Review by Choice Review
Americans never tire of reading narrative histories about WW II. Gifted naval historian Toll follows his The Pacific Crucible (CH, Jul'12, 49-6430) with this second volume in his trilogy on the Pacific War. Here, he chronicles the titanic struggle between the US and Japan, beginning with the US counteroffensive in the Solomon Islands at Tulagi and Guadalcanal. The author not only focuses on the terror of jungle warfare and the horror of night naval actions at sea, but also reexamines the decisions of generals and admirals (especially Admiral Ernest King) that determined the war's final outcome. Toll is at his best in reviewing the animosities evident within the high commands of power in both Tokyo and Washington. For generations, the US public has known nothing but limited war fought for limited objectives. To his credit, Toll takes readers on an excursion into what can be called "hell in the pacific," where Tarawa and Saipan seared the memories of a generation. This superb work will clearly rank with Samuel Eliot Morrison's classic Victory in the Pacific (1960). Summing Up: Essential. All levels and libraries. --Christopher C. Lovett, Emporia State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
WORLD WAR II in the Pacific embraced half the globe across a watery expanse dotted with jungle-clad islands and barren coral atolls. In the decades before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States war-gamed responses to Japanese aggression in a series of "Orange" plans. These envisioned a rapid counterattack westward across the central Pacific via some combination of the Gilbert, Marshall, Caroline and Mariana Islands to the Philippines. After Dec. 7, 1941, the magnitude of this undertaking became even more evident when Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had assumed command of Allied forces in Australia after escaping from the Philippines, proposed an alternate strategy. MacArthur passionately argued for a return to the Philippines through the southwest Pacific, but the United States Navy stubbornly clung to a line of advance across the central Pacific. Ian W. Toll, no stranger to students of naval history who are familiar with his acclaimed "Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy," has already chronicled the sea battles of the first six months of the war in "Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942." "The Conquering Tide" picks up where "Pacific Crucible" left off and provides a gripping narrative of the central Pacific campaign. Japanese expansion had been blunted at the battle of the Coral Sea and dealt a major defeat at Midway, but a long Japanese finger of expansion thrusting through the Solomon Islands still threatened the Allied lifeline from America's West Coast and Hawaii to Australia. Adm. Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the United States fleet, was determined not only to safeguard this route at all costs, but also to launch a counteroffensive that he hoped would suck in Japanese resources and divert the enemy's attention from other areas of the Pacific. Relying on official correspondence and histories as well as personal reminiscences, Toll reveals his approach early on. While rightly presenting King as a global strategist, he also portrays the rank and file who bore the brunt of implementing that strategy. These include an Australian coast watcher radioing reports from his tenuous perch on Bougainville Island and a young American carrier pilot flying his F4F Wildcat into a swarm of Japanese Zeros. The fighting for Guadalcanal racked up horrendous losses on both sides in men, planes and ships. Shortly after the First Marine Division landed in early August 1942 to retake the island, the Navy suffered one of its worst defeats in an engagement with Japanese cruisers off Savo Island. King took the news in stride and refused to retreat. On the Japanese side, Vice Adm. Gunichi Mikawa was criticized for failing to press the attack against the American transports anchored offshore. Several long months later, Guadalcanal was firmly in American hands and King's strategy of an early counteroffensive to absorb Japanese resources had been vindicated. "By consuming so many scarce cargo ships," Toll writes, "the fight for Guadalcanal threatened to cripple the entire Japanese war economy, which could not function without raw materials imported into the home islands." Toll is strong on the operational details of battle, but he is no less skilled at presenting something that is frequently missing from military histories, a well-rounded depiction of the home front on both sides. Strategic planning conferences in Washington sought to balance military necessities with political realities; the Japanese high command in Tokyo faced similar issues but were far less candid with the Japanese public. Well into 1944, most Japanese civilians knew little of the war's progress except from government news stories that reported all actions as glorious victories. Occasionally, the reader senses a disruption in the narrative or a turn down a dead end. A case in point is a chapter combining descriptions of a "jaded and unfriendly" San Francisco "overrun with servicemen" with tales from the war patrols of the submarine Wahoo. But Toll's descriptions of down-the-throat torpedo attacks against Japanese destroyers are so tense that here, as elsewhere, he successfully entwines a digressive thread with his main story to pull one onward. NOTHING UNDERSCORED America's enormous industrial output better than the numbers of Essex-class fast carriers arriving in the Pacific throughout 1943. "Less than a year earlier," Toll writes, "the Saratoga and Enterprise had been the sole remaining American carriers left in the Pacific. To lay eyes on 13 friendly flattops between sunrise and sunset," he says, quoting Roger Bond, a quartermaster on the Saratoga, "made it 'an awesome, awesome day.'" Once Guadalcanal was secure, this increased amphibious power was turned against the Gilbert Islands and what many thought would be an easy fight for the flat coral speck of Tarawa. It proved anything but, and hard lessons were learned from wildly fluctuating tides, ineffective naval bombardments and poor coordination with air support. Sharon Tosi Lacey chronicled the evolution of these amphibious operations in detail in "Pacific Blitzkrieg: World War II in the Central Pacific," but Toll remains focused on the big picture. "In less than three months' time," he says, "the costly lessons of Tarawa had been refined and integrated into amphibious planning and doctrine." Absorbing the lessons of Tarawa, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, boldly told his subordinates he would strike next at the heart of the Marshall Islands and take the principal island of Kwajalein in one bite rather than nibble away at the encircling atolls. The result was that