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Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

Max Hastings

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Total reviews: 59 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Danger's Hour: The Story of the USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Crippled Her

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the closing months of World War II, Americans found themselves facing a new and terrifying weapon: kamikazes -- the first men to use airplanes as suicide weapons.

By the beginning of 1945, American pilots were shooting down Japanese planes more than ten to one. The Japanese had so few metals left that the military had begun using wooden coins and clay pots for hand grenades. For the first time in 800 years, Japan faced imminent invasion. As Germany faltered, the combined strength of every warring nation gathered at Japan's door. Desperate, Japan turned to its most idealistic young men -- the best and brightest college students -- and demanded of them the greatest sacrifice.

On the morning of May 11, 1945, days after the Nazi surrender, the USS Bunker Hill -- a magnificent vessel that held thousands of crewmen and the most sophisticated naval technology available -- was holding at the Pacific Theater, 70 miles off the coast of Okinawa.

At precisely 9:58 a.m., Kiyoshi Ogawa radioed in to his base at Kanoya, 350 miles from the Bunker Hill, "I found the enemy vessels." After eighteen months of training, Kiyoshi tucked a comrade's poem into his breast pocket and flew his Zero five hours across the Pacific. Now the young Japanese pilot had located his target and was on the verge of fulfilling his destiny. At 10:02.30 a.m., as he hovered above the Bunker Hill, hidden in a mass of clouds, Kiyoshi spoke his last words: "Now, I am nose-diving into the ship."

The attack killed 393 Americans and was the worst suicide attack against America until September 11. Juxtaposing Kiyoshi's story with the stories of untold heroism of the men aboard the Bunker Hill, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy details how American sailors and airmen worked together, risking their own lives to save their fellows and ultimately triumphing in their efforts to save their ship.

Drawing on years of research and firsthand interviews with both American and Japanese survivors, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy draws a gripping portrait of men bravely serving their countries in war and the advent of a terrifying new weapon, suicide bombing, that nearly halted the most powerful nation in the world.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

James D. Hornfischer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 132 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.”

With these words, Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland addressed the crew of the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts on the morning of October 25, 1944, off the Philippine Island of Samar. On the horizon loomed the mightiest ships of the Japanese navy, a massive fleet that represented the last hope of a staggering empire. All that stood between it and Douglas MacArthur’s vulnerable invasion force were the Roberts and the other small ships of a tiny American flotilla poised to charge into history.

In the tradition of the #1 New York Times bestseller Flags of Our Fathers, James D. Hornfischer paints an unprecedented portrait of the Battle of Samar, a naval engagement unlike any other in U.S. history—and captures with unforgettable intensity the men, the strategies, and the sacrifices that turned certain defeat into a legendary victory.


From the Hardcover edition.

The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific

James Campbell

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A harrowing portrait of a largely forgotten campaign that pushed one battalion to the limits of human suffering.

Despite their lack of jungle training, the 32nd Division’s “Ghost Mountain Boys” were assigned the most grueling mission of the entire Pacific campaign in World War II: to march over the 10,000-foot Owen Stanley Mountains to protect the right flank of the Australian army during the battle for New Guinea. Reminiscent of the classics like Band of Brothers and The Things They Carried, The Ghost Mountain Boys is part war diary, part extreme-adventure tale, and—through letters, journals, and interviews—part biography of a group of men who fought to survive in an environment every bit as fierce as the enemy they faced. Theirs is one of the great untold stories of the war.

“Superb.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

“Campbell started out with history, but in the end he has written a tale of survival and courage of near-mythic proportions.”
—America in WWII magazine

“In this compelling and sprightly written account, Campbell shines a long-overdue light on the equally deserving heroes of the Red Arrow Division.”
—Military.com

Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser, and the Epic Saga of her Survivors

James Hornfischer

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Total reviews: 40 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Son, we’re going to Hell."

The navigator of the USS Houston confided these prophetic words to a young officer as he and his captain charted a course into U.S. naval legend. Renowned as FDR’s favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest. It wasn’t a fair fight, but the men of the Houston would wage it to the death.

Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, the deadly rain of fire from Japanese bombers, and the almost superhuman effort of the crew as they miraculously escaped disaster again and again–until their luck ran out during a daring action in Sunda Strait. There, hopelessly outnumbered, the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner. For more than three years their fate would be a mystery to families waiting at home.

