One thing about the book that didn't ring true to me, being that James Jones based this on actual events, was the apparently common practice of befriending homosexuals in town to "scam them" or "string them along" for money, free drinks, etc. In the book, there were a lot of soldiers doing this and during one investigation, two entire truckloads of soldiers who were thought to be fraternizing with homosexuals were brought in for questioning and the soldiers treated the whole thing like a joke.
I can tell you that when I was in the service, nothing of the sort was tolerated. If a Marine "got a boyfriend off base" even as a ruse to rip the homosexual off, he would be quickly turned in by his fellow Marines and run right out of the Corps.
I'll have a lot more to say about this book as the thread progresses (don't want to shoot my whole wad at once).
Maybe it was the time and place. Remember, back then a soldier's pay was really horrible so it isn't unreasonable for the soldiers to scam the homos for money. In the book, they tried to get money from them WITHOUT going all the way. Since this part of the book was highly detailed, I am sure that Jones himself was pulling just such a scam while in the military. Also Jones almost ALWAYS based events in his novels to things he has seen or participated in. I did a thorough research of his Go To The Widowmaker and the closeness of the facts to the events in the books was astonishing. Almost a perfect match.
Oh, and from reading this book and others by Jones, I am sure he was an alcoholic. However, since this did not seem to affect his writing (although it did cause an early death), I don't hold this against him.
p.s. A starting point for research on whether there were big homo investigations in Hawaii circa 1941 is to check out the FBI's Freedom of Information files.