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As such I was a witness of sorts to some of the events Hastings describes and his stories and my memories of what happened are identical t, so I think it safe to say that, based on personal experience, I believe this book to be an accurate rendition of the two definitive years which preceded the fall of Japan.Some of it was new to me - particularly the travails of he Chinese and, particularly, the Australians, and British trapped in Singapore and the Dutch in what was previously the Dutch East Indies. One tends to be critical of historians. But all of it matches other historians and word-of-mouth stories and stands on the white plain of truth telling.No one who reads this will ever buy into the theory that the atom bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary, just as no one who was in the service in that area at the time did anything but cheer for those who dropped it.As for the Japanese. But when I finished reading this magnificent history - and it's a long one - I did so with nothing but admiration for the man who wrote it. Max Hastings has done a superb job of telling us in his measured prose and in the anecdotal experiences of those who were there what happened in the last two years (1944-5) of the War against Japan.I had been minted almost simultaneously as a San Francisco lawyer and a Naval Reserve Ensign in December 1941 and in the spring/ summer of 1944 was far more Naval Officer than lawyer and was attached to a destroyer escort assigned to the Seventh Fleet where - without much combat and without distinction - we followed or escorted the auxiliaries and some of the lesser lights like jeep carriers and old cruisers and destroyers from New Guinea to Luzon via Hollandia, Pelileu, Leyte, and Lingayen. The book accurately expounds on the medieval code of the Bushido which only delayed the surrender of Japan and caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Looking back this is a true story of a great tragedy.
Provides historical context for the Pacific theatre of WWII and context for current day relations among China, Taiwan, N Korea, Japan, Russia, etc. A little bit slow reading for a war book, but parts are fascinating: technology, strategy, inhuman nature of war.
The war had to be brought to and end quickly in the interests of the United States, any country in that circumstance would have acted in this fashion, it was simply the only reasonable approach at the time. However he also looks at the events in the perspective of the times and frequently concludes that it is easy to see why decisions that were made, albeit in retrospect misguided, in the uncertainties of the time would have seemed quite reasonable, even inevitable. Also, as Hastings points out, 650 thousand Japanese civilians died in WWII, 25 million Asians who died in the attempt of Japan to enslave them, which would never have happened had the Japanese civilian population not fully supported the war. There was no reasonable expectation the war would have ended in a fashion the Allies could reasonable accept until late fall at the earliest, had the Atomic Bombs not been dropped.
He looks at incidents from a number of angles, from all sides. This is a well researched and convincing book, Hastings is at the top of the league in providing solid convincing evidence to support his conclusions. To illustrate, Mr. Based on what I have read by Hastings and others, I see the notion that Japan would have been willing to surrender in early August 1945, had continuance of the Emperor been guaranteed, as an absurdity.
Prior to this most with real power favored defense against invasion, with the hope that inflicting sufficient American casualties would push the US into more favorable terms. Kai Bird is clearly the type of historical critic, who lacks the ability or willingness to see events in the context of the times, evaluates them according to his own ideological values of this epoch, and finds whatever support available to convince others of his preconceived perceptions. Bird ridicules Hastings' as one whose views would appeal to an American Legion audience, a statement one would expect from a biased journalist in a newspaper editorial, not a serious historical critic. Few serious scholarly historians share Bird's view. Hastings is one of my favorite historians.
Within a few weeks causalities would have exceeded those of the two destroyed cities, and without the double shock the war would certainly have continued for some time. While there were those who favored this in Japan, these were not the individuals who held the power, the Military would never have accepted early surrender without the double shock of Russian declaration of war and the dropping of the Atomic Bombs. Hastings convincingly illustrates this, if one is willing to view the circumstances objectively, and within the context of those times. If one does view events in the context of the times, this it is clear that there never was any question about dropping the A-Bomb. The power of Japan was in the name of the Emperor, and in the Military, the diplomats had little power whatever. He does judge actions in retrospect, and is often critical of American decisions in that respect. The impending danger of Russian power and influence in the world was anticipated by this time.
It is just silly, there is no other way of putting it. Bird and others who continue to push the fantasy that Japan was willing to accept occupation prior to the events of early August 1945 never find any support for that view in the records or actions of the holders of real power, only with the second and third tier. Indeed this was a factor, along with further casualties and expenditure of resources. Even Adolf Hitler lacked that kind of public support when he embarked on his war of conquest.
MacArthur. Patton, he had a profound sense of destiny which fortified his physical courage and a deep sense of religion and purpose.Assertions of other reviewers to the contrary, MacArthur did have consumately competent subordinates.Gen. He served valorously in WWI and rose to Army Chief of Staff during the interwar years.His long list of career achievments belie the claims of other reviewers that MacArthur was an incompetent pretender. His advice was destroy the Luftwaffe, attack targets they must defend either out of necessity or pride. He had an ego, like all great men, his was large. He had a doting mother, just like Roosvelt who was a distant cousin. While the bulk of the book is stellar, and reveals facets of the Pacific War that even I, widely read as I am of this period of history, was not familiar.To my disappointment Hastings rolled out the much repeated slurs against Gen D. Who's overwhelming successfull application of air power led to his opinion being sought and his suggestions adopted by the 8th Air Force in Europe.