In the brutal privation of jungle POW camps dubiously immortalized in such films as The Bridge on the River Kwai, the war continued for the men of the Houston—a life-and-death struggle to survive forced labor, starvation, disease, and psychological torture. Here is the gritty, unvarnished story of the infamous Burma–Thailand Death Railway glamorized by Hollywood, but which in reality mercilessly reduced men to little more than animals, who fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, will–power—and the undying faith that their country would prevail.

Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, including testimony from postwar Japanese war crimes tribunals, and the eyewitness accounts of Houston’s survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it’s easy to forget that every single word is true.


From the Hardcover edition.

Flyboys: A True Story of Courage

James Bradley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 84 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Stuck on stupid 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book is good only for throwing across the room. Why this is so has already been explained by most one-star reviewers. I will stay away from anything written by James Bradley for as long as I live.

Throw it Back.... 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I never got to the "Fly Boys" part of the book about the true courage of WWII fliers in the Pacific who paid the ultimate price. The first 100 pages of supposed historical prelude turned out to be nothing more than an overt rejection of Western culture in general and Christianity in particular, intertwined with a coarsely written characterization and single sided judgment of American progress and greatness. In a time when it has become fashionable to stick our country in the eye, this is a crassly opportunistic book that primarily underwrites author Bradley's twisted version of world history at the expense of American heroes. If you feel compelled to read this unscholarly account of the Fly Boys, cut out chapters 1-6 first. Given that suspect lead in, what follows may or may not be all true.

Editorial Review:

This acclaimed bestseller brilliantly illuminates a hidden piece of World War II history as it tells the harrowing true story of nine American airmen shot down in the Pacific. One of them, George H. W. Bush, was miraculously rescued. The fate of the others-an explosive 60-year-old secret-is revealed for the first time in FLYBOYS.

Escape from the Deep: A Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew

Alex Kershaw

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The adrenaline-soaked story of nine men who fought the Japanese from America's deadliest submarine, survived its sinkage, and endured months of brutal torture in captivity.

By October, 1944, the U.S. Navy submarine Tang was legendary--she had sunk more enemy ships, rescued more downed airmen, and pulled off more daring surface attacks than any other Allied submarine in the Pacific. And then, on her fifth patrol, tragedy struck--the Tang was hit by one of her own faulty torpedoes. The survivors of the explosion struggled to stay alive in their submerged "iron coffin" one hundred-eighty feet beneath the surface. While the Japanese dropped deadly depth charges, just nine of the original eighty-man crew survived a harrowing ascent through the escape hatch.

But a far greater ordeal was coming. After being picked up by a Japanese patrol vessel, they were sent to a secret Japanese interrogation camp known as the "Torture Farm." They were close to death when finally liberated in August, 1945, but they had revealed nothing to the Japanese--not even the greatest secret of World War II.

The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II

Judith M. Heimann

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

N ovember 1944: Army airmen set out in a B-24 bomber on what should have been an easy mission off the Borneo coast. Instead they found themselves unexpectedly facing a Japanese fleet—and were shot down. When they cut themselves loose from their parachutes, they were scattered across the island’s mountainous interior. Then a group of loincloth-wearing natives silently materialized out of the jungle. Would these Dayak tribesmen turn the starving airmen over to the hostile Japanese occupiers? Or would the Dayaks risk vicious reprisals to get the airmen safely home? The tribal leaders’ unprecedented decision led to a desperate game of hide-and-seek, and, ultimately, the return of a long-renounced ritual: head-hunting.

A cinematic survival story that features a bamboo airstrip built on a rice paddy, a mad British major, and a blowpipe-wielding army that helped destroy one of the last Japanese strongholds, The Airmen and the Headhunters is a gripping, you-are-there journey into the remote world and forgotten heroism of the Dayaks.

At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor

Gordon W. Prange

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Parts are thorough but book lacks essential information 2 out of 5 stars.
11 of 13 people found this review helpful.

Gordon Prange was a military historian on MacArthur's staff who researched and interviewed key people involving Pearl Harbor for nearly 40 years prior to his death. He never finished this book and a couple of graduate students of his compiled, edited, and finished his work, so this is a composite production.

