Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

Relatively few people are alive today who experienced any aspect of WWII as a teenager or older. Fewer still live in countries where the WWII experience can be freely discussed, as in the United States and UK. The Soviet Union considered the war to be a people's war and only recently have stories of individual experiences been forthcoming. In Germany, less and less attention is paid to the horrendous crimes of the German people. France dramatizes its miniscule, if even existent, role. And in Japan, as Hastings points, out widespread denial is still the norm. As a result, accurate knowledge of WWII and its horrors and few glories is rapidly fading from human consciousness - and with that forgetfulness comes the danager of new and even more horrible wars. Max Hastings writes highly readable military histories. He eschews footnotes and the minutia of academic writing in favor of a friendly narrative style. There is considerable depth, however. In its 550 pages, Hastings covers a war that spanned the years 1931 - 1945 and a bit beyond. It covered a larger geographic area than any other conflict in history, though most of the area was the Pacific Ocean. The book opens on the saddest possible note: the dedication is to Max Hasting's son who apparently died at age 27 in 2000. And on that sad note, the deaths of millions and unspeakable cruelties at the hands of the Japanese are chronicled in the following pages. In twenty-two chapters, Hastings treats every major aspect of the war against the Japanese by the primary combatants: the United States, Britain, China and late in the game, the Soviet Union. Hastings begins with a look at the motivation and goals of the United States. President Roosevelt had announced the goal was unconditional surrender. In recent years, revisionist historians have claimed that this policy prolonged the war. Throughout the book, Hastings demolishes these arguments over and over again. It is quite something to see: Hastings has a clear mastery of the subject. He then goes on to describe the various battlefronts and he is equally at home here. He uses dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews and memoirs to create his descriptions of battles like the British Burma campaign, the Battle of Leyte Gulf and so on, all the time weaving in the machinations of the main players in the Japanese, US, British and other governments. It is a very effective approach. His descriptions of the battles on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the sea war at the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the kamikazee campaign leave no room for doubt as to why the Americans feared the blood cost of an invasion of Japan. This is a critical history and Hastings heaps it on. The vastly overrated Douglas MacArthur is cut appropriately down to size, though Hastings does laud his post-war stewardship of Japan. Hastings criticizes the revisionists, apologists and anti-Americans who condemn the United States for its actions, such as the use of nuclear weapons. He spares nothing

World War II history books were the first serious books I began reading as a kid. I've probably read over 100 titles ranging from autobiographies (like William Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness" or Saburo Sakai's "Samurai") to "big" history (like Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich") and everything in between (especially a lot of those great Ballantine Books from the 1960s and 1970s). The value I see with Max Hastings effort, "Retribution," is that while it supplies well written history, it also reminds us of the past. The book clearly demonstrates that war is brutal, ugly, and vicious and even this "Good War" from the "Greatest Generation" still proves there's no nice way to do it. I would quibble with Hastings' recurring need to snipe at various historical figures like Douglas MacArthur, William Halsey, Patrick Hurley, and others. He frequently finds fault with decisions that appeared to make a battle worse and that the decision makers should have known better at the time, but because they were vain, arrogant, or incompetent, more people suffered as a result. For example, Admiral William Halsey has been second guessed for his pursuit of what turned out to be a Japanese decoy force at Leyte Gulf. Halsey directed his naval forces after that decoy, leaving vulnerable other American forces in the area. Those remaining American forces had one helluva fight on their hands when the main Japanese naval force attacked, but they managed to more than hold their own and drive off the Japanese assault. Every history book I've read going back to very early titles published shortly after the war, commented that Halsey at the very least got fooled by the decoy and should have provided better communication to other American commanders in the area. Hastings comments that Halsey should have been relieved of command, but since things turned out okay and it was so close to the end of the war, Halsey's superiors let it go. My take on this is simple: You're always the smartest guy in the room when it's not your job. Hastings often acts like that annoying backseat driver, Monday morning quarterback, . . . (insert your favorite cliche here) throughout the book, offering these tidy, smart smacks on the wrist of the historical reputation of men who are dead now. Most of the older history books I've read didn't go that far. They noted as descriptively as possible what happened and what people thought they knew at the time and left it at that. Hastings frequently has to weigh in with his wisdom. My concern here is that if this is the only book you'll ever read about this area, you'll come away with a negative opinion of a lot of folks and I don't think that's warranted or fair. Hastings cannot accept the "fog of war" as a legitimate explanation and instead prefers to make attributions to perceived character defects. This weakness noted, I find "Retribution" to be an accurate, detailed, interesting and complete examination of the last year in the Pa

With age comes a bit of weariness, and I confess that huge books with small print have begun to intimidate me just a bit. But some of them are so well-written and so interesting that page-anxiety drops away after the first couple of chapters. So it was for me with Max Hastings' Retribution. Retribution, which chronicles the final year of World War II's Pacific Theatre, is a companion to Hasting's Armageddon, a history of the European Theatre's final year. The new volume begins with General MacArthur's plans to retake the Philippines and ends with a quick summary of the war's effects on Japanese society and culture. In between, Hastings examines the infiltration of total warfare into everyday Japanese life; the battle for control of the sea corridors, the Burma campaign and the Aussies who fought it (which I found particularly fascinating, knowing virtually nothing about it); the air campaign over Japan, masterminded by Curtis LeMay (also an especially intriguing chapter, particularly for those who presume that the only big bomb damage in Japan were the nuclear blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki); the unspeakably horrific Japanese treatment of China and Manchuria; the ferocious battles on Iwo Jima (to which Hastings devotes an entire chapter); and the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led up to Japan's final surrender. Hastings punctuates his history of the Pacific Theatre's final year with dozens of stories about individual people whose lives were affected--GIs, sailors, Japanese infantrymen and pilots, Chinese "comfort girls," generals, admirals, statesmen--and this is part of what makes his book such a fascinating read. Moreover, Hastings doesn't pull any punches in his estimation of the war's leaders. MacArthur, for example, comes off as one of the most overrated military leaders ever produced by the U.S. Hirohito also comes across badly. Despite the post-war efforts to paint him as a pacifist overwhelmed by sabre-rattling generals, Hastings argues that the Emperor advocated war right up to the end. Three things in particular struck me in reading Hastings. The first was that bushido, the ancient code of honor embraced by the Japanese military, made life hell for ordinary foot soldiers, who could be savagely beaten by superiors for little or no reason. Apparently such abuse was seen as a way of toughening up the fighting spirit. Bushido also encouraged disdain for military technology on the part of Japanese officers. "Why do we need radar?" one of them asked. "Do we not have eyes that see perfectly well?" (p. 47) This attitude led to a constant technological lag throughout the entire war. The second was that the Kamikaze strategy adopted by the Japanese toward the end of the war not only failed in its aim of striking fear and panic into the hearts of Allied sailors, but actually had the opposite effect. Sailors were so enraged by what they perceived as cowardly attacks that their ferocity against the Japanese intensified.