Retribution_ The Battle For Japan, 1944-45 Part 1

Retribution_ The Battle for j.a.pan, 1944-45.

by Max Hastings.

INTRODUCTION.

Sir Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower's deputy supreme commander in Europe in 194445, suggested that warriors educating themselves for future conflicts should study the early phases of past ones: "There are no big battalions1 or blank cheques then," he wrote ruefully. In the first campaigns, nations which are victims rather than initiators of aggression enjoy scanty choices. They strive for survival with inadequate resources, often unsuitable commanders, all the handicaps of fighting on an enemy's terms. Later, if they are granted time fully to mobilise, they may achieve the luxury of options, of might equal or superior to that of the enemy, of the certainty of final victory tempered only by debate about how to secure this most swiftly and cheaply. Tedder and his Allied comrades experienced all these sensations. or blank cheques then," he wrote ruefully. In the first campaigns, nations which are victims rather than initiators of aggression enjoy scanty choices. They strive for survival with inadequate resources, often unsuitable commanders, all the handicaps of fighting on an enemy's terms. Later, if they are granted time fully to mobilise, they may achieve the luxury of options, of might equal or superior to that of the enemy, of the certainty of final victory tempered only by debate about how to secure this most swiftly and cheaply. Tedder and his Allied comrades experienced all these sensations.

For students of history, however, the manner in which the Second World War ended is even more fascinating than that in which it began. Giants of their respective nations, or rather mortal men cast into giants' roles, resolved the greatest issues of the twentieth century on battlefields in three dimensions, and in the war rooms of their capitals. Some of the most populous societies on earth teemed in flux. Technology displayed a terrifying maturity. Churchill ent.i.tled the closing volume of his war memoirs Triumph and Tragedy. Triumph and Tragedy. For millions, 194445 brought liberation, the banishment of privation, fear and oppression; but air attack during those years killed larger numbers of people than in the rest of the conflict put together. Posterity knows that the war ended in August 1945. However, it would have provided scant comfort to the men who risked their lives in the Pacific island battles, as well as in the other b.l.o.o.d.y campaigns of that spring and summer, to be a.s.sured that the tumult would soon be stilled. Soldiers may accept a need to be the first to die in a war, but there is often an unseemly scramble to avoid becoming the last. For millions, 194445 brought liberation, the banishment of privation, fear and oppression; but air attack during those years killed larger numbers of people than in the rest of the conflict put together. Posterity knows that the war ended in August 1945. However, it would have provided scant comfort to the men who risked their lives in the Pacific island battles, as well as in the other b.l.o.o.d.y campaigns of that spring and summer, to be a.s.sured that the tumult would soon be stilled. Soldiers may accept a need to be the first to die in a war, but there is often an unseemly scramble to avoid becoming the last.

I have written Retribution Retribution as a counterpart to my earlier book as a counterpart to my earlier book Armageddon, Armageddon, which describes the 194445 struggle for Germany. It is hard to exaggerate the differences between the endgames of the Asian and European wars. In the west, American strategy was dominated by a determination to confront the German army in Europe at the first possible moment-which proved much later than the U.S. joint chiefs of staff desired. It was taken for granted that Allied armies must defeat the main forces of the enemy. Uncertainty focused upon how this should be achieved, and where Soviet and Anglo-American armies might meet. The possibility of offering terms to the n.a.z.is was never entertained. which describes the 194445 struggle for Germany. It is hard to exaggerate the differences between the endgames of the Asian and European wars. In the west, American strategy was dominated by a determination to confront the German army in Europe at the first possible moment-which proved much later than the U.S. joint chiefs of staff desired. It was taken for granted that Allied armies must defeat the main forces of the enemy. Uncertainty focused upon how this should be achieved, and where Soviet and Anglo-American armies might meet. The possibility of offering terms to the n.a.z.is was never entertained.

In the Far East, by contrast, there was much less appet.i.te for a ground showdown. Some in the Allied camp argued that the commitment to impose unconditional surrender upon the j.a.panese should be moderated, if this would avert the necessity for a bloodbath in the home islands. Only in the Philippines and Burma did U.S. and British ground forces encounter, and finally destroy, major j.a.panese armies-though none was as large as the enemy host deployed in China. The U.S. Navy and Army Air Forces (USAAF) sought to demonstrate that blockade and bombardment could render unnecessary a b.l.o.o.d.y land campaign in the j.a.panese home islands. Their hopes were fulfilled in the most momentous and terrible fashion.

The phrase "heavy casualties" recurs in studies of the eastern conflict. It is often used to categorise American losses on Guadalca.n.a.l, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and in smaller island battles. It deserves more sceptical scrutiny than it usually receives, however, being justified only in relation to the relatively small forces engaged, and to the expectation of the American people that a nation as rich and technologically powerful as their own should be able to gain victory without great loss of blood. The lives of some 103,000 Americans were sacrificed to defeat j.a.pan, along with those of more than 30,000 British, Indian, Australian and other Commonwealth servicemen, in addition to those who perished in captivity. The U.S. pro rata casualty rate in the Pacific was three and a half times that in Europe. America's total loss, however, represented only a small fraction of the toll which war extracted from the Soviets, the Germans and j.a.panese, and only 1 percent of the total deaths in j.a.pan's Asian war. Americans came to expect in the Pacific a favourable exchange rate of one U.S. casualty for every six or seven j.a.panese. They were dismayed when, on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the enemy fared better, losing only in the ratio of 1.25:1 and 1.3:1, respectively, though almost all the j.a.panese losses were fatal, compared with less than one-third of the American. Pervading U.S. strategy was a cultural conceit about the necessary cost of victory. This proved justified, but should not have been taken for granted in a conflict between major industrial nations.

I agree wholeheartedly2 with American scholars Richard Frank and Robert Newman that underpinning most post-war a.n.a.lysis of the eastern war is a delusion that the nuclear climax represented the bloodiest possible outcome. On the contrary, alternative scenarios suggest that if the conflict had continued for even a few weeks longer, more people of all nations-and especially j.a.pan-would have lost their lives than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The myth that the j.a.panese were ready to surrender anyway has been so comprehensively discredited by modern research that it is astonishing some writers continue to give it credence. j.a.panese intransigence does not of itself validate the use of atomic bombs, but it should frame the context of debate. with American scholars Richard Frank and Robert Newman that underpinning most post-war a.n.a.lysis of the eastern war is a delusion that the nuclear climax represented the bloodiest possible outcome. On the contrary, alternative scenarios suggest that if the conflict had continued for even a few weeks longer, more people of all nations-and especially j.a.pan-would have lost their lives than perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The myth that the j.a.panese were ready to surrender anyway has been so comprehensively discredited by modern research that it is astonishing some writers continue to give it credence. j.a.panese intransigence does not of itself validate the use of atomic bombs, but it should frame the context of debate.

