. The aircraft that would become the X-15 was being designed to attain Mach 6, and to fly at the edges of space. It would be accomplished without the use of digital computers, video teleconferencing, the internet, or email. It would, however, come at a terrible financial cost-over 30 times the original estimate. The X-15 would ultimately exceed all of its original performance goals. Instead of Mach 6 and 250,000 feet, the program would record Mach 6.7 and 354,200 feet. And compared against other research (and even operational) aircraft of the era, the X-15 was remarkably safe. Several pilots would get banged up; Jack McKay seriously so, although he would return from his injuries to fly 22 more X-15 flights. Tragically, Major Michael J. Adams would be killed on Flight 191, the only fatality of the program. Unfortunately due to the absence of a subsequent hypersonic mission, aeronautical applications of X-15 technology have been few. Given the major advances in materials and computer technology in the 30 years since the end of the flight research program, it is unlikely that many of the actual hardware lessons are still applicable. That being said, the lessons learned from hypersonic modeling, simulation, and the insight gained by being able to evaluate actual X-15 flight research against wind tunnel and predicted results, greatly expanded the confidence of researchers. This allowed the development of Space Shuttle to proceed much smoother than would otherwise have been possible. In space, however, the X-15 contributed to both Apollo and Space Shuttle. It is interesting to note that when the X-15 was conceived, there were many that believed its space-oriented aspects should be removed from the program since human space travel was postulated to be many decades in the future. Perhaps the major contribution was the final elimination of a spray-on ablator as a possible thermal protection system for Space Shuttle. This would likely have happened in any case as the ceramic tiles and metal shingles were further developed, but the operational problems encountered with the (admittedly brief) experience on X-15A-2 hastened the departure of the ablators.

Army engineer support to U.S. Central Command's joint maneuver force during the Persian Gulf War was massive and critical. Over 100 active and reserve component engineer units contributed significantly to the success of Operation DESERT SHIELD/DESERT STORM. These contributions are well documented in Supporting the Troops: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Persian Gulf War. The Gulf War dramatically demonstrated the need to deploy engineers early so that they can determine the engineer requirements, communicate those requirements to the maneuver commanders, and take appropriate steps to bed down and sustain U.S. forces. The delayed flow of engineers and their equipment into Southwest Asia directly affected the ability of the maneuver units to sustain themselves and operate effectively. We are now moving toward a smaller, quality Army with rapidly deployable forces. There are fewer engineer units than in 1990, and a larger proportion of the engineer force is in the reserve components. As the active component force continues to shrink, we must insure that the reserve component engineer forces are well trained and ready to deploy on short notice. During the Gulf War engineers provided the model for the Total Army concept, successfully blending Active Army, Army National Guard, Army Reserve, and Department of Defense civilian engineer capabilities. U.S. forces could not have succeeded in the Gulf without the assistance of the reserve components and civilians. The force structure of today's Active Army does not include a number of specialized engineer units needed to support a large-scale deployment. Nor do operational engineer units have all the special expertise that can be found in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As Supporting the Troops vividly illustrates, the contributions of the Corps' military and civilian members were diverse and significant. Over 160 Corps civilians, who voluntarily deployed to Southwest Asia, provided procurement, design, construction, and real estate support. Corps members worked diligently, often in difficult conditions, to provide for the well-being and safety of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers. They devised creative solutions to the problems they, encountered, whether implementing new policies or developing new project designs. It was my privilege to serve with them in the Persian Gulf.Pat M. Stevens IVMajor General, USAActing Chief of Engineers

As the worldwide demands for basic minerals increase and some resources on land show signs of rapid decrease, it is inevitable that the search for new sources will extend to the oceans - the largely unexplored 71 percent of the planet's surface. Of great importance is the rich reserve of hard minerals in the oceans - for example the so-called manganese nodules, which vary in size and shape from small pebbles to massive pavements, containing economically attractive deposits of manganese, copper, cobalt, and nickel. It is important to assess the nature and extent of the mineral resources of the seabed and to devise ways of recovering them with a minimal impact on the environment. This report (based on an 18-month study) of a panel of the National Academy of Sciences examines the potential of the resources, evaluates the state of the art of ocean mining, identifies the legal, regulatory, and jurisdictional problems involved, considers the possible environmental questions, and determines how to meet the need for trained engineers to do the job.

