The War Against Japan 1941 1945

With over 5,200 entries, this volume remains one of the most extensive annotated bibliographies on the USA’s fight against Japan in the Second World War. Including books, articles, and de-classified documents up to the end of 1987, the book is organized into six categories: Part 1 presents reference works, including encyclopedias, pictorial accounts, military histories, East Asian histories, hisotoriographies. Part 2 covers diplomatic-political aspects of the war against Japan. Part 3 contains sources on the economic and legal aspects of the war against Japan. Part 4 presents sources on the military apsects of the war – embracing land, air and sea forces. Religious aspects of the war are covered in Part 5 and Part 6 deals with the social and cultural aspects, including substantial sections on the treatment of Japanese minorities in the USA, Hawaii, Canada and Peru.

A history of the United Kingdom’s contribution to the Pacific theater of the Second World War, by the author of Disasters of the Deep. Hollywood’s version of the World War II in the Pacific has led many people to believe that it was an all-American affair, and that Britain took no part in it. But, as Edwin Gray shows in Operation Pacific, that is false. The British Royal Navy and its Commonwealth partners played a very significant role in the Pacific War. They waged a vigorous, non-stop battle with the enemy from the earliest days to the ultimate triumph of victory. Japanese troops also landed in Malaya and opened hostilities in Britain a full ninety minutes before Nagumo’s dive-bombers swept down on the unsuspecting American pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor to bring the United States into the war. Operation Pacific is the first book to provide a full and detailed account of Britain’s Naval contribution to the ultimate defeat of Japan, a saga that ranges from the darkest days of December, 1941, to the carrier operations and kamikaze attacks of the final battles in 1945. While in no way disparaging the heroic achievements and fighting courage of the U.S. forces in the Pacific, Edwyn Gray reveals that the Royal Navy’s cooperation was not always welcomed by her over-mighty Ally, and that America’s top brass—notably admiral Ernest King and General Douglas MacAuthur—were opposed to British involvement in the Pacific for both practical and political reasons. Operation Pacific is an absorbing story, offering a comprehensive picture of the part played by the Royal Navy and Commonwealth forces in the Far East War.

A full assembly of all 223 maps and sketches from UNITED KINGDOM MILITARY SERIES: OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN HISTORY - THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN. These official maps will help unravel the complexities of a difficult war that saw the Allies pitted against Japan. The British Empire waged ceaseless war against Japan between December 1941 and August 1945, in defeat and retreat at first, stabilising in 1943 as the Allies hit back and the Japanese tide abated, and turning to the offensive in 1944. The Empire's war against Japan witnessed constant military activity and the deployment east of Suez of hundreds of thousands of imperial service personnel on land, sea and air, from Australasia, Britain, East and West Africa, and from a rebuilt and vastly expanded Indian Army. British Imperial military activity continued, following the surrender at Singapore, in Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Ceylon, and in places such as New Guinea and British Pacific islands, occupied Malaya, Thailand, and beyond. British Imperial forces were also constantly active at sea and in the air, even when the Empire's fortunes were at their nadir in 1942.

A full assembly of all 223 maps and sketches from UNITED KINGDOM MILITARY SERIES: OFFICIAL CAMPAIGN HISTORY - THE WAR AGAINST JAPAN. These official maps will help unravel the complexities of a difficult war that saw the Allies pitted against Japan. The British Empire waged ceaseless war against Japan between December 1941 and August 1945, in defeat and retreat at first, stabilising in 1943 as the Allies hit back and the Japanese tide abated, and turning to the offensive in 1944. The Empire's war against Japan witnessed constant military activity and the deployment east of Suez of hundreds of thousands of imperial service personnel on land, sea and air, from Australasia, Britain, East and West Africa, and from a rebuilt and vastly expanded Indian Army. British Imperial military activity continued, following the surrender at Singapore, in Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Ceylon, and in places such as New Guinea and British Pacific islands, occupied Malaya, Thailand, and beyond. British Imperial forces were also constantly active at sea and in the air, even when the Empire's fortunes were at their nadir in 1942.

A groundbreaking history that considers the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective and is certain to revolutionize how we think of the war in the Pacific. When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men—military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor—put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm’s way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed—eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler’s dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable. In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan’s leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington’s hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan’s place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy—unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation’s bona fides with the West. We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan’s army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan’s elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it. Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing—both Japanese and Western—to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.

War In The Pacific 1941-1945 looks at the war against Japan in the Pacific Islands which formed an integral part of eventual Allied victory in World War II. Setting the scene with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the almost simultaneous attack on US bases on Guam and Wake Island, it then goes on to document the battles fought in the jungle islands of Guadalcanal and the Philippines and the seas of the Pacific. This war story is brought to life by the addition of carefully selected facsimile pieces of memorabilia ranging from military orders to propaganda leaflets dropped by the Japanese on US troops to the personal diaries and letters home of both generals, officers and ordinary soldiers.