in less than three months' time, the operations against the Gilbert and Marshall Islands "had kicked down Japan's mid-Pacific barricade." For the United States Navy, the next step was obvious. While there was a continuing debate between the central Pacific line of advance and MacArthur's route through the Philippines, King remained convinced that the central Pacific islands of Guam, Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas held the key to victory. They were so situated that the sea lanes linking Japan to its supply of natural resources in the East Indies could be interdicted and bases could be established for the new B-29 bombers to strike the Japanese home islands. To defend the Marianas, Japanese leaders realized they needed to force the major confrontation that both sides had long contemplated. This was the Battle of the Philippine Sea, whose first day, a frenzy of aerial combat, was known on the American side as the Marianas Turkey Shoot. The account of that day and the next afternoon's strike against retreating Japanese carriers is grippingly told, although Toll discounts as apocryphal Adm. Marc Mitscher's oft-quoted command to "turn on the lights" to aid nighttime carrier landings. Toll rightly acknowledges that the Marianas campaign, coming within days of the invasion of Europe at Normandy, was a stunning achievement. "That two such colossal assaults could be launched against fortified enemy shores, in the same month and at opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass," he writes, "was a supreme demonstration of American military-industrial hegemony." After the conquest of the Marianas, there would be another year of tough fighting in both the southwest Pacific at Leyte and Luzon and the central Pacific on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Much of that story is to come in the third volume of his planned Pacific War trilogy, but Toll convincingly argues that the success in the Marianas was pivotal. "Though Americans were slow to appreciate it," he concludes, "they had just won the decisive victory of the Pacific War." WALTER R. BORNEMAN is the author of "The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King - The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 11, 2015]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This solid second volume in naval historian Toll's planned three-volume history of the U.S. Navy in the WWII's Pacific Theater (after 2012's Pacific Crucible) follows the campaign from the summer of 1942 through the summer of 1944. Those two years constituted the critical period where the war's momentum shifted from the Japanese to the Americans. Based on archival and respected secondary sources, the work focuses on the Central Pacific and begins with the Guadalcanal campaign, with Toll clearly describing the narrow American victory. Through the book's middle he describes the strategic decision-making that drove the direction of the campaign. Toll diverges into specialized topics that parallel or compliment the major naval campaign, including submarine warfare, naval logistics, and activities on the home front and within industry. The work ends with him addressing the decisive victory of U.S. forces in the battle for the Marianas Islands, where American numerical and technological superiority unmistakably pointed toward the war's inevitable outcome. Toll has an engaging writing style and he deftly weaves biographical sketches of the strategic leadership together with strong descriptions of the tactical battles and personal combat narratives. Experts may find nits to pick, but this is an accessible and balanced overview for lay history buffs. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
World War II has generated enormous amounts of literature, and there's no shortage of studies on the American struggle against the Japanese empire after Pearl Harbor. Best-selling author Toll (Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy) has plans for a three-volume treatment of the Pacific contest, and this book, the second in the trilogy, is a worthy successor to Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942, which dealt with the period between the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941) and the Battle of Midway (June 1942). Toll's well-written narrative carries the action forward from the Battle of Midway to the summer of 1944. Told with verve, this account sweeps the reader along with a fascinating detailing of the personalities and strategy on both sides of this grim series of battles on the water and in the air. VERDICT Toll successfully captures the drama and excitement of the Pacific War. Readers of military history will anticipate the final volume in this excellent history that should be a part of every library's collection on World War II. [See Prepub Alert, 3/23/15.]-Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The second volume of naval historian Toll's Pacific War trilogy (Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific: 1941-1942, 2011, etc.). The author's interspersing of personal tales of World War II with the official histories not only brings the action to life, but also clarifies certain facts advanced in personal memoirs. Focusing on the theater led by Chester Nimitz, Toll conscientiously presents characterizations of the Navy, Air Force, and Marine leaders. The divisions of the Pacific theater between the Army and Navy resulted from Gen. Douglas MacArthur's demands for sole leadership, and the bitter rivalries between the services plagued leaders throughout the war, greatly affecting communications and targets. The author devotes a considerable portion of the book to the battle for Guadalcanal, as the fighter and bomber squadrons and naval bombardments paved the way for amphibious landings. With almost as much information about the Japanese leaders as the Americans, Toll's wide view of the Pacific war is enlightening. He lauds the submariners whose primary job was to eliminate Japanese provisioning by sinking merchant shipping and tankers. The policy of hopscotching islands sped up Allied victories, and they avoided invading chosen islands, using bombardment and aerial bombing to neutralize them. The decisive capture of the Marianas in July 1944 signaled the end of Japan's war, but it would take another year to convince them. Toll provides a solid picture of the mindset of the Japanese: their horror of surrender, their rigidity in operational procedures, which made them easy to predict, the rivalries that far surpassed those of the Allies, and the obdurate demands of Emperor Hirohito to fight to the death. Just as well-researched and -written as the first volume, this story of how air and submarine power replaced the Navy's reliance on battleships is an education for all and an enjoyable read in the bargain. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