"Retributive justice" is among the dictionary definitions of nemesis. nemesis. Readers must judge for themselves whether the fate which befell j.a.pan in 1945 merits that description, as I believe it does. The war in the Far East extended across an even wider canvas than the struggle for Europe: China, Burma, India, the Philippines, together with a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Its courses were directed by one of the most extraordinary galaxies of leaders, military and political, the world has ever seen: j.a.pan's emperor, generals and admirals; Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong; Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, Stalin; MacArthur and Nimitz; LeMay, Slim, Mountbatten, Stilwell-and the men who built the bomb. My purpose, as in Readers must judge for themselves whether the fate which befell j.a.pan in 1945 merits that description, as I believe it does. The war in the Far East extended across an even wider canvas than the struggle for Europe: China, Burma, India, the Philippines, together with a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Its courses were directed by one of the most extraordinary galaxies of leaders, military and political, the world has ever seen: j.a.pan's emperor, generals and admirals; Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong; Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman, Stalin; MacArthur and Nimitz; LeMay, Slim, Mountbatten, Stilwell-and the men who built the bomb. My purpose, as in Armageddon, Armageddon, is to portray a ma.s.sive and terrible human experience, set within a chronological framework, rather than to revisit the detailed narrative of campaigns that have been described by many authors, and which anyway could not be contained within a single volume. This book focuses upon how and why things were done, what it was like to do them, and what manner of men and women did them. is to portray a ma.s.sive and terrible human experience, set within a chronological framework, rather than to revisit the detailed narrative of campaigns that have been described by many authors, and which anyway could not be contained within a single volume. This book focuses upon how and why things were done, what it was like to do them, and what manner of men and women did them.

Many of us gained our first, wonderfully romantic notion of the war against j.a.pan by watching the movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. South Pacific. Memories of its scenes pervaded my consciousness as I wrote Memories of its scenes pervaded my consciousness as I wrote Retribution. Retribution. For all that the film is Hollywood entertainment, it catches a few simple truths about what the struggle was like for Americans. A host of innocent young men and a scattering of young women found themselves transplanted into a wildly exotic setting. The Pacific's natural beauties provided inadequate compensation, alas, for the discomforts and emotional stresses which they endured amid coral atolls and palm trees. For every fighting soldier, sailor and Marine who suffered the terrors of battle, many more men experienced merely heat and boredom at some G.o.dforsaken island base. The phrase "the greatest generation" is sometimes used in the U.S. to describe those who lived through those times. This seems inapt. The people of World War II may have adopted different fashions and danced to different music from us, but human behaviour, aspirations and fears do not alter much. It is more appropriate to call them, without jealousy, "the generation to which the greatest things happened." For all that the film is Hollywood entertainment, it catches a few simple truths about what the struggle was like for Americans. A host of innocent young men and a scattering of young women found themselves transplanted into a wildly exotic setting. The Pacific's natural beauties provided inadequate compensation, alas, for the discomforts and emotional stresses which they endured amid coral atolls and palm trees. For every fighting soldier, sailor and Marine who suffered the terrors of battle, many more men experienced merely heat and boredom at some G.o.dforsaken island base. The phrase "the greatest generation" is sometimes used in the U.S. to describe those who lived through those times. This seems inapt. The people of World War II may have adopted different fashions and danced to different music from us, but human behaviour, aspirations and fears do not alter much. It is more appropriate to call them, without jealousy, "the generation to which the greatest things happened."

I chose my terms of reference partly in order to depict examples from a wide range of land, sea and air battles. Though there were some great men upon the stage, the history of World War II is, for the most part, a story of statesmen and commanders flawed as all of us are, striving to grapple with issues and dilemmas larger than their talents. How many people are fitted to grapple with decisions of the magnitude imposed by global war? How many commanders in history's great conflicts can be deemed competent, far less brilliant?

While most writers address one eastern campaign or another-Burma, strategic bombing, the war at sea, the island a.s.saults-I have attempted to set all these in context, component parts of the struggle to defeat j.a.pan. I have omitted only the experience of indigenous anti-colonial resistance movements, an important subject so large that it would have overwhelmed my pages. Where possible without impairing coherence, I have omitted familiar anecdotes and dialogue. I have explored some aspects of the struggle that have been neglected by Western authors, notably the Chinese experience and the Russian a.s.sault on Manchuria. Nehru once said scornfully: "The average European concept of Asia is an appendage to Europe and America-a great ma.s.s of people fallen low, who are to be lifted by the good works of the West." Twenty years ago, that princely historian Ronald Spector puzzled over the fact that Westerners have always been less interested in the war with j.a.pan than in the struggle against Germany. Remoteness, both geographical and cultural, is the obvious explanation, together with our often morbid fascination with the n.a.z.is. Today, however, readers as well as writers seem ready to bridge the chasm with Asia. Its affairs loom huge in our world. An understanding of its recent past is essential to a grasp of its present, especially when Chinese grievances about the 193145 era remain a key issue in relations between Beijing and Tokyo.

Some set pieces-Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, Okinawa-are bound to be familiar. I have attempted no primary research on the dropping of the atomic bombs, because the archives have been exhaustively explored and the published literature is vast. Other episodes and experiences may come fresh to readers. I have addressed the issue of why Australia seemed almost to vanish from the war after 1943. Australian soldiers played a notable, sometimes dazzling, part in the North African and New Guinea campaigns. Yet the country's internal dissentions, together with American dominance of the Pacific theatre, caused the Australian Army to be relegated to a frankly humiliating role in 194445.

All authors of history books owe debts to earlier chroniclers, and it is important to acknowledge these. I am following a path trodden with special distinction by Ronald Spector in Eagle Against the Sun, Eagle Against the Sun, Richard Frank in Richard Frank in Downfall, Downfall, and Christopher Thorne in and Christopher Thorne in Allies of a Kind. Allies of a Kind. John Dower's books offer indispensable insights into the j.a.panese experience. John Toland's John Dower's books offer indispensable insights into the j.a.panese experience. John Toland's The Rising Sun The Rising Sun is not a scholarly work, but it contains significant j.a.panese anecdotal material. These are only the most notable general studies of a period for which the specialised literature is vast. I should add George MacDonald Fraser's is not a scholarly work, but it contains significant j.a.panese anecdotal material. These are only the most notable general studies of a period for which the specialised literature is vast. I should add George MacDonald Fraser's Quartered Safe Out Here, Quartered Safe Out Here, perhaps the most vivid private soldier's memoir of the Second World War, describing his 1945 experience with Slim's Fourteenth Army. perhaps the most vivid private soldier's memoir of the Second World War, describing his 1945 experience with Slim's Fourteenth Army.

