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Title: Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
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Manufacturer: Knopf
List Price: $35.00
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Knopf Buy the book | | This book is less a "nuts & bolts" history of the end of the war in the Pacific and more of a "soft" history. What did people think? How did they feel? Why did they do what they did? It speaks more to the WHY rather than the HOW. Excellent book, hard to put down, and it explores some obscure areas of the conflict. Buy it. | | Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Knopf good summary of the end of the Pacific war | | This book along with Richard Frank's "Downfall" gives a good picture of the end of the Japanese war and further puts to rest the idea that the Atomic Bombs should not have been employed. The Japanese were still full of fight. | | Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Knopf Retribution | | I have been a Max Hastings fan for years. This is another in a series of his excellent books. While I was born in 1939 and have always been a student of WWII history he shares views of the people and events that are not well known. | | Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Knopf Excellent Book | | An excellent book that brings focus to the end of the war with Japan. Detailed and well researched as are all Max Hastings book. As with every Max Hastings book 5 stars. | | Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Knopf A superb addition to the history of World War 2 | Hastings continues his fine histories of the last years of World War 2. His earlier book "Armageddon"
focused on the battle for Germany, he continues in "Retribution" with the last years of the Pacific war
Starting with a striking dust cover, an eerie night photograph of a smoke screen off Iwo Jima by the legendary Life photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, the journey of death and atrocity in Asia begins. His presentation technique moves chronologically and sequentially deftly mixing commentary, observations with American, British and Japanese soldiers' memoirs. Less well known aspects of the war find space; the heroic British
push in Burma, the Australian unions' refusal to unload ships and their general difficulties supporting the Allied case, the Soviets push in Manchuria, the laxity of the Chinese nationalists under Chang Kai shek and the Communists under Mao to advance the war against the Japanese preferring to ration their efforts until once the Pacific war ended. Hastings is a fine and insightful writer; his objectivity is underscored by his severe critique of MacArthur but finally complimenting on his conciliatory speech on the deck of USS Missouri at the end of signing of the Potsdam Declaration; his criticism of the Japanese warrior ethic of bushido and
its militarist leadership for their wartime atrocities and his historical justification for Truman's dropping of
the atom bomb in August 1945. This last point has been criticized by some media reviewers for being conclusory on Hastings part. Hastings, on the contrary, lays out a convincing set of detailed rationales for
the American bombing of Hiroshima. "Any scenario suggests that far more people of many nationalities would have died in the course of even a few further weeks of war than were killed by the atomic bombs." Anyone who reads the book to its end will understand his points but may not agree with them. But that is one of the reasons why reading fine historians like Max Hastings is such pleasure. | | Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Knopf Product Description | Hailed in Britain as “Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful” (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph), a riveting, impeccably informed chronicle of the final year of the Pacific war. In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan.
By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama—that ended in Japan’s utter devastation—was acted out across the vast stage of Asia, with massive clashes of naval and air forces, fighting through jungles, and barbarities by an apparently incomprehensible foe. In recounting the saga of this time and place, Max Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the theater’s 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.
With unprecedented insight, 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.
Retribution is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers. |
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