Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Also by Simon Winchester
About the Publisher
Map of the Pacific—Political
The plutonium bomb Helen of Bikini
The Pueblo’s surviving crewmen, led by Captain Lloyd Bucher
Youngsters’ performance in North Korea
The RMS Queen Elizabeth, in her heyday
The RMS Queen Elizabeth, sabotaged in Hong Kong
Helicopter during the evacuation of Saigon
Destruction by Cyclone Tracy in the city of Darwin
The tectonic architecture of the Pacific Ocean
Inhabitants of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef
A Hawaiian feather cloak, an ahu’ula
The short-tailed, or Steller’s, albatross
The eruption of Mount Pinatubo
The carrier USS Kitty Hawk and a Chinese Song-class diesel attack submarine
Map of the Western Pacific: U.S. and Chinese Military
Chinese constructions in the South China Sea
PROLOGUE: THE LONELY SEA AND THE SKY
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke
Into pale sea—look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet . . .
arched over to Asia, Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.
—ROBINSON JEFFERS, FROM “THE EYE,” 1965
United Airlines Flight 154 leaves Honolulu International Airport just after dawn three times a week, bound ultimately for the city of Hagåtña, the capital of the island republic of Guam. If the northeast trades are blowing at their usual steady twelve knots, the jet will take off to the east, into the low morning sun over Waikiki, and those passengers on the aircraft’s left side will see the wall of skyscraper hotels along the beachfront and be able to glimpse down at Doris Duke’s great seaside mansion, Shangri-La. Once the plane is two miles high above the crater of the dormant Diamond Head volcano, it will begin to make a long and lazy turn to the right.
If the morning haze is light, passengers on the right side now can sometimes glimpse the bombers and heavy