Transcripts of the first congressional hearing on a very exciting and a complex new technology application. Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, as it is commonly known, is frankly a World War II-era technology that has begun to find new commercial and government application in just the last few years. In basic terms, the most common commercial application of RFID used radio waves to transmit data from a transmitting device called a ''tag'' to a scanning device called a "reader" which can be networked with a computer data base. These RFID tags can be attached to products and packaging individually. Readers are able to activate tags via radio signals and receive tag data without "line-of-sight" scanning, which is a limitation for the common barcode. In terms of the data embedded in the tags, work is being done to develop common standards known as the Electronic Products Code or "EPC" to create unique numerical identifiers for individual items. This would allow RFID readers to receive EPC data from tags on items and products that can be matched through a data base for identification and for other purposes. This is a global effort and, in theory, could lead to a seamless supply chain and logistics management in global trade. While still far off, such possibilities have led some to comment that because EPC identifies a product much like an IP address identifies a computer, RFID and EPC, in effect, are creating an internet for physical items rather than just for data. For manufacturing and retail applications, RFID technology is gradually being rolled out for tracking large bulk containers and pallets along the supply chain. And if technical and cost feasibility issues can be addressed, RFID readers, for example, could have the ability to read instantaneously not only pallets but also each unique individual product they contain. This could be done without having to unload any product contents, with inventory being updated in real time. Forecasting would become obsolete, shelves would always be stocked with the most popular brands, and cost savings would be passed on to the consumer. Now this is just one future possibility. Currently, RFID technology is being used in such diverse applications as automatic traffic tolls, and in anti-theft immobilizers on the latest automobiles. There also are plans to use RFID technology for counterfeit drug detection as well as tracking port cargo and hazardous substances for homeland security purposes. One possible future application that seems to generate excitement for anyone who has ever stood endless in line at the grocery store, involves using readers at checkout. In this application, readers placed at checkouts would allow customers to pass straight through with their RFID tagged items loaded in their shopping carts. Customer accounts would be automatically updated leaving them free to head straight for the parking lot - without even stopping for so much as a candy bar at the checkout or buying that little magazine.

When the call to battle sounded in April 1917, the Navy air arm could muster at its one air station only 48 officers and 239 enlisted men with some experience in aviation, and 54 aircraft none of which was fit for patrol service. The problems of building this small force to a effective fighting unit were enormous. Yet, the Armistice was signed 19 months later, there were 43 air stations in operation at home and abroad, an aircraft factory in production, and numerous schools, assembly plants, repair depots and other facilities providing the needed logistic support. Aviation personnel numbered over 39000, a figure nearly equal to the total in the entire Navy at the start of the war. Little has been published on the nature and extent of Naval air operations in the first World War until, in April 1967, Naval Aviation News began a series of monthly articles under the general title, "Naval Aviation in World War I." Using chronologies of significant events and narrative accounts of special phases of the war, this series told the story of how Naval Aviation met the challenge. The series was conceived by and completed under the direction of the Assistant for Aviation History, Mr. A. O. Van Wyen, who also wrote many of the articles and arranged for the writing of others. While not a definitive history, it is the first published word to deal specifically with the accomplishments of Naval Aviation in the first World War. Based on official sources as well as the recollections of participants, it is authoritatively presented through an interesting combination of official and personal accounts. It is also the history of a beginning made under stress of war---a beginning in which the men of Naval Aviation demonstrated the potential of aviation as an arm of sea power and set the course for its future growth. The success with which they carried out their task is in large measure responsible for the position of aviation at the forefront of Naval power today.T. F. ConnolyVice Admiral, USNDeputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air)

