Hi r/AskHistorians missing my dad a lot today. He enlisted into the Marines in 1942 when he turned 17. He grew up on a farm in Michigan's UP and until the war had never been more than a few miles from it. For the rest of his life he refused to talk about the war aside from a few stories about boot camp and how Pearl Harbor looked one year after the attack. (Like an eerie boat graveyard with all the downed ships dragged to the side as best as possible to allow entry into the harbor. He said the entire ship was silent as they sailed in.) When pressed for more information he would say that some things are better forgotten. When I was a kid he had his cap and a few medals in a box but he threw them away before I was a teen. I do not now remember what the medals looked like.
What little I know is he was a Marine, a private first class, and I believe he spent time as a military police. He lost two fingers and in one of his only comments said, "well, they missed." He was classed as a sharpshooter but he said all farm kids were. Finally, he was dismissed honorably after the war's end. Is there anywhere I could get specific information about where he was? I wrote the National Archives but was only able to get his dates of service. Could you suggest some of the best books on the reality of serving in the Pacific Theater?
He was a wonderful dad and a very good man. He married his sweetheart a few years after the war and they spent 64 years together before passing away a few days apart in 2015. Thinking about him today and this 'missing' part of his life.
If you could provide more information about what you know of his service, it would be helpful in providing you a more comprehensive answer. Things such as his unit, division, a serial number etc.
Two of the more popular memoirs concerning the Marine Corps and the war in the Pacific are Robert Leckie's Helmet For My Pillow and Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Both books are written by Marines who saw combat and both have been adapted for television in the form of Steven Spielberg's The Pacific.
You can actually read both books online free of charge thatnks to archive.org
As another reply mentions, more information on his service can help. But there may be limitations on what details can be found. A fire at a storage facility for service records in St Louis occurred in 1973. A very large portion of the records for those who served before 1960 are gone. Some records can be reconstructed from other sources, but can take time.