The American poet's 1944-45 war journal, written on the island of Saipan, where he was stationed as a gunner. Saipan -- the site of a harrowing mass suicide by Japanese civilians in 1944 -- was a Japanese territory until the Americans arrived. John Ciardi, just 28 at the time, brought his poet's eye and heart to the war in the Pacific.  (PAC113, $16.95)