Outnumbered

As one who served as a junior officer on board a cruiser in the U.S. Pacific Fleet during the terrible first year of World War II, I salute you and Capt. Edward L. Beach for publishing the most succinct, accurate, and moving account I have ever read of how our greatly outnumbered Navy halted the Japanese invasion forces that year (“The Biggest Theater,” December).

I wish a monument in the form of a great lighthouse could be erected somewhere in the Pacific Ocean in memory of the brave aviators and sailors who gave their lives for our country in those dark days. The inscription, to borrow a tribute to the three hundred Spartans who died holding the pass at Thermopylae against 180,000 Persians:

Go tell the Americans, thou who passest by That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.