In Britain and the U.S. I have interviewed some veterans, but focused my research chiefly upon the huge ma.n.u.script and doc.u.mentary collections which are available. My splendid Russian researcher, Dr. Luba Vinogradovna, conducted interviews with Red Army veterans, and also translated a ma.s.s of doc.u.ments and written narratives. In China and j.a.pan I have sought out eyewitnesses. Most published Chinese and j.a.panese memoirs reveal more about what people claim to have done than about what they thought. I will not suggest that face-to-face interviews with a Westerner necessarily persuaded Chinese and j.a.panese witnesses to open their hearts, but I hope that the tales which emerge make some characters seem flesh and blood, rather than mere strangled Asian names speaking tortured English.

In most Western accounts of the war, the j.a.panese remain stubbornly opaque. It is striking how seldom j.a.panese historians are quoted in U.S. and British scholarly discussions. This is not, I think, a reflection of American or British nationalistic conceit, but rather of the lack of intellectual rigour which characterises even most modern j.a.panese accounts. There is a small contributory point, that literal translations from the j.a.panese language cause statements and dialogue to sound stilted. Where possible here, I have taken the liberty of adjusting quoted j.a.panese speech and writing into English vernacular. Scholars might suggest that this gives a misleading idea of the j.a.panese use of language. It may help, however, to make Asian characters more accessible. With the same intention, although the j.a.panese place surnames before given names, I have reversed this in accordance with Western practice.

I have adopted some other styles for convenience. The j.a.panese called their Manchurian puppet state "Manchukuo." Modern Chinese never speak of "Manchuria," but of "the north-eastern provinces." Nonetheless, I have here retained the name "Manchuria," save when the j.a.panese political creation is discussed. Modern Indonesia is referred to as the Dutch East Indies, Malaysia as Malaya, Taiwan as Formosa and so on. After much vacillation, however, I have adopted modern pinyin spellings for Chinese names and places, because these are more familiar to a modern readership. I have, however, accepted the loss of consistency involved in retaining the familiar usages "Kuomintang" and "Manchukuo." Naval and military operations are timed by the twenty-four-hour clock, while the twelve-hour clock is used in describing the doings of civilians.

China is the country which today provides a historical researcher with the greatest revelations. I first visited it in 1971 as a TV film-maker, and again in 1985 when writing a book on the Korean War. On neither a.s.signment was it was possible to break through the ironclad culture of propaganda. In 2005, by contrast, I found ordinary Chinese welcoming, relaxed and remarkably open in conversation. Many, for instance, do not hesitate to a.s.sert a respect for Chiang Kai-shek, and reservations about Mao Zedong, which were unavowable thirty years ago.

Some Chinese observed bitterly to me that they found the Maoist Cultural Revolution a worse personal experience than the Second World War. Almost all those with Nationalist a.s.sociations suffered the confiscation and destruction of their personal papers and photographs. Several served long terms of imprisonment-one because wartime service as a Soviet-sponsored guerrilla caused him to be denounced twenty years later as a Russian agent. I conducted almost all my own interviews in China and j.a.pan, with the help of interpreters, but four former Chinese "comfort women" of the j.a.panese army declined to tell their stories to a man and a Westerner, and instead talked to my splendid researcher Gu Renquan.

In modern China, as in Russia and to some degree j.a.pan, there is no tradition of objective historical research. Absurd claims are thus made even by academics, unsupported by evidence. This is especially true about the China-j.a.pan war, which remains a focus of national pa.s.sions, fomented by the Chinese government for political purposes. An appropriately sceptical Western researcher, however, can still achieve much more than was possible a decade or two ago. I found it exhilarating to stand on the snowclad border with Russia, where Soviet armies swept across the Ussuri River in August 1945; to clamber through the tunnels of the ma.s.sive old j.a.panese fortress at Hutou, some of which have today been reopened as part of the local "Fortress Relics Museum of j.a.panese Aggression Against China" to meet peasants who witnessed the battles. In a cafe in Hutou, at nine in the morning local people were cl.u.s.tered around the big TV, watching one of the melodramas about the j.a.panese war which Chinese film-makers produce in industrial quant.i.ties. These celluoid epics, echoing with the diabolical laughter of j.a.panese occupiers as they slaughter heroic Chinese peasants, make such Hollywood war movies as The Sands of Iwo Jima The Sands of Iwo Jima seem models of understatement. seem models of understatement.

When I asked Jiang Fushun, in 1945 a teenage peasant in Hutou, if there were any happy moments in his childhood, he responded bitterly: "How can you ask such a question? Our lives were unspeakable. There was only work, work, work, knowing that if we crossed the j.a.panese in any way, we would go the way of others who were thrown into the river with their hands tied to a rock." In his flat in Harbin, eighty-four-year-old Li Fenggui vividly reenacted for me the motions of a bayonet fight in which he engaged with a j.a.panese soldier in 1944.

Likewise, in j.a.pan, at the tiny doll's house in a Toyko suburb where he lives, Lt. Cmdr. Haruki Iki cherishes a plastic model of the torpedo bomber which he once flew, alongside a garish painting of the British battle cruiser Repulse, Repulse, which he sank in 1941. To meet him is to encounter a legend. At eighty-seven, former navy pilot Kunio Iwas.h.i.ta retains the energy and quick movements of a man thirty years younger. Today he is known in j.a.pan as "Mr. Zero." I met him when he had just returned from the premiere of a lurid new j.a.panese movie epic, which he sank in 1941. To meet him is to encounter a legend. At eighty-seven, former navy pilot Kunio Iwas.h.i.ta retains the energy and quick movements of a man thirty years younger. Today he is known in j.a.pan as "Mr. Zero." I met him when he had just returned from the premiere of a lurid new j.a.panese movie epic, Men of the Yamato. Men of the Yamato. Iwas.h.i.ta overflew the vast battleship on the morning she was sunk in April 1945, and has never forgotten the spectacle. He said with a wry smile: "I sobbed all the way through the film." Iwas.h.i.ta overflew the vast battleship on the morning she was sunk in April 1945, and has never forgotten the spectacle. He said with a wry smile: "I sobbed all the way through the film."

I asked another navy fighter pilot, Toshio Hijikata, how he and his comrades spent their hours on Kyushu in the early months of 1945, as they prepared to scramble to meet American B-29 formations in the same fashion as RAF pilots waited for the Luftwaffe five years earlier, during the Battle of Britain. "We played a lot of bridge," said Hijikata. "It was part of the whole ethos of the Imperial j.a.panese Navy, which tried so hard to emulate the Royal Navy." The notion of j.a.panese fliers calling "three spades, four clubs" to each other between sorties seemed irresistibly unexpected and droll.

