Assembling more than thirty primary documents - including proposals, memoranda, decrypted messages, and imperial conference reports - Iriye presents diplomatic exchanges from both American and Japanese perspectives to determine how and why the United States and Japan went to war in 1941. A detailed introduction provides background on Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia during the 1930s and economic unrest and isolationism in the United States. Readings add an interpretive dimension, placing Pearl Harbor in global context with essays from American, Japanese, Chinese, Soviet, German, British, and Indonesian perspectives that explain how various countries applied pressure, offered assistance, exacerbated rifts, and significantly affected negotiations and Japan's ultimate decision for war.

Historian Harry Gailey offers a fresh one-volume treatment of the vast Pacific theater in World War II, examining in detail the performance of Japanese and Allied naval, air, and land forces in every major military operation. The War in the Pacific begins with an examination of events leading up to World War II and compares the Japanese and American economies and societies, as well as the chief combatants' military doctrine, training, war plans, and equipment. The book then chronicles all significant actions - from the early Allied defeats in the Philippines, the East Indies, and New Guinea; through the gradual improvement of the Allied position in the Central and Southwest Pacific regions; to the final agonies of the Japanese people, whose leaders refused to admit defeat until the very end. Gailey gives detailed treatment to much that has been neglected or given only cursory mention in previous surveys. The reader thus gains an unparalleled overview of operations, as well as many fresh insights into the behind-the-scenes bickering between the Allies and the interservice squabbles that dogged MacArthur and Nimitz throughout the war. NOTE: This edition does not include a photo insert.

Assembling more than 30 primary documents — including proposals, memoranda, decrypted messages, and imperial conferences — Iriye presents diplomatic exchanges from both American and Japanese perspectives to determine how and why the United States and Japan went to war in 1941. A detailed introduction provides background on Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia during the 1930s and economic unrest and isolationism in the United States. Readings add an interpretive dimension, placing Pearl Harbor in global context; essays from American, Japanese, Chinese, Soviet, German, British, and Indonesian perspectives explain how various countries applied pressure, offered assistance, exacerbated rifts, and significantly affected negotiations and Japan’s ultimate decision for war.

Meticulous detail and insightful analysis combine with a gripping chronological narrative to provide the essential guide to the Pacific Theater of World War II. On December 7, 1941, Japanese fighter planes appeared from the clouds above Pearl Harbor and fundamentally changed the course of history; with this one surprise attack the previously isolationist America was irrevocably thrown into World War II. This definitive history explores each of the major battles that America would fight in the ensuing struggle against Imperial Japan, from the naval clashes at Midway and Coral Sea to the desperate, bloody fighting on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Each chapter reveals both the horrors of the battle and the Allies' grim yet heroic determination to wrest victory from what often seemed to be certain defeat, offering a valuable guide to the long road to victory in the Pacific.

Eighteen essays on the failure of diplomatic efforts by the US and Japan between the two world wars--the problems that thwarted diplomacy, the possible avoidability of the Pacific War. The collection serves as a retroactive study in peace research as well as a study in diplomatic history. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Refighting the Pacific War looks at how World War II in the Pacific might have unfolded differently, giving historians, authors and veterans the opportunity to discuss what happened and what might have happened. Contributors to this alternative history include noted military historians William Bartsch, John Burton, Donald Goldstein, John Lundstrom, Robert Mrazek, Jon Parshall, Douglas Smith, Peter Smith, Barrett Tillman, Anthony Tully, and H. P. Willmott. In all more than thirty Pacific War experts will provide commentary, employing a roundtable panel discussion format. The reader will hear from the experts on how history could and could not have been altered during the course of the war in the Pacific. With multiple opinions, the reader will be provided with an interesting collection of divergent views about the outcome of the war. Refighting the Pacific War focuses largely on naval battles and campaigns, including Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. While the main concentration is on the major naval actions, the book also delves into key island battles, like Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, as well as pre-war and post-war political issues The panelists debate questions like whether the Japanese could have inflicted even greater damage on the U. S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and how Yamamoto might have won at Midway and how such a victory might have impacted the direction of the war. The book extensively studies the opening year of the war when the Japanese war machine seemed unstoppable. Also explored is whether the Pacific War was inevitable and whether the conflict could have ended without the use of the atomic bomb.Vice Admiral Yoji Koda, Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (Ret.), provides the book's Introduction.

This fascinating volume - now available in paperback offers a vivid narrative history of the early stages of the Pacific War, as US and Allied forces desperately tried to slow the Japanese onslaught that began with the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. In many popular histories of the Pacific War, the period from the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor to the US victory at Midway is often passed over because it is seen as a period of darkness. Indeed, it is easy to see the period as one of unmitigated disaster for the Allies, with the fall of the Philippines, Malaya, Burma and the Dutch East Indies, and the wholesale retreat and humiliation at the hands of Japan throughout Southeast Asia. However, there are also stories of courage and determination in the face of overwhelming odds: the stand of the Marines at Wake Island; the fighting retreat in the Philippines that forced the Japanese to take 140 days to accomplish what they had expected would take 50; the fight against the odds at Singapore and over Java; the stirring tale of the American Volunteer Group in China; and the beginnings of resistance to further Japanese expansion. In these events, there are many individual stories that have either not been told or not been told widely which are every bit as gripping as the stories associated with the turning tide after Midway. I Will Run Wild draws on extensive first-hand accounts and fascinating new analysis to tell the story of Americans, British, Dutch, Australians and New Zealanders taken by surprise from Pearl Harbor to Singapore that first Sunday of December 1941, who went on to fight with what they had at hand against a stronger and better-prepared foe, and in so doing built the basis for a reversal of fortune and an eventual victory.