Review by Choice Review
These essays on the Pacific theater of WW II, written by a group of international scholars representing Australia, Great Britain, Japan, and the US, cover the well-known events at Pearl Harbor, the Coral Sea, and Midway; MacArthur's push to the Philippines; Nimitz's island campaign in the central Pacific; Okinawa; and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The authors also touch on areas less well known, such as the first unified command in the cooperative American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) defense of the Pacific and Indian Ocean theater, the campaign in Burma, and the military contributions of Australia and New Zealand. The most intriguing chapters are by Robert Love, who asserts that Admiral Ernest King was the unsung hero of Midway; H. P. Wilmott, who details the faulty Japanese planning, execution, and gross overestimation of US losses (e.g., the destruction of 16 US carriers at Leyte Gulf); Bruce Gudmundsson, who describes the Japanese and US tactics used on Okinawa; and Richard Frank, who analyzes the controversy over the US use of atomic weapons. A chronology, detailed maps, and photographs greatly enhance this excellent volume on the Pacific phase of WW II. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. W. T. Lindley Union University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
This big, thoroughly satisfactory introduction to the Pacific War, including its diplomatic prelude of deteriorating Japanese-American relations, boasts contributors who are all highly qualified. Some, such as Dennis Showalter, are virtually household names to World War II buffs, while others, less well known, saliently include Tomoyuki Ishizu on the opening amphibious operations and Joseph Alexander on the amphibious counterattack that carried Americans back across the Pacific. H. P. Willmott is particularly trenchant on the subject of Japanese naval strategy after Midway, in which the Japanese lost the rest of their naval opportunities. The accompanying photographs constitute a definite strength, inasmuch as, while not overwhelming the text, they are reproduced at large-enough scale, cover a wide range of subjects--from Japanese tanks on Chinese roads to American tanks on Pacific island hills--and exclude the overly familiar image. The combined efforts of the contributors also include annotation and bibliography well suited to leading Pacific War neophytes to further research. --Roland Green Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