My daughter once observed in a domestic context: "Life is what you are used to, Daddy." This seems an important truth in understanding human responses to circ.u.mstances. To a remarkable degree the young, especially, adapt to predicaments which might seem unendurable, if these are all that they have known. Across the globe, the generation which grew to maturity amid the Second World War learned to accept war's terrors and privations as a norm. This applies to many people whose stories I seek to record in this book.

Some general observations can be made about evidence, of which the most obvious is that scepticism is in order, even when reading formal contemporary minutes of meetings, unit war diaries or ships' logs. Few official narratives in any language explicitly acknowledge disaster, panic or failure, or admit that people ran away. Likewise, many splendid lines attributed by historians to partic.i.p.ants are probably apocryphal. People find it infinitely easier to imagine afterwards what should have been said in crises, rather than what actually was. Witticisms which survive through the generations retain a certain validity, however, if they seem to catch a spirit of the moment, like "Nuts!," the alleged American response to a German demand for surrender at Bastogne.

Oral evidence collected in the early twenty-first century by interviewing men and women who witnessed events more than sixty years earlier is immensely valuable in ill.u.s.trating moods and att.i.tudes. But old people have forgotten many things, or can claim to remember too much. Those who survive today were very young in the war years. They held junior ranks and offices, if indeed any at all. They knew nothing worth rehearsing about events beyond their own eyesight and earshot. The reflections of their age group cannot be considered representative of a nation's mind-set and behaviour in 194445. It is essential to reinforce their tales with written testimony from those who were at the time more mature and exalted.

It is notable how swiftly historical perceptions change. For instance, in post-war j.a.pan General Douglas MacArthur was a hero, an icon, almost a G.o.d, in recognition of his perceived generosity to the j.a.panese people in defeat. But a modern historian, Kazutoshi Hando, says: "In j.a.pan today, MacArthur is almost unknown." Similarly, a Chinese historian told me that few of his young compatriots have heard of Stalin. I feel obliged to restate a caveat which I entered in the foreword of Armageddon Armageddon: statistics given here are the best available, but all large numbers related to the Second World War must be treated warily. Figures detailing American and British activities-though emphatically not their contemporary estimates of losses inflicted on the enemy-are credible, but those of other nations are disputed, or represent guesstimates. For instance, although the rape of Nanjing falls outside the compa.s.s of my narrative, I am persuaded that Iris Chang's well-known book claims a death toll for the city in excess of its actual, rather than previously recorded, 1937 population. This does not invalidate the portrait of horror which she depicts, but it does ill.u.s.trate the difficulty of establishing credible, never mind conclusive, numbers.

The longer I write books about the Second World War, the more conscious I become that a fundamental humility is necessary when offering judgements upon those who conducted it. Harold Macmillan, British minister in the Mediterranean 194345 and later prime minister, once told me a story of his last encounter with Field Marshal Earl Alexander, wartime Allied commander-in-chief in Italy: "We were going into the theatre together, and I turned to him and said one of those old man's things: 'Alex, wouldn't it be lovely to have it all to do over again.' Alexander shook his head decisively. 'Oh, no,' he said. 'We might not do nearly so well.'" Those of us who have never been obliged to partic.i.p.ate in a great war seem wise to count our blessings and incline a bow to all those, mighty and humble, who did so.

-MAX HASTINGS Hungerford, England, and Kamogi, Kenya April 2007

CHAPTER ONE.

Dilemmas and Decisions

1. War in the East

OUR UNDERSTANDING of the events of 193945 might be improved by adding a plural and calling them the Second World Wars. The only common strand in the struggles which Germany and j.a.pan unleashed was that they chose most of the same adversaries. The only important people who sought to conduct the eastern and western conflicts as a unified enterprise were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and their respective chiefs of staff. After the 7 December 1941 j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor caused the United States to become a belligerent, Allied warlords addressed the vexed issue of allocating resources to rival theatres. Germany was by far the Allies' more dangerous enemy, while j.a.pan was the focus of greater American animus. In 1942, at the battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway a month later, the U.S. Navy won victories which halted the j.a.panese advance across the Pacific, and removed the danger that Australia might be invaded. of the events of 193945 might be improved by adding a plural and calling them the Second World Wars. The only common strand in the struggles which Germany and j.a.pan unleashed was that they chose most of the same adversaries. The only important people who sought to conduct the eastern and western conflicts as a unified enterprise were Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and their respective chiefs of staff. After the 7 December 1941 j.a.panese attack on Pearl Harbor caused the United States to become a belligerent, Allied warlords addressed the vexed issue of allocating resources to rival theatres. Germany was by far the Allies' more dangerous enemy, while j.a.pan was the focus of greater American animus. In 1942, at the battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway a month later, the U.S. Navy won victories which halted the j.a.panese advance across the Pacific, and removed the danger that Australia might be invaded.

Through the two years which followed, America's navy grew in strength, while her Marines and soldiers slowly and painfully expelled the j.a.panese from the island strongholds which they had seized. But President Roosevelt and General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, resisted the demands of Admiral Ernest King, the U.S. Navy's C-in-C, and of General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander in the south-west Pacific, for the eastern theatre to become the princ.i.p.al focus of America's war effort. In 1943 and 1944, America's vast industrial mobilisation made it possible to send large forces of warships and planes east as well as west. Most U.S. ground troops, however, were dispatched across the Atlantic, to fight the Germans. Once j.a.pan's onslaught was checked, the Allies' eastern commanders were given enough forces progressively to push back the enemy, but insufficient to pursue a swift victory. The second-cla.s.s status of the j.a.panese war was a source of resentment to those who had to fight it, but represented strategic wisdom.

The U.S. and Britain dispatched separate companies to Europe and Asia, to perform in different plays. Stalin, meanwhile, was interested in the conflict with j.a.pan only insofar as it might offer opportunities to ama.s.s booty. "The Russians may be expected to move against the j.a.panese when it suits their pleasure," suggested an American diplomat in an October 1943 memorandum to the State Department, "which may not be until the final3 phases of the war-and then only in order to be able to partic.i.p.ate in dictating terms to the j.a.panese and to establish new strategic frontiers." Until 8 August 1945, Soviet neutrality in the east was so scrupulously preserved that American B-29s which forced-landed on Russian territory had to stay there, not least to enable their hosts to copy the design. phases of the war-and then only in order to be able to partic.i.p.ate in dictating terms to the j.a.panese and to establish new strategic frontiers." Until 8 August 1945, Soviet neutrality in the east was so scrupulously preserved that American B-29s which forced-landed on Russian territory had to stay there, not least to enable their hosts to copy the design.