The role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in opening the West is not as well known as the Corps' work on nationwide flood control and navigation projects. Yet, in the 19th century the surveys, explorations, scientific studies, and reports of Army engineer and topographical officers were major contributions to our understanding of the undeveloped arid regions of the United States. The following report illustrates the skill and dedication of these soldiers. The Board of Commissioners that explored the interior valleys of California was composed of two Army engineer officers and one civilian scientist for the Coast Survey. Their report, published in 1874, was the first federal irrigation survey. It still has value for its detailed information on central California and on irrigation practice in the American West and, indeed, around the world. The introductory essay puts the report into its historical setting and provides a wealth of information about both the survey and the political and economic forces that dominated California over a hundred years ago. I trust the report and the essay will be of interest to all those interested in the development of the West. Robert W. Page Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works)

Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) was a German educator who introduced the concept of kindergarten. This book is a collection of fifteen essays, originally published in German in 1861, on the value of different stages of a child's play. Froebel found an educational value in every phase of the child's play, and in every object that engages its attention. Froebel finds all that the child does significant and of educational importance. In fact, he is the great pioneer and founder of child study as well as of the pedagogic theory of intellectual values. This book, originally published in 1908, was translated and annotated by Emilie Michaelis, Head Mistress of the Croydon Kindergarten and Preparatory School, and H. Keatley Moore, Examiner in Music to the Froebel Society, and Vice-Chairman of the Croydon Kindergarten Company.

The fall of Rome and how military selection aided the decline; traces national development as influenced by the pursuits of peace and occupations of war. David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) was a noted educator, scientist and peace activist. Educated at Cornell University, Butler University, and the Indiana University School of Medicine he became the President of Indiana University in 1885, the youngest university president in the nation at the time. Six years later, he accepted the post of President of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where he remained, first as president and later as chancellor, until his retirement. Dr. Jordan was a renowned expert in many fields. His training was mainly in ichthyology, the study of fish, and he was widely regarded in that field. He served as an expert witness on the validity of the theory of evolution at the Scopes trial in Tennessee. In addition, he was known for his work in education and philosophy, publishing many works on those subjects.

Nassau William Senior (1790-1864) - economist, critical essayist and government adviser - was a highly original classical economist in the era between Ricardo's Principles of 1817 and Mill's Principles of 1848. He was the first Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and in his published works he made original contributions to the theory of value, rent, population, money, and international trade. Senior was an active proponent of laissez-faire. Although Senior did not achieve the originality and influence of the leading economists of the classical school - Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus - he did make an enduring contribution on the development of economics. John Stuart Mill took much effort to respond to Senior."The question to be answered today is exactly the same as is expounded in Senior's lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals from Country to Country." - Ludwig von Mises in the Economic Journal, September, 1933

The Vietnam war of 1961-1975 is, among other things, notable for the massive employment of anti-plant chemical warfare agents (herbicides or plant defoliating and killing chemicals). Primarily during the mid to late 1960's the USA sprayed approximately 72 million liters of these herbicides over some 1.7 million hectares of rural South Vietnam; that is about one hectare in every ten. At least 12% of the forests of South Vietnam were sprayed one or more times as were 5% or more of the agricultural land. The "International Symposium on Herbicides and Defoliants in War: The Long-term Effects of Man and Nature" was convened in Ho Chi Minh City from January 14 to 19, 1983 in order to examine the aftermath of this chemical assault on South Vietnam, after about a decade had elapsed since the spraying. More than 70 ecological and medical scientists from some 20 countries, both East and West, came together in order to meet with about an equal number of their Vietnamese counterparts. The international participants included some of the top experts in the world in their respective fields of ecological and medical science. It was strictly a working conference open only to qualified scientists. This is the final summary report of the symposium and the seven final summary reports of the various working groups, plus an article compiled from papers presented by participating Vietnamese scientists.