Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (Vintage)
by Max Hastings
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Book Summary Information
Author: Max HastingsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2009-03-10
ISBN: 0307275361
Number of pages: 688
Publisher: Vintage
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780307275363
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Book Reviews of Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (Vintage)
Book Review: Outstanding and Completely Accurate History
Summary: 5 Stars
One tends to be critical of historians. But when I finished reading this magnificent history - and it's a long one - I did so with nothing but admiration for the man who wrote it. Max Hastings has done a superb job of telling us in his measured prose and in the anecdotal experiences of those who were there what happened in the last two years (1944-5) of the War against Japan.
I had been minted almost simultaneously as a San Francisco lawyer and a Naval Reserve Ensign in December 1941 and in the spring/ summer of 1944 was far more Naval Officer than lawyer and was attached to a destroyer escort assigned to the Seventh Fleet where - without much combat and without distinction - we followed or escorted the auxiliaries and some of the lesser lights like jeep carriers and old cruisers and destroyers from New Guinea to Luzon via Hollandia, Pelileu, Leyte, and Lingayen. As such I was a witness of sorts to some of the events Hastings describes and his stories and my memories of what happened are identical t, so I think it safe to say that, based on personal experience, I believe this book to be an accurate rendition of the two definitive years which preceded the fall of Japan.
Some of it was new to me - particularly the travails of he Chinese and, particularly, the Australians, and British trapped in Singapore and the Dutch in what was previously the Dutch East Indies. But all of it matches other historians and word-of-mouth stories and stands on the white plain of truth telling.
No one who reads this will ever buy into the theory that the atom bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary, just as no one who was in the service in that area at the time did anything but cheer for those who dropped it.
As for the Japanese. The book accurately expounds on the medieval code of the Bushido which only delayed the surrender of Japan and caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Looking back this is a true story of a great tragedy.
Summary of Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (Vintage)
By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan's defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained unclear. The ensuing drama?that ended in Japan's utter devastation?was acted out across the vast theater of Asia in massive clashes between army, air, and naval forces.In recounting these extraordinary events, Max Hastings draws incisive portraits of MacArthur, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and other key figures of the war in the East. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors caught in the bloodiest of campaigns.
With its piercing and convincing analysis, Retribution is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers.
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