To soldiers, sailors and airmen, any battlefield beyond their own compa.s.s seemed remote. "What was happening in Europe really didn't matter to us," said Lt. John Cameron-Hayes of 23rd Indian Mountain Artillery, fighting in Burma. More surprising was the failure of Germany and j.a.pan to coordinate their war efforts, even to the limited extent that geographical separation might have permitted. These two nominal allies, whose fortunes became conjoined in December 1941, conducted operations in almost absolute isolation from each other. Hitler had no wish for Asians to meddle in his Aryan war. Indeed, despite Himmler's best efforts to prove that j.a.panese possessed some Aryan blood, Hitler remained embarra.s.sed by the a.s.sociation of the n.a.z.i cause with Untermenschen Untermenschen. He received the j.a.panese amba.s.sador in Berlin twice after Pearl Harbor, then not for a year. When Tokyo in 1942 proposed an a.s.sault on Madagascar, the German navy opposed any infringement of the two allies' agreed spheres of operations, divided at 70 degrees of longitude.

A j.a.panese a.s.sault on the Soviet Union in 194142, taking the Russians in the rear as they struggled to stem Hitler's invasion, might have yielded important rewards for the Axis. Stalin was terrified of such an eventuality. The July 1941 oil embargo and a.s.set freeze imposed by the U.S. on j.a.pan-Roosevelt's clumsiest diplomatic act in the months before Pearl Harbor-was partly designed to deter Tokyo from joining Hitler's Operation Barbarossa. j.a.pan's bellicose foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka, resigned in the same month because his government rejected his urgings to attack.

Only in January 1943, towards the end of the disaster of Stalingrad, did Hitler make a belated and unsuccessful attempt to persuade j.a.pan to join his Russian war. By then, the moment had pa.s.sed at which such an intervention might have altered history. Germany's Asian ally was far too heavily committed in the Pacific, South-East Asia and China to gratuitously engage a new adversary. So perfunctory was Berlin's relationship with Tokyo that when Hitler gifted to his ally two state-of-the-art U-boats for reproduction, German manufacturers complained about breaches of their patent rights. One of j.a.pan's most serious deficiencies in 194445 was lack of a portable anti-tank weapon, but no attempt was made to copy the cheap and excellent German Panzerfaust Panzerfaust.

j.a.pan and Germany were alike fascistic states. Michael Howard has written: "Both [nations'] programmes were fuelled4 by a militarist ideology that rejected the bourgeois liberalism of the capitalist West and glorified war as the inevitable and necessary destiny of mankind." The common German and j.a.panese commitment to making war for its own sake provides the best reason for rejecting pleas in mitigation of either nation's conduct. The two Axis partners, however, pursued unrelated ambitions. The only obvious manifestation of shared interest was that j.a.panese planning was rooted in an a.s.sumption of German victory. Like Italy in June 1940, j.a.pan in December 1941 decided that the old colonial powers' difficulties in Europe exposed their remoter properties to rapine. j.a.pan sought to seize access to vital oil and raw materials, together with s.p.a.ce for ma.s.s migration from the home islands. by a militarist ideology that rejected the bourgeois liberalism of the capitalist West and glorified war as the inevitable and necessary destiny of mankind." The common German and j.a.panese commitment to making war for its own sake provides the best reason for rejecting pleas in mitigation of either nation's conduct. The two Axis partners, however, pursued unrelated ambitions. The only obvious manifestation of shared interest was that j.a.panese planning was rooted in an a.s.sumption of German victory. Like Italy in June 1940, j.a.pan in December 1941 decided that the old colonial powers' difficulties in Europe exposed their remoter properties to rapine. j.a.pan sought to seize access to vital oil and raw materials, together with s.p.a.ce for ma.s.s migration from the home islands.

A U.S. historian has written of j.a.pan's Daitoa Senso Daitoa Senso, Greater East Asian War: "j.a.pan did not invade independent countries5 in southern Asia. It invaded colonial outposts which the Westerners had dominated for generations, taking absolutely for granted their racial and cultural superiority over their Asian subjects." This is true as far as it goes. Yet j.a.pan's seizures of British, Dutch, French and American possessions must surely be seen in the context of its earlier aggression in China, where for a decade its armies had flaunted their ruthlessness towards fellow Asians. After seizing Manchuria in 1931, the j.a.panese in 1937 began their piecemeal pillage of China, which continued until 1945. in southern Asia. It invaded colonial outposts which the Westerners had dominated for generations, taking absolutely for granted their racial and cultural superiority over their Asian subjects." This is true as far as it goes. Yet j.a.pan's seizures of British, Dutch, French and American possessions must surely be seen in the context of its earlier aggression in China, where for a decade its armies had flaunted their ruthlessness towards fellow Asians. After seizing Manchuria in 1931, the j.a.panese in 1937 began their piecemeal pillage of China, which continued until 1945.

Inaugurating its "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," j.a.pan perceived itself merely as a latecomer to the contest for empire in which other great nations had engaged for centuries. It saw only hypocrisy and racism in the objections of Western imperial powers to its bid to match their own generous interpretations of what const.i.tuted legitimate overseas interests. Such a view was not completely baseless. j.a.pan's pre-war economic difficulties and pretensions to a policy of "Asia for Asians" inspired some sympathy among subject peoples of the European empires. This vanished, however, in the face of the occupiers' behaviour in China and elsewhere. j.a.panese pogroms of Chinese in South-East Asia were designed partly to win favour with indigenous peoples, but these in turn soon found themselves suffering appallingly. The new rulers were inhibited from treating their conquests humanely, even had they wished to do so, by the fact that the purpose of seizure was to strip them of food and raw materials for the benefit of j.a.pan's people. Western audiences have been told much since 1945 about j.a.panese wartime inhumanity to British, Americans and Australians who fell into their hands. This pales into absolute insignificance beside the scale of their mistreatment of Asians.

It is a fascinating speculation, how events might have evolved if the U.S. and its Philippines dependency had been excluded from j.a.panese war plans in December 1941; had Tokyo confined itself to occupying British Malaya and Burma, along with the Dutch East Indies. Roosevelt would certainly have wished to confront j.a.panese aggression and enter the war-the oil embargo imposed by the U.S. following j.a.pan's advance into Indochina was the tipping factor in deciding Tokyo to fight the Western powers. It remains a moot point, however, whether Congress and public sentiment would have allowed the president to declare war in the absence of a direct a.s.sault on American national interests or the subsequent German declaration of war on the United States.

There was once a popular delusion that j.a.pan's attack smashed the American Pacific Fleet. In truth, however, the six old battleships disabled at Pearl Harbor-all but two were subsequently restored for war service by brilliantly ingenious repair techniques-mattered much less to the balance of forces than the four American aircraft carriers, oil stocks and dockyard facilities which escaped. j.a.pan paid a wholly disproportionate moral price for a modest, if spectacular, tactical success. The "Day of Infamy" roused the American people as no lesser provocation could have done. The operation must thus be judged a failure, rendering hollow the exultation of the Imperial Navy's fliers as they landed back on their carriers on 7 December 1941. Thereafter, Americans were united in their determination to avenge themselves on the treacherous Asians who had a.s.saulted a peace-loving people.

