Summary: "A chronicle of the horrific final year of the Pacific war. By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan's defeat was inevitable, but how the victory would be achieved remained to be seen. Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the key figures--MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors--American, British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese--caught in some of the war's bloodiest campaigns. Hastings discusses Japan's war against China--now all but forgotten in the West, MacArthur's follies in the Philippines, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria. He analyzes the decision-making process that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki--which, he convincingly argues, ultimately saved lives. Finally, he delves into the Japanese wartime mind-set, which caused an otherwise civilized society to carry out atrocities that haunt the nation to this day."--From publisher description.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In this companion to Hastings' effusively praised Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–45 (2004), the notable military historian wrestles with controversies about the last year of World War II in Asia and the Pacific. From qualities of commanders to experiences of soldiers and civilians to atomic bombings, Hastings thematically surveys the consequences of the Japanese government's refusal to confront a defeat that was unavoidable after American capture of the Marianas Islands in June 1944. As with German resistance, Japan's death ride produced a sizable fraction of WWII-related fatalities in that last year, a shock that Hastings argues must be incorporated into an understanding of what happened and why. As inevitable as Allied victory may have been, no leader could predict how or when it would arrive. The cataclysmic form that it assumed—fire bombings punctuated by mushroom clouds—has, to an extent, bestowed victim status on Japan. Hastings' work stands as a stern refutation of that idea's persistence in both academic and popular circles, without, however, absolving the Allies of his moral scrutiny. Encompassing the British, Chinese, and Soviet roles in vanquishing Japan, Hastings is both comprehensive and finely acute in this masterful interpretive narrative. Copyright 2008 Booklist Reviews.
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