Reviews for Race and Migration in Imperial Japan

The average rating for Race and Migration in Imperial Japan based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-05-06 00:00:00 Christian Micheelsen When I was a kid - but a kid who loved history - my mom got me a ticket for a dinner and lecture featuring World War II pilots speaking about their experiences. The thing that struck me then, as it does now, was how hard it was to imagine these old, frail, wrinkled, stooped men as heroes, hale and true. One of these men was Chuck Albury, co-pilot of a B-29 Superfortress called "Bock's Car." On August 9, 1945, shortly after 11:00, Bock's Car dropped a single bomb - Fat Man - from its belly. Fat Man exploded 1500 feet above the City. In a double clap of light, at least 40,000 people were immolated. The discussion about the Bomb was brief, ancillary, and was explained simply as something that had to be done to end the war. The dissonance between the nice old man on the dais, and the bomb he dropped, and the destruction it wrought, was never touched upon. We have been in a long period of World War II commemoration. The ugliness and brutalities of the conflict are often lost amid the platitudes, parades and foreign legion hats. Max Hasting's Retribution is focused on the ugliness and brutality. It is a companion piece to Armageddon, which detailed the last year of World War II in Europe. This sequel-in-kind tells the horrible, bloody history of the last year of World War II in the Pacific. It culminates, of course, in one of the most destructive events ever perpetrated by man: the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I really like Max Hastings. I don't always agree with his conclusions, but he is always evocative. He takes familiar history and makes you look at it from entirely new angles; once you read his books, you feel you have a new understanding, or at the very least, that your mind has been taught to think a little more critically. Retribution skips the over the beginnings of the Pacific War. There is little discussion about the reasons for the war, no analysis of Dutch oil, co-prosperity spheres, or missed warnings. There is no Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Guadalcanal, Coral Sea, or Midway. Instead, the reader is plunged right into the final, bloody months: Burma; China; Iwo Jima; Okinawa; the Philippines; submarine warfare; the bombings of Japan; kamikazes; the atomic bombs; and finally, the surrender on the USS Missouri. Hastings is not a great writer, but he does a superb job of deftly limning characters, creating short, compelling sketches of General William Slim, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, Admirals Nimitz and Halsey, and General Curtis LeMay. Hastings also has time to pound a few more nails into the coffin of General Douglas MacArthur's reputation. But Hastings doesn't get caught up top. Instead, he has done a great deal of primary research on the ordinary soldiers and civilians who lived through this time (of course, only the ordinary soldiers and civilians were young enough at the time to be alive for Hastings to do primary research, but I digress). The result is a seamless transition from top to bottom to top, where you get the command decisions from the generals and admirals, and then feel the consequences felt by the privates and corporals. I wouldn't call Retribution a military history of the Pacific. As Hastings states in his forward, he hasn't set out relate the ins-and-outs of each battle. You can a strategic overview, but nothing about the tactics. I don't know what you'd call this type of book. Perhaps "historical mood piece." You get an unvarnished feel for the war. This book is best read by people who already have a working familiarity with the Pacific War. It moves quickly and assumes a lot. It's good to know the tropes, the currents, the way it all plays out, because there's not a lot of handholding. Indeed, there are some interesting chapters on the war in Burma, the fight in China, and especially the post-atomic invasion of Manchuria by the Russians. However, these are necessarily dealt with swiftly, so you are only getting a nibble of a vaster story. Also, by starting at the last year, you lose all the context. So, beware: you must bring your context with you. The thrust of this book is a critical analysis of the battles, decisions, and sacred cows of the Pacific. For instance, even while giving credit to John Dower's War Without Mercy, Hastings disagrees with Dower's belief that the savagery of the war came from its racial nature. Hastings gives even more time to the firebombings of Tokyo and the decision to drop the atomic bombs. This takes up the last third of the book, and here I had some quibbles. When I first started reading, I knew that Hastings was in the pro-bombing camp. Now, I've read Richard Frank's Downfall, which pretty much tears apart the argument that any invasion of Japan was necessary. To my surprise, Hastings was in complete agreement with Frank. Hastings shows persuasively that Japan was in no condition to repel an invasion. Sure, they would have put together their kamikaze corps, their suicide ships, their dogs with bombs strapped to their bellies. The reality, though, was that there were only a few and battered planes left; no oil to fly them; to pilots to pilot them; that the suicide ships had failed completely at Okinawa; and that the citizenry probably wasn't as gung-ho about mass suicide as the military clique thought. Besides, American submarines had effectively blockaded the island nation, making it impossible for them to get more oil. Japan would not have been able to hold out for long. Yet, Hastings believes there were still good reasons for the atomic bombs (though he is oddly of the belief that the Tokyo firebombings were unnecessary in light of the airtight sub blockade). Hastings thinks that the bomb served the twin aims of retributive justice and keeping the Russian bear at bay. I'm not going to get into a lengthy discussion on this, but suffice it to say, I did not find his moral arguments compelling. Hastings is a historian, not a philosopher, and when he starts getting into philosophical arguments, the book just gets muddled. It would've been better if he had delineated a philosophical school and then applied it to these facts. Instead, he speaks in moral vagaries, saying that the Japanese had to be punished for starting the war. Essentially, the argument is that the "brought it on themselves." That begs the question: how is burning 12 year-old school girls, old men and women, infants and invalids, punishment for those who started the war? What did they do? Is this an argument for collective guilt, such as the Germans were convicted of? If so, Hastings should have made that contention, rather than the specious and brutal notion that innocent and ordinary civilians should be crisped by the splitting of atoms for the sins of its political leaders. (Ironically, I recall that when Doolittle's bombers took off from the Hornet and bombed Tokyo back in 1942, they were told not to bomb the Imperial Palace, which would've been one way of actually punishing the wrongdoers. Apparently, it is passe for one government to try and kill the leaders of the opposing government. This is why the British refused to get on board with attempts to assassinate Hitler. Isn't that funny in a disgusting way? One government has a problem with another government, so they bring fire down upon the civilians who have no say or control over what takes place, as a way to punish that government. Maybe John Lennon was on to something. Imagine, indeed.) Anyway, I heartily endorse this book, and all of Max Hastings work. It is, at the least, provocative.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-06 00:00:00 Gary Campbell It is perhaps inevitable that an oral historian's honest look at both sides of the fence would penetrate most into a Japanese experience, namely that of a child subjected to non-nuclear bombardment. Yet it's only one of a thousand bright pieces in Hasting's customary mosaic.