Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
by Max Hastings
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Book Summary Information
Author: Max HastingsEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-03-18
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 656
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
Book Review: Japan deserved Retribution because of it's inhumane philosophy of conquest.
Summary: 5 Stars
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. 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.
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. MacArthur had been chased out of the Philippines. 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.
It appeared that even President Roosevelt was overwhelmed by the mystique of General MacArthur. 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.
Retribution maintains that the Japanese began to realize the futility of extending their line of conquest any farther. 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. 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. Yet, any talk of compromise or retreat was impossible for the Yamaha warrior. He either wins in battle or dies.
Japanese fighters were terrifying and savage in their hurried conquests. 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. 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. 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. Surrender was never an option; death--whether imposed by the enemy or by a warrior's own hand--was the honorable way to die. "See you at the Yasukuni Shrine," was oft said among warriors as they embarked in battle. 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. Allied soldiers, on the other hand, believed life was so precious that even the life of a single man should never be wasted. 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. 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? 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. The railroad ties of the Burma Railroad were tantamount to the number of lives lost by prisoners struggling to build it.
No real match for the industrialized Allied nations, the Japanese had counted on two winning strategies to take place.
_____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.
_____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.
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. I often wonder if I would have had the courage to perform my duty as an Allied Warrior. As a result, this book fascinated me more than just a small amount. Since it is written so descriptively well from factual data collected by Max Hastings, finishing the book was an emotional experience for me. 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. 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. Retribution will show today's youth how dangerous and realistic that fairytale was.
Other interesting titles:
Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan
Hell in the Pacific: The War with Japan 1941-1945
You Know When
The Island Off Stony Point
Summary of Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
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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