The books(yes, books - the edition I own is 2 volumes) themselves are arranged in sections called "Prelude", "Action" and "Aftermath". Prange and his students are not writers and this is a long, detailed book that is not for the idle reader looking for a popular account.

But the main reason for the low ranking of this book is that it lacks so much essential information. Some has only become available in the last few years but a fair amount was simply not included by Prange or his students. Some material is still locked up. A fair amount was destroyed or disappeared at the orders of the accusers of General Short and Admiral Kimmel, the scapegoats. And if that isn't circumstantial evidence, I don't know what is. In fairness, Prange never completed this hobby of his.

Prange's students overall decide that the Pearl Harbor debacle was the fault of the 2 primary commanders, General Short of the Army and Kimmel of the Navy. The majority of the book is actually a defense of this thesis and defense of President Roosevelt and his staff.

The basic problem is that the Japanese destroyed our Pacific Fleet with almost no losses. And someone must have been at fault. Of course, it is quite possible for no one or everyone to be at fault, but the Pearl Harbor blame game has continued for 60 years and shows no signs of stopping. This book is the best and most complete defense of Roosevelt, General George C. Marshall and other top Washington Insiders. For the missing parts of the puzzle I recommend Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath and Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack.

The greatest strength of this book is the extensive Japanese information and interviews. The main Japanese commanders who had the greatest knowledge were, however, almost all killed during the war or in the war crimes trials shortly thereafter.

The key factor in believing that Pearl Harbor could have been prevented was that the US had broken the Japanese code and intercepted and translated messages regularly. Yet for some reason, the code-breaking machines, called "Magic", were never sent to the Pacific, the area which most needed this information. As a matter of fact, the listening stations in the Pacific relayed the intercepts to Washington. Why? Roosevelt wanted control as he tried his best to get America in WWII. And the best way to do that was to get Japan to attack the US. This information, readily available is not included in this book and is one of its most glaring problems.

There were multiple intercepts of war messages, none of which ever got to Pearl Harbor. The code for launching attack was "Execute Winds". This message was intercepted and decoded December 4, 1941, 3 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. This information was never transmitted to the Pacific under orders from at least 20 Washington Insiders including President Roosevelt and General Marshall.

The meat of the book are the investigations after Pearl Harbor. The first was the Roberts Commission. Roberts was a Supreme Court Justice and the rest of the group were cronies of General George C. Marshall or Roosevelt, the 2 figures who covered up the information that would have saved thousands of lives at Pearl Harbor. There was one exception, a retired Admiral Standley who came late to the hearings and found that the witnesses weren't being sworn in, no one had asked hard questions of the Washington Insiders and the testimony wasn't even being recorded. Roberts even forbade Kimmel and Short from calling any witnesses. Finally, the court assigned 2 stenographers, one a mere teen-ager and neither of whom had any court experience. These incompetents missed or garbled much of the testimony and Justice Roberts refused to even let Kimmel and Short correct the errors. The fix was in. Commenting on this kangaroo court Admiral Bull Halsey noted, ""I have always considered Admiral Kimmel and General Short to be splendid officers who were thrown to the wolves as scapegoats for something over which they had no control." Other admirals called this panel "as crooked as a snake" and said the report was "the most unfair, unjust, and deceptively dishonest document ever printed by the Government Printing Office". Strong words from those most likely to know what really happened. And this book has none of this, to its shame.

Kimmel and Short then pushed for a courts-martial so they could tell their side. Eventually the Navy and Army tried these officers in 1944. Kimmel had heard by then of all the intercepted messages that had been withheld from him. 43 of these were delivered to the court and "The admirals on the Court listened to them being read with looks of horror and disbelief. Two of the admirals flung their pencils down. More than 2,000 died at Pearl Harbor because those messages had been withheld." The Roberts Commission findings were reversed; Kimmel and then Short were exonerated. General George C. Marshall and other Washington Insiders were censured. But George C. Marshall was the highest General in the land and this was 1944 - the war was still on. So the innocent verdict was suppressed as a state secret by Secretary of Navy Knox on Roosevelt's orders. Clearly, Roosevelt was behind all of this, but the investigation had purposely not examined the President's role.