The only important strategic judgement which the j.a.panese got right was that their fate hinged upon that of Hitler. German victory was the sole eventuality which might have saved j.a.pan from the consequences of a.s.saulting powers vastly superior to itself in military and industrial potential. Col. Masan.o.bu Tsuji, architect of the j.a.panese army's capture of Singapore and a fanatical advocate of national expansion, said: "We honestly believed that America6, a nation of storekeepers, would not persist with a loss-making war, whereas j.a.pan could sustain a protracted campaign against the Anglo-Saxons." Tokyo's greatest misjudgement of all was to perceive its a.s.sault as an act of policy which might be reviewed in the light of events. In December 1941 j.a.pan gambled on a short war, swift victory, and acceptance of terms by the vanquished. Even in August 1945, many j.a.panese leaders refused to acknowledge that the terms of reference for the struggle ceased to be theirs to determine on the day of Pearl Harbor. It was wildly fanciful to suppose that the consequences of military failure might be mitigated through diplomatic parley. By choosing to partic.i.p.ate in a total war, the nation exposed itself to total defeat.

Although the loss of Hong Kong, Malaya and Burma in 194142 inflicted on Britain humiliations to match those suffered at j.a.panese hands by the U.S., its people cared relatively little about the Far Eastern war, a source of dismay to British soldiers obliged to fight in it. Winston Churchill was tormented by a desire to redeem the defeat in February 1942 of some 70,000 combat troops under British command by a force of 35,000 j.a.panese. "The shame of our disaster7 at Singapore could...only be wiped out by our recapture of that fortress," he told the British chiefs of staff as late as 6 July 1944, in one of his many-fortunately frustrated-attempts to allow this objective to determine eastern strategy. at Singapore could...only be wiped out by our recapture of that fortress," he told the British chiefs of staff as late as 6 July 1944, in one of his many-fortunately frustrated-attempts to allow this objective to determine eastern strategy.

To the British public, however, the Asian war seemed remote. The j.a.panese character in the BBC's legendary ITMA ITMA radio comedy show was Hari Kari, a gabbling clown. In June 1943 the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, proposed forming a committee to rouse the British public against its Asian enemies. The minister of information, Brendan Bracken, strongly dissented: radio comedy show was Hari Kari, a gabbling clown. In June 1943 the Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery, proposed forming a committee to rouse the British public against its Asian enemies. The minister of information, Brendan Bracken, strongly dissented:

It is all very well to say8 "We must educate the British public to regard the j.a.panese as if they were Germans, and war in the Pacific as if it were war in Europe." But, while the j.a.panese remain many thousands of miles away, the Germans have for three years been only twenty miles distant from our sh.o.r.e and, too often, vertically overhead. Interest and feeling follow where friends and loved ones are fighting...Europe is very much a home concern, whereas knowledge of or interest in the Far East is spa.r.s.ely distributed in this country...I do not think that any committee could do much to alter "the state of morale"...The people have been left under no misapprehension by the PM that it is their duty to turn and tackle j.a.pan when the time comes... "We must educate the British public to regard the j.a.panese as if they were Germans, and war in the Pacific as if it were war in Europe." But, while the j.a.panese remain many thousands of miles away, the Germans have for three years been only twenty miles distant from our sh.o.r.e and, too often, vertically overhead. Interest and feeling follow where friends and loved ones are fighting...Europe is very much a home concern, whereas knowledge of or interest in the Far East is spa.r.s.ely distributed in this country...I do not think that any committee could do much to alter "the state of morale"...The people have been left under no misapprehension by the PM that it is their duty to turn and tackle j.a.pan when the time comes...

Those Britons who did think about the j.a.panese shared American revulsion towards them. When reports were broadcast in early 1944 of the maltreatment of prisoners, an editorial in the Daily Mail Daily Mail proclaimed: "The j.a.panese have proved proclaimed: "The j.a.panese have proved9 a sub-human race...Let us resolve to outlaw them. When they are beaten back to their own savage land, let them live there in complete isolation from the rest of the world, as in a leper compound, unclean." The American historian John Dower explains Western att.i.tudes in racist terms. U.S. admiral William Halsey set the tone after Pearl Harbor, a.s.serting that when the war was over, "j.a.panese will be spoken only in h.e.l.l." A U.S. War Department film promoting bond sales employed the slogan: "Every War Bond Kills a j.a.p." An American sub-machine gun manufacturer advertised its products as "blasting big red holes in little yellow men." There was no counterpart on the European fronts to the commonplace Pacific practices of drying and preserving j.a.panese skulls as souvenirs, and sending home to loved ones polished bones of enemy dead. A British brigade commander in Burma once declined to accept a report from the 4/1st Gurkhas about the proximity of "Nips." Their colonel, Derek Horsford, dispatched a patrol to gather evidence. Next day, Horsford left three j.a.panese heads, hung for convenience on a string, beside his commander's desk. The brigadier said: "Never do that again a sub-human race...Let us resolve to outlaw them. When they are beaten back to their own savage land, let them live there in complete isolation from the rest of the world, as in a leper compound, unclean." The American historian John Dower explains Western att.i.tudes in racist terms. U.S. admiral William Halsey set the tone after Pearl Harbor, a.s.serting that when the war was over, "j.a.panese will be spoken only in h.e.l.l." A U.S. War Department film promoting bond sales employed the slogan: "Every War Bond Kills a j.a.p." An American sub-machine gun manufacturer advertised its products as "blasting big red holes in little yellow men." There was no counterpart on the European fronts to the commonplace Pacific practices of drying and preserving j.a.panese skulls as souvenirs, and sending home to loved ones polished bones of enemy dead. A British brigade commander in Burma once declined to accept a report from the 4/1st Gurkhas about the proximity of "Nips." Their colonel, Derek Horsford, dispatched a patrol to gather evidence. Next day, Horsford left three j.a.panese heads, hung for convenience on a string, beside his commander's desk. The brigadier said: "Never do that again10. Next time, I'll take your word for it."

But those who argue that the alien appearance and culture of the j.a.panese generated unique hatred and savagery seem to give insufficient weight to the fact that the j.a.panese initiated and inst.i.tutionalised barbarism towards both civilians and prisoners. True, the Allies later responded in kind. But in an imperfect world, it seems unrealistic to expect that any combatant in a war will grant adversaries conspicuously better treatment than his own people receive at their hands. Years ahead of Pearl Harbor j.a.panese ma.s.sacres of Chinese civilians were receiving worldwide publicity. Tokyo's forces committed systemic brutalities against Allied prisoners and civilians in the Philippines, East Indies, Hong Kong and Malaya-for instance, the slaughter of Chinese outside Singapore in February 1942-long before the first Allied atrocity against any j.a.panese is recorded.

