Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45

701 Pages·2008·7.21 MB·English

by  Max Hastings

CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE Dilemmas and Decisions
1. War in the East
2. Summit on Oahu
CHAPTER TWO Japan: Defying Gravity
1. Yamato Spirit
2. Warriors
CHAPTER THREE The British in Burma
1. Imphal and Kohima
2. “The Forgotten Army”
CHAPTER FOUR Titans at Sea
1. Men and Ships
2. Flyboys
CHAPTER FIVE America’s Return to the Philippines
1. Peleliu
2. Leyte: The Landing
CHAPTER SIX “Flowers of Death”: Leyte Gulf
1. Shogo
2. The Ordeal of Taffy 3
3. Kamikaze
CHAPTER SEVEN Ashore: Battle for the Mountains
CHAPTER EIGHT China: Dragon by the Tail
1. The Generalissimo
Photo Insert One
2. Barefoot Soldiers
3. The Fall of Stilwell
CHAPTER NINE MacArthur on Luzon
1. “He Is Insane on This Subject!”: Manila
2. Yamashita’s Defiance
CHAPTER TEN Bloody Miniature: Iwo Jima
CHAPTER ELEVEN Blockade: War Underwater
CHAPTER TWELVE Burning a Nation: LeMay
1. Superfortresses
2. Fire-Raising
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Road past Mandalay
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Australians: “Bludging” and “Mopping Up”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Captivity and Slavery
1. Inhuman Rites
2. Hell Ships
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Okinawa
1. Love Day
2. At Sea
Photo Insert Two
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Mao’s War
1. Yan’an
2. With the Soviets
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Eclipse of Empires
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Bombs
1. Fantasy in Tokyo
2. Reality at Hiroshima
CHAPTER TWENTY Manchuria: The Bear’s Claws
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Last Act
1. “God’s Gifts”
2. Despair and Deliverance
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Legacies
A Brief Chronology of the Japanese War
Acknowledgements
Notes and Sources
A Note About the Author
Also by Max Hastings
Copyright
In memory of my son
CHARLES HASTINGS
1973–2000
War is human, it is as something that is lived like a love or a hatred…It
might better be described as a pathological condition because it admits of
accidents which not even a skilled physician could have foreseen.
—Marcel Proust
“Oh, surely they’ll stop now. They’ll be horrified at what they’ve done!,” he
thought, aimlessly following on behind crowds of stretchers moving away
from the battlefield.
—Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov at Borodino, 1812
In 1944, there seemed absolutely no reason to suppose that the war might
end in 1945.
—Captain Luo Dingwen, Chinese Nationalist Army
ILLUSTRATIONS
INSERT ONE
Roosevelt, MacArthur and Nimitz on Hawaii. (© U.S. National
Archives/CORBIS)
Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. (U.S. National Archives/CORBIS)
Sikh troops charge a foxhole in Burma. (Imperial War Museum, London: IND
4550)
Elephant transport in Burma. (Imperial War Museum, London: SE 3189)
River crossing during the 1944–45 Burma campaign. (Imperial War Museum,
London: SE 4100)
Bill Slim. (Imperial War Museum, London: SE 3310)
Two scenes during the Japanese invasion of China. (© Hulton-Deutsch
Collection/CORBIS; © Associated Press/PA Photos)
Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. (© AFP/Getty Images)
The puppet emperor Pu Yi. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)
Chiang Kai-shek. (© Bettman/CORBIS)
The Japanese Combined Fleet on its passage towards destruction in September
1944. (Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
USS Gambier Bay bracketed by Japanese fire during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
(© U.S. National Archives/CORBIS)
The cruiser Birmingham aids the stricken Princeton after a crippling air attack.
(Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
Nimitz, King and Spruance aboard the cruiser Indianapolis. (Naval Historical
Foundation, Washington)
Krueger and Kinkaid. (© U.S. National Archives/CORBIS)
Kurita. (Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
Ugaki. (Courtesy of Donald M. Goldstein, University of Pittsburgh)
Men crouch tensed aboard a landing craft. (Naval Historical Foundation,
Washington)
Marine amphibious vehicles approach Peleliu. (© U.S. National
Archives/CORBIS)
A task group led by U.S. carriers at sea in late 1944. (© Bettman/CORBIS)
A pilot in the “ready room.” (Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
Launching a Hellcat. (Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
Commander David McCampbell. (Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
U.S. soldiers taking cover on Leyte in November 1944. (© Associated Press/PA
Photos)
U.S. soldiers fighting through the wreckage of Manila in February 1945. (©
Associated Press/PA Photos)
The Marines land on Iwo Jima. (U.S. National Archives/CORBIS)
Japanese surrendering on Iwo Jima. (Naval Historical Foundation, Washington)
Gen. Douglas MacArthur. (© U.S. National Archives/CORBIS)
Lt. Bill Bradlee.
Lt. Philip True. (Courtesy of Philip True)
Emory Jernigan. (Courtesy of Vandamere Press)