Roosevelt died shortly thereafter and the war ended. And then Secretary Knox convened other hearings - this time with his hand-picked cronies. Officers were demoted and transferred who had previously testified. One was thrown in a mental hospital. The Chief Warrant Officer Ralph T. Briggs, the man who had originally intercepted the "winds" message at a United States monitoring station was summoned before his commanding officer, who forbade him to testify. "Perhaps someday you'll understand the reason for this," he was told. Briggs had a blind wife to support. He did not come forward as a witness.

But the father of Naval Cryptography, Captain Laurance Safford, refused to be cowed. He continued to testify of the truth. Gradually others began to again confirm that the Roosevelt Administration had prevented the transmission of the intercepted Japanese information. It was found that just four days after Pearl Harbor, Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, director of naval communications, told his subordinates: "Destroy all notes or anything in writing." This was an illegal order -- naval memoranda belong to the American people and cannot be destroyed except by congressional authority. And this book, again, has none of this.

Then Congress convened its own investigative body. With 6 democrats and 4 republicans, it broke along party lines so that the new President Truman, wouldn't lose any votes. And that was that. General Short died and then Admiral Kimmel.

We know now that Kimmel and Short were right. Dozens of sources of the information that Japan was attacking have since turned up - all suppressed by a Roosevelt administration determined to get us into WWII. As historian John Toland reports, both Japanese assistant naval attachés posted at the Washington embassy in 1941 have verified that the message to attack was transmitted on December 4th, exactly as Safford said.

As a final footnote, on May 25, 1999, the U.S. Senate approved a resolution that Kimmel and Short had performed their duties "competently and professionally" and that our losses at Pearl Harbor were "not the result of dereliction of duty." "They were denied vital intelligence that was available in Washington," said Senator William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.). Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) called Kimmel and Short "the two final victims of Pearl Harbor."

And so Kimmel and Short have been finally vindicated. Roosevelt, Marshall and others purposely withheld information that would have prevented the disaster at Pearl Harbor to get us more committed and unified. And that this book has none of this information means that it is not worth reading.

In the end, this is just one more, decades old, sordid government cover-up of treasonous activities by Insiders bent on their own agenda. Korea, Vietnam, assassinations of key figures, Waco, Oklahoma City,Iraq and 9-11 are just the continued fruits of a government over which we long ago lost control. Now why would I bother to even review this flawed book on an event that is being forgotten? "Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Vincet Veritas! And Long Live the Republic!

Editorial Review:

At 7:53 a.m., December 7, 1941, America's national consciousness and confidence were rocked as the first wave of Japanese warplanes took aim at the U.S. Naval fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor. As intense and absorbing as a suspense novel, At Dawn We Slept is the unparalleled and exhaustive account of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is widely regarded as the definitive assessment of the events surrounding one of the most daring and brilliant naval operations of all time. Through extensive research and interviews with American and Japanese leaders, Gordon W. Prange has written a remarkable historical account of the assault that-sixty years later-America cannot forget.

Down to the Sea: An Epic Story of Naval Disaster and Heroism in World War II

Bruce Henderson

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Typhoon Survivor 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Down to the Sea: An Epic Story of Naval Disaster and Heroism in World War IIMy name is Pat Douhan and I am one of the few survivors from the USS Hull DD350. After reading this book I can truthfully say that Bruce Henderson did an outstanding job of compilling
the true facts leading up to, during and after our loss in Typhoon Cobra. Being the reunion coordinator for the USS Hull reunions I am very close to most of my surviving shipmates as well as others that transferred prior to our sinking and this author has put together the true facts he obtained through research, interview, Naval records and ships deck logs, something than none of the previous authors accomplished. When reading this book you can see that our problems really begin when we had a change of command in October during our yard overhaul in Seattle. We destroyer sailors are close nit group and not too much was known about the loss of the three "tin cans" in the typhoon and we did not say much, but over the past few years this Naval tragedy has come to light and is getting some attention and as you can see by this authors writings you are not going to win when you are fighting mother nature. I will say again, after having been there,that this book "Down to the Sea" truthfully tells it like it was.

Editorial Review:

This epic story opens at the hour the Greatest Generation went to war on December 7, 1941, and follows four U.S. Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon. In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty U.S. Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.