In 1964, the Overseas Press Club presented Tregaskis with the George Polk Award for first-person reporting under hazardous circumstances. Tregaskis' second wife, Moana, followed him to Vietnam, where she put her skills to work as an anthropologist, photographing and documenting the impact of war on soldiers and civilians alike. During the Vietnam War, Tregaskis reported on the growing conflict for a decade and accompanied U.S.

Tregaskis later covered Cold War-era conflicts in China, Korea, and Vietnam. (A modern edition is available with an introduction by Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down.) The diary was later made into a film of the same title in 1943. His story is the straight day-by-day account of what he himself saw or learned from eyewitnesses during those seven weeks.' Īs a testimony to the power of Tregaskis' writing, Guadalcanal Diary is still considered essential reading by present-day U.S. Until the author's departure in a B-17 bomber on September 26th, he ate, slept, and sweated with our front-line units. Because it was written by a crack newspaperman, who knew how to do his job. As the jacket of the book's first edition noted, 'This is a new chapter in the story of the United States Marines. Tregaskis' most renowned book, Guadalcanal Diary, recorded his experiences with the Marines on Guadalcanal. He subsequently covered the war in Europe against Germany and Italy. (In fact, Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on location at Guadalcanal.)Ĭover of a present-day edition of Richard Tregaskis' book Guadalcanal DiaryĪssigned to cover the war in the Pacific, Tregaskis spent part of August and most of September, 1942 reporting on Marines on Guadalcanal, a pivotal campaign in the war against Japan. entered World War II, Tregaskis volunteered as a combat correspondent representing the International News Service. Prior to World War II he worked as a journalist for the Boston American Record newspaper. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Tregaskis attended the Pingry School in Elizabeth and the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey before going to college at Harvard University.

X-15 Diary by Richard Tregaskis