The consequence of so-called j.a.panese fanaticism on the battlefield, of which much more later, was that Allied commanders favoured the use of extreme methods to defeat them. As an example, the j.a.panese rejected the convention customary in Western wars, whereby if a military position became untenable, its defenders gave up. In August 1944, when German prisoners were arriving in the United States at the rate of 50,000 a month, after three years of the war only 1,990 j.a.panese prisoners reposed in American hands. Why, demanded Allied commanders, should their men be obliged to risk their own lives in order to indulge the enemy's inhuman doctrine of mutual immolation?

The Anglo-American Lethbridge Mission, which toured theatres of war a.s.sessing tactics, urged in a March 1944 report that mustard and phosgene gases should be employed against j.a.panese underground defensive positions. The report's conclusion was endorsed by Marshall, U.S. air chief Gen. Henry A. "Hap" Arnold and MacArthur, even though the latter abhorred the area bombing of j.a.panese cities. "We are of the opinion11," wrote the Lethbridge team, "that the j.a.panese forces in the field will not be able to survive chemical warfare attack...upon a vast scale...[This] is the quickest method of bringing the war to a successful conclusion." Despite the weight of opinion which favoured gas, it was vetoed by President Roosevelt.

The Allies certainly perceived victory over j.a.pan as the reversal of a painful cultural humiliation, the defeats of 194142. But it seems mistaken to argue that they behaved ruthlessly towards the j.a.panese, once the tide of war turned, because they were Asians. The U.S. pursued a historic love affair with other Asians, the people of China, a nation which it sought to make a great power. A leading British statesman told an audience in February 1933: "I hope we shall try in England to understand a little the position of j.a.pan, an ancient state with the highest sense of national honour and patriotism and with a teeming population of remarkable energy. On the one side they see the dark menace of Soviet Russia; on the other, the chaos of China, four or five provinces of which are actually now being tortured, under Communist rule." Remarkable as it may seem to posterity, the speaker was Winston Churchill, addressing the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union. Allied hatred of, contempt for, and finally savagery towards their Pacific foes were surely inspired less by racial alienation than by their wartime conduct.

It may be true that j.a.panese physiognomy lent itself to Anglo-Saxon caricature. But it seems mistaken to argue that-for instance-Americans felt free to incinerate j.a.panese, and finally to drop atomic bombs upon them, only because they were Asians. Rather, these were Asians who forged a reputation for uncivilised behaviour not merely towards their Western enemies, but on a vastly greater scale towards their fellow Asian subject peoples. If the Allies treated the j.a.panese barbarously in the last months of the war, it seems quite mistaken thus to perceive a moral equivalence between the two sides.

At its zenith in 1942, the j.a.panese empire extended over twenty million square miles. Most were water, but even Tokyo's land conquests were a third greater than Berlin's. j.a.panese forces were deployed from the north-eastern extremities of India to the northern border of China, from the myriad islands of the Dutch East Indies to the jungle wildernesses of New Guinea. Few Allied servicemen were aware that, throughout the war, more than a million enemy soldiers-approximately half Tokyo's fighting formations-were deployed to garrison Manchuria and sustain the occupation of eastern China. By the summer of 1944, while some j.a.panese formations still held out on New Guinea and Bougainville, American forces had driven westwards across the Pacific, dispossessing the enemy island by island of air and naval bases. Some nineteen divisions, about a quarter of the Imperial Army's strength, were deployed against the British and Chinese in Burma, and garrisoned Malaya. A further twenty-three divisions, some reduced to fragments and amounting in all to a further quarter of j.a.panese combat capability, confronted U.S. soldiers and Marines on their oceanic line of advance.

"Americans ought to like12 the Pacific," a.s.serted a jocular pa.s.sage of the 1944 official the Pacific," a.s.serted a jocular pa.s.sage of the 1944 official U.S. Forces' Guide U.S. Forces' Guide to their theatre of war. "They like things big, and the Pacific is big enough to satisfy the most demanding...Quonset huts and tents are the most profuse growth on the main islands we occupy. In arguments with trees, bulldozers always win. Americans who eat out a lot in the Carolines will have trouble with girth control. The basic food the natives eat is starchy vegetables-breadfruit, taro, yams, sweet potatoes and arrowroot. Gonorrhea is found in at least one-third of the natives, and there is some syphilis." to their theatre of war. "They like things big, and the Pacific is big enough to satisfy the most demanding...Quonset huts and tents are the most profuse growth on the main islands we occupy. In arguments with trees, bulldozers always win. Americans who eat out a lot in the Carolines will have trouble with girth control. The basic food the natives eat is starchy vegetables-breadfruit, taro, yams, sweet potatoes and arrowroot. Gonorrhea is found in at least one-third of the natives, and there is some syphilis."

Almost 400,000 British servicemen served in the Far East, together with more than two million soldiers of Britain's Indian Army. In other words, though the U.S. absolutely dominated the conduct of the war against j.a.pan, the British mobilised far more people to do their modest share. One and a quarter million Americans served in the Pacific and Asia, a zone of operations embracing a third of the globe. Of these, 40 percent of officers and 33 percent of men spent some time in combat, by the most generous interpretation of that word. Over 40 percent saw no action at all, working in the vast support organisations necessary to maintain armies, fleets and air forces thousands of miles from home.

There was a chronic shortage of manpower to shift supplies in the wake of the advancing spearheads. All strategy is powerfully influenced by logistics, but the Pacific war was especially so. Marshall and MacArthur once discussed a proposal to ship 50,000 coolies a month from China to boost the labour force in their rear areas, dismissing it only because the practicalities were too complex. Waste was a constant issue. Americans fighting for their lives were understandably negligent about the care of food, weapons, equipment, vehicles. The c.u.mulative cost13 was enormous, when every ration pack and truck tyre had to be shipped halfway across the world to the battlefield. Up to 19 percent of some categories of food were spoilt in transit by climate, poor packing or careless handling. was enormous, when every ration pack and truck tyre had to be shipped halfway across the world to the battlefield. Up to 19 percent of some categories of food were spoilt in transit by climate, poor packing or careless handling.

Many of those who did the fighting of 194445 had been mere children in September 1939, or indeed December 1941. Philip True was a sixteen-year-old Michigan high school student at the time of Pearl Harbor-"I didn't think I'd be in World War II." By 1945, however, he was navigating a B-29. The merest chance dictated whether a man called to his country's service finished up in a foxhole in Okinawa, in the c.o.c.kpit of a Spitfire, or pushing paper at a headquarters in Delhi. For millions of people of every nationality, the wartime experience was defined by the need to make journeys far from home, sometimes of an epic nature, across oceans and continents, at risk of their lives.