He repeats verbatim the same tired slurs and mis-information, about MacArthur and the New Guinea-Phillipine axis of advance, that it makes me think he was a Navy man, maybe related to Nimitz or King.Yes MacArthur does appear hard to like from 60 years distant, but placed in the context of his times, he was a giant among men. George Kinney for example. Today we accept cardboard cutouts as national heros and elect do-nothing-nobodies to the highest office in the land then give them allocades they neither have earned nor deserve.I'll take accomplishments over pipe dreams every time. MacArthur prized loyalty and reciprocated, keeping incompetent subordinates in tow when more ruthless commanders would have dismissed them.The oft repeated sobriquet "Dugout Dug" was dispised by him and was propogated by enemies. To bet a much more balanced view of MacArthur, one should read Geoffrey Perret's Old Soldiers Never Die: The Life of Douglas MacArthur.A few points should be made about MacArthur. The result was the the devastating interdiction campaign leading up to D-Day and the successful war of attrition that gutted the Luftwaffe of its seasoned pilots.
MacArthur was poorly served by numerous subordinates, not least was his chief of staff, Sutherland. He showed on more than one occasion in WWI and repeatedly in WWII that he had far more physical courage than most men.Like another prima dona, Gen. The exact tactics Kinney's 5th Air Force used to destroy Japanese air power in the Southwest Pacific.I said Hastings had a Europcentric bias, because of his negative outlook on MacArthur. Instead we get semi-pretty boys with no credentials at all.
He either wins in battle or dies.Japanese fighters were terrifying and savage in their hurried conquests. Looking back at my own youth during those years and my nightly fear that although Japan was thousands of miles away I still might be bombed, probably seems like a fairytale. His "I will return" statement became his obsession; indeed, he must return to liberate the Philippine Islands in order to maintain his ego as the Great General. This latter route was suggested by other Pacific generals who believed that once the lifeline to the outlying Japanese troops was destroyed, there would be no need to island hop--a costly move in both materials and human lives.
From early childhood, Japanese youth were brainwashed to believe they were the greatest race, a nation so superior that all bushido fighters would wantonly give their lives for the fatherland. According to Retribution, when Roosevelt, and Nimitz, met in Hawaii with MacArthur, the crux of their dialogue was between Roosevelt and MacArthur who returned to his command triumphant he had sold his idea of launching war into the Philippines. Research shows that supplying their established line of offense/defense, so distant from the mainland, had become a realized impossibility to the Japanese war effort. While men were dying or struggling on battlefields or on the seas for sheer survival, the inflated ego's of some top brass American generals became even more bloated in the Pacific war against Japan. Allied soldiers, on the other hand, believed life was so precious that even the life of a single man should never be wasted. Since it is written so descriptively well from factual data collected by Max Hastings, finishing the book was an emotional experience for me. _____1) Allied forces would become so involved battling Hitler's Nazi forces in the West that they could not engage a second war to stop Japan's Eastern conquests.
Where the United States had an overwhelming advantage in raw materials to produce weapons of war, the Japanese had a shrinking disadvantage due to the effective blockade of her ports. It is no wonder that early in the war, Japanese warriors quickly overran peoples trying to escape the savagery of kamikaze warrior zeal.How could the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war be in any way humane. So on all Eastern battlefronts there were literally two opposing philosophical forces--preservation of life at all costs versus a desire to die to reach Yasukuni. Retribution maintains that the Japanese began to realize the futility of extending their line of conquest any farther. MacArthur had been chased out of the Philippines. Prisoners were treated as a subhuman species who had surrendered and survived without honor. With barely enough to live, prisoners were forced into slave labor wherever possible. Surrender was never an option; death--whether imposed by the enemy or by a warrior's own hand--was the honorable way to die.
Yet, any talk of compromise or retreat was impossible for the Yamaha warrior. They would follow orders in mokusatsu--silence.In a very real sense, a single life, or thousands for that matter, was only worthwhile as long as a warrior could be the aggressor in battle on land or at sea; any position less than that was shameful. _____2) Once a second war commenced, the Japanese would make it so viciously costly in lives lost or mutilated, and supplies destroyed, that the American public would have no stomach for it.In both instances, the Japanese were catastrophically wrong.Retribution ends with author Max Hastings' claim that modern Japan is "guilty of a collective rejection of historical fact." Although the ideology existed that the Japanese people were superior to any other humans on the planet, it is unacceptable today to continue to believe such attractive superiority with ceremonial remembrances that ennoble and glorify the notorious killers of that savage wartime generation. Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 reveals that it became General Douglass MacArthur's overwhelming intent to free the Philippines rather than wage war against mainland Japan. No real match for the industrialized Allied nations, the Japanese had counted on two winning strategies to take place.
The railroad ties of the Burma Railroad were tantamount to the number of lives lost by prisoners struggling to build it. Like the Nazis, Hastings claims the Japanese will remain outcasts in the eyes of countless people worldwide until, as a nation, they openly admit to new generations of children that it deserved the Retribution inflicted by the Allies because of an abhorrent inhuman past war philosophy.WWII will forever fascinate me because I was too young to fight for my country. When I think of all the men and women who gave their lives, and their bodies--and in many cases, body parts--to stop the heinous crimes committed by the Japanese in the Orient, I can only bow to them and say "Thank You." This book receives my highest recommendation to readers of any age who dare to see first-hand what a twisted ideology can do to dehumanize a nation. Yasukuni was a shrine for fallen Japanese heroes.As a result, throughout the war, the Japanese combatant appeared eager to die, "the most formidable fighting insect in history." This was the praiseworthy end to life. It appeared that even President Roosevelt was overwhelmed by the mystique of General MacArthur.
As a result, this book fascinated me more than just a small amount. They would endure hardship, sickness, starvation--any pain or agony to achieve the status of a warrior who had fought the enemy--any non-Japanese people. "See you at the Yasukuni Shrine," was oft said among warriors as they embarked in battle. I often wonder if I would have had the courage to perform my duty as an Allied Warrior. Retribution will show today's youth how dangerous and realistic that fairytale was.Other interesting titles:Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With JapanHell in the Pacific: The War with Japan 1941-1945You Know WhenThe Island Off Stony Point
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