Mark Navarro Releases World War II Marine's Memoir, Paintings, Letters in E-book Format
Galveston, TX (PRWEB) May 23, 2014 -- Texas native P.G. Navarro, a talented young artist, won a high school art contest in Houston prior to the war, which landed him a job in the printing industry. When the first generation Mexican American immigrant joined the Marines during World War II, his artistic skills and print experience landed him in the Second Marine Division’s mapping unit and he was shipped overseas immediately. He was sent on a three-year odyssey traversing the Pacific, mapping various islands throughout the war. His often harrowing account takes the reader across the high seas, into New Zealand, and through the jungles of some of the most desolate islands of the Pacific, including the New Hebrides and Saipan. All the while, his journey is punctuated by letters home to anxious family members, all censored so as not to reveal his exact location. As an outlet, Navarro utilized his prolific journaling and artistic skills to weave together an honest portrait of a man witnessing the daily atrocities of the war in the Pacific theater.
After the war, Navarro returned to Houston, where he established a commercial art business that he ran for more than 30 years. In the 1980s, Navarro’s friend found an old newspaper in a garbage pile with the headline, "Hitler Boasts Nazi Armed Might." Upon closer inspection, he noticed a photo of a painting Navarro had done in high school, 45 years earlier. Waving the newspaper in front of Navarro’s face, he exclaimed, "You and Hitler on the same page!" This discovery inspired Navarro to write his WWII memoirs, which he kept hidden away for years.
Mark Navarro, P.G. Navarro’s son, wanted to tell his father’s story, so he spent seven years scanning P.G.’s sketches, letters, and photos from 1942-1945. Together, they identified people and places and put everything in chronological order, combining the text and images until the book “In the Pacific from Points Unknown” was born. It is through never before seen photos, original sketches and paintings from the front, his detailed narrative, and letters home, that Navarro manages to provide readers with a glimpse into the day-to-day life of a World War II Marine that is unparalleled in works of its genre to date. Everyone from the Smithsonian to the Marine Corps Museum have requested this collection since it is rare to come across such a complete set of correspondence from WWII.
Many of the sketches Navarro made during WWII, drawn on scraps, notebooks and letters sent home, were intended as preliminary works for future oil paintings. After having left them for decades in desk drawers and boxes, he began to turn those rough sketches into the finished works he intended to make nearly 60 years earlier. They tell the story of one Marine from boot camp to voyage home, 1942-1945. Navarro is now 93 and still painting.
"In the Pacific from Points Unknown" is available as an e-book through Amazon and iBooks.
Mark Navarro, http://www.mirabooksmart.com/, +1 713-702-8516, [email protected]
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