Many British and American teenagers, without previous knowledge of life outside their own communities, found uniformed service a unifying and educating force. They learned that the only redemptive feature of war is the brotherhood which it forges. "The people are what14 I really remember," said USAAF pilot Jack Lee DeTour, who bombed South-East Asia from India. If men got home on leave, many felt alienated from civilians who had not shared their perils and sacrifices. "Only shipmates were important I really remember," said USAAF pilot Jack Lee DeTour, who bombed South-East Asia from India. If men got home on leave, many felt alienated from civilians who had not shared their perils and sacrifices. "Only shipmates were important15 to me," wrote U.S. naval rating Emory Jernigan. Eugene Hardy to me," wrote U.S. naval rating Emory Jernigan. Eugene Hardy16, a bosun's mate, came from a farm family so dirt-poor that he had never set foot in a restaurant until he joined the navy in 1940. Men learned to live with others from utterly different backgrounds, often possessing quite different outlooks. For instance, a million messroom or foxhole arguments between American northerners and southerners featured the line: "You want a n.i.g.g.e.r to marry your sister?" Somehow, out of it all, most men learned a lot about viewpoints other than their own, and about mutual tolerance.

A British soldier expressed in his journal reflections about wartime conscript experience which have almost universal validity: "Men live conscious17 all the time that their hearts, roots, origins lie elsewhere in some other life...They measure the hardships, privations, weariness here against the memory of a past that they hope to continue in the future...Since their hearts reside elsewhere, they face the present with an armoured countenance." The author meant that most warriors seek to preserve their sanity by shielding some corner of themselves from proximate reality, so often unpleasant. U.S. naval officers protested at the a.s.sertively unseamanlike outlook of crypta.n.a.lysts working at the Pacific Fleet's superb "Magic" code-breaking centre in Honolulu, which played such a critical part in Allied victory. Their commander dismissed their complaints: "Relax, we have always won all the time that their hearts, roots, origins lie elsewhere in some other life...They measure the hardships, privations, weariness here against the memory of a past that they hope to continue in the future...Since their hearts reside elsewhere, they face the present with an armoured countenance." The author meant that most warriors seek to preserve their sanity by shielding some corner of themselves from proximate reality, so often unpleasant. U.S. naval officers protested at the a.s.sertively unseamanlike outlook of crypta.n.a.lysts working at the Pacific Fleet's superb "Magic" code-breaking centre in Honolulu, which played such a critical part in Allied victory. Their commander dismissed their complaints: "Relax, we have always won18 our wars with a bunch of d.a.m.ned civilians in uniform anxious to get back to their own affairs, and we will win this one the same way." our wars with a bunch of d.a.m.ned civilians in uniform anxious to get back to their own affairs, and we will win this one the same way."

Winston Churchill often a.s.serted his conviction that the proper conduct of war demanded that "the enemy should be made to bleed and burn every day." The Pacific and Burma campaigns, by contrast, were characterised by periods of intense fighting interspersed with long intervals of inaction and preparation. Whereas on the Russian front opposing forces were in permanent contact, and likewise in north-west Europe from June 1944, in the east j.a.panese and Allied troops were often separated by hundreds, even thousands, of miles of sea or jungle. Few Westerners who served in the war against j.a.pan enjoyed the experience. It was widely agreed by veterans that the North African desert was the most congenial, or rather least terrible, theatre. Thereafter in ascending intensity of grief came north-west Europe, Italy, and finally the Far East. Few soldiers, sailors or airmen felt entirely healthy during Asian or Pacific service. The stifling heat belowdecks in a warship made daily routine enervating, even before the enemy took a hand. The only interruptions to months at sea were provided by brief spasms in an overcrowded rest camp on some featureless atoll. For those fighting the land campaigns, disease and privation were constants, vying as threats to a man's welfare with a boundlessly ingenious and merciless enemy. "All the officers at home19 want to go to other theatres because there is more publicity there," wrote one of MacArthur's corps commanders, Lt.-Gen. Robert Eichelberger, in a gloomy letter to his wife. want to go to other theatres because there is more publicity there," wrote one of MacArthur's corps commanders, Lt.-Gen. Robert Eichelberger, in a gloomy letter to his wife.

Eichelberger was a career soldier, one of those whom war provided with dramatic scope for fulfilment and advancement. Civilians in uniform, however, were vulnerable to the misery identified by British novelist Anthony Powell, "that terrible, recurrent20 army dejection, the sensation that no one cares a halfpenny whether you live or die." "h.e.l.lo, suckers," "Tokyo Rose" taunted millions of Allied servicemen from Radio j.a.pan. "I got mine last night, your wives and sweethearts probably got theirs-did you get yours?" Corporal Ray Haskel of the U.S. Army wrote from the South Pacific to a Hollywood starlet named Myrtle Ristenhart, whose picture he had glimpsed in army dejection, the sensation that no one cares a halfpenny whether you live or die." "h.e.l.lo, suckers," "Tokyo Rose" taunted millions of Allied servicemen from Radio j.a.pan. "I got mine last night, your wives and sweethearts probably got theirs-did you get yours?" Corporal Ray Haskel of the U.S. Army wrote from the South Pacific to a Hollywood starlet named Myrtle Ristenhart, whose picture he had glimpsed in Life Life magazine. Rodgers and Hammerstein would have appreciated his sentiments: "My dear Myrtle magazine. Rodgers and Hammerstein would have appreciated his sentiments: "My dear Myrtle21, guess you are wondering who this strange person could be writing to you. We are here in the Pacific and got kind of lonesome and so thought we would drop you a few lines...There isn't any girls here at all but a few natives and a few nurses and we can't get within ten miles of them...When you can find time please answer this letter and if you have a small picture we would appreciate it, Sincerely your RAY. PS I am an Indian, full-blooded and very handsome."

"Here it is a Burma moon22 with not a girl in sight and a few dead j.a.ps trying to stink you out," Sgt. Harry Hunt of the British Fourteenth Army wrote miserably to a relative in England. "...It must be lovely to soldier back home, just to get away from this heat and sweat, from these natives, to get together with white men...There it comes, the rain again, rain rain that's all we get, then the damp, it slowly eats into your bones, you wake up like nothing on earth, you always feel sleepy. I don't know whether I'm coming or going, better close now before I use bad words, remember me to dad, mum and all." with not a girl in sight and a few dead j.a.ps trying to stink you out," Sgt. Harry Hunt of the British Fourteenth Army wrote miