From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima: The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1941–45

247 Pages·1994·25.614 MB·English

by  Saki Dockrill (eds.)

FROM PEARL HARBOR TO HIROSHIMA
Also by Saki Dockrill
BRITAIN'S POLICY FOR WEST GERMAN REARMAMENT,
1950-55
From Pearl Harbor
to Hiroshima
The Second World War in Asia
and the Pacific, 1941-45
Edited by
Saki Dockrill
Lecturer in War Studies
King's College London
University ofL ondon
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-23131-7 ISBN 978-1-349-23129-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-23129-4
Editorial matter and selection © Saki Dockrill 1994
Text © The Macmillan Press Ltd 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994 978-0-333-57722-6
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1994
ISBN 978-0-312-10246-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima: the Second World War in Asia and the
Pacific, 1941-45 / edited by Saki Dockrill.
p. cm.
A collection of essays based on papers given at the Conference on
'The Pacific War: a Reappraisal after Fifty Years' held at the
Imperial War Museum, London, Dec. 5-6, 1991.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-10246-3
l. World War, I 939-l945-Campaigns-Pacific Area-Congresses.
2. World War, 1939-1 945-Campaigns-Asia-Congresses. I. Dockrill,
Saki. II. Conference on 'The Pacific War: a Reappraisal after Fifty
Years' (1991: Imperial War Museum)
D767.F76 1994
940.54'26---dc20 93-14207
CIP
To the memory of Louis Allen, Lord Cheshire
and Christopher Thome
Contents
List of Maps ix
Acknowledgements X
Foreword
Donald Cameron Watt xi
Notes on the Contributors xiii
Introduction: One Step Forward-A Reappraisal of the Pacific War
1
Saki Dockrill
I. The Road to Pearl Harbor
1
Anglo-Japanese Alienation Revisited
lanNish 11
2 Winston Churchill, the Military, and Imperial Defence in East Asia
John Pritchard 26
3 Admiral Yamamoto's Surprise Attack and the Japanese Navy's
War Strategy
lkuhiko Hata 55
II. Conflicts in the Pacific
4 American Seizure of Japan's Strategic Points, Summer 1942-44
Ronald Spector 75
5 US Army Codebreakers and the War against Japan
EdwardDrea 87
III. Conflicts in Asia
6 Burma: The Longest War, 1941--45
Louis Allen and David Steeds 109
7 Thailand, Japanese Pan-Asianism and the Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere
Nigel Brailey 119
8 The China Theatre and the Pacific War
Wenzhao Tao 134
vii
viii Contents
IV. International Relations during the War
9 The Gennan-Japanese Alliance in the Second World War
Bernd Martin 153
10 Britain, the Commonwealth and Pacific Security
Peter Lowe 174
v. Termination of the War, August 1945
11 Hiroshima: A Strategy of Shock
Lawrence Freedman and Saki Dockrill 191
VI. Conclusions
12 The Legacy of the 'Pacific War' as Seen from Europe
Saki Dockrill 215
Select Bibliography 225
Index 237
Maps
1 The Japanese advance 1941-42 56
2 The defeat of Japan, 1945 192
ix
Acknowledgements
This collection of essays is based upon papers given at the Conference on 'The
Pacific War: A Reappraisal after Fifty Years' held at the Imperial War Museum,
London, on 5 and 6 December 1991. The Conference was sponsored by the Japan
Foundation, the Asahi Shimbun, the Daily Telegraph and the Department of War
Studies, King's College London, and was attended by more than a hundred
historians and students from Britain and overseas.
The editor of the current volume would like to thank the Japan Foundation, the
Asahi Shimbun and the Daily Telegraph for their invaluable help which enabled
this Conference to take place. It resulted from close collaboration between the
Department of War Studies and the Imperial War Museum and I wish to thank the
Imperial War Museum and especially its Director, Dr Alan Borg, and Mrs Gill
Smith of the Museum, for helping to make the Conference so successful. Special
thanks also due to Professor Freedman, Head of the Department of War Studies, for
his patient encouragement and support of the project.
I would also like to thank the contributors to this volume for their cooperation
while I was preparing it for publication. Mr David Steeds kindly volunteered to
edit the summary of the paper which was written and sent to me by the late Louis
Allen prior to the opening of the Conference and appears here as Chapter 6.
I am grateful to Vice-Admiral Sir Ian Hogg for permitting Ian Nish to quote from
the H.W. Gwynne papers in Chapter 1, and due appreciation should also go to the
Bodleian Library, Oxford, for allowing Ian Nish to consult these papers. My thanks
also to Colonel Oya and the Archival Section of the Institute for National Defence
Studies for kindly allowing the use of Colonel Oya's Oral History in Chapter 11.
On behalf of the contributors I would also like to thank the staff of the various
archives that were consulted. Copyright material from the Public Record Office,
Kew, appears by permission of the Controller, Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Finally, I wish to thank Tim Farmiloe, Director, and Belinda Holdsworth, Editor,
at Macmillan for their help in preparing the manuscript for publication. I am also
grateful to Anne Rafique of Anne Rafique Editorial Services for her editorial work
on the text
Shortly after the end of the Conference, Mr Louis Allen, who gave a paper,
Group Captain Lord Cheshire, who attended the Conference, and Professor
Christopher Thome, who had initially hoped to speak at the Conference and who
was my tutor when I studied at the University of Sussex during the academic year
1981-2, died. This book is therefore dedicated to the memory of these three
distinguished people.
November 1992 Saki Dockrill
King's College London
X