Fairfax Connection

To patrons of the Fairfax Regional Library, Alan Rems is a familiar face. A 10-year volunteer there, he’s in the Virginia Room every Tuesday, helping people with genealogy matters. And last year, he received a pin for putting in 1,000 volunteer hours.

Now, though, he has a book of his own in the library. Called “South Pacific Cauldron,” it’s about the forgotten WWII battlefields of the South Pacific – as well as a cover-up of a Marine Corps general’s death.

His article disclosing this bombshell was first published in “Naval History Magazine” and earned Rems the 2008 Author of the Year award from the U.S. Naval Institute. Yet his book is much more than that.

“It’s the only game in town, as far as a complete history of WWII in the South Pacific, including military operations by all branches of the service,” he explained. “Other historians have written parts of it, but nobody has put it all together in one book. And most have stopped in early 1944, but lots of interesting things were happening at the tail end of the war, as well.”

The book’s available on Amazon, in bookstores and in local libraries. And next Wednesday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m., Rems will discuss and sign it at the George Mason Regional Library, 70001 Little River Turnpike in Annandale.

“I’m very happy to share my new and exciting PowerPoint presentation,” he said. “It’s built mostly around vivid, rarely seen photographs of the Bougainville campaign in the Solomon Islands. I want to catch people’s interest in the book. And even if they don’t buy it, they can read it at any of the Fairfax County libraries.”

However, Rems, 77, didn’t set out to be a writer; he’s a retired CPA who calls his second career a “pure fluke.” He grew up during WWII, so he always had a special interest in it. Attending a friend’s horticultural book talk in Fairfax in 2007, by chance he learned about a WWII general he’d never heard of before and became curious.

“I started researching him and discovered an autobiography of him in the Virginia Room of the Fairfax Library because he was from Northern Virginia,” said Rems. “The details of his death intrigued me and led me to investigate further and question the official cause of his death and whether there was a cover-up.”

ALONG THE WAY, he became an accomplished writer. Between 2007 and 2013, he published seven articles and wrote two reviews of other people’s books in “Naval History Magazine.” His own book, published in May, contains 29 chapters, each one telling a complete story.

“I think it’s because I wrote those articles for ‘Naval History Magazine’ that I got accustomed to working that way,” said Rems. “I was also getting wonderfully juicy quotes when I was doing the research and I made sure each chapter was built around one.”

The most pertinent quote of all, he said, is in Chapter 10, “Halsey Knows the Straight Story.” Calling it the book’s “most remarkable chapter,” Rems said it was based mostly on his own, independent research and “on the most amazing letters in the Marine Corps archives in Quantico that had never been seen before by anyone other than the correspondents.”

Initially, he’d planned to write a book about the Bougainville campaign in the Solomon Islands. “But this startling, new information about the general was a prelude to it,” he said. “And when I realized nobody had done a complete history of WWII in the South Pacific, I saw a great opportunity to do so.”

Those who’ve read “South Pacific Cauldron” have praised his writing style and, said Rems, “People who know their military history have weighed in on what a good book it is. But I wrote it to be read especially by veterans and their families. It’s serious history, but with more than enough of interest to attract the average, intelligent reader.”

Knowing that career military personnel and military-history buffs would be among his readers, he felt “a serious obligation to tell this story with sufficient detail and adequate authority. This was a war of many, small-scale actions that added up, so I had to tell the story in that detail. I didn’t want to broad-brush history.”

Another element making this book special, said Rems, is the attention he gives to the Australian military. “If there’s anything we don’t know about, it’s their critical contribution to the war in New Guinea before enough American troops could get there,” he said.

He’s spoken about his book on talk radio, at Arlington’s Army-Navy Club, at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and at GMU’S “Fall for the Book” event in September.

REMS began writing it in late 2009 and finished in mid-2013. Hardest, he said, was the preface, explaining its contents and why people should care about it. His greatest satisfaction was bringing to light “an important piece of WWII history, in Chapter 10, because of the insight it provides into Admiral [William] Halsey, one of our leading WWII figures.”

He was also pleased to highlight the Australians’ important contribution to the war in the South Pacific and to “at last be able to construct a cohesive history of this critical battleground of WWII.” Basically, added Rems, “It’s a damn good book and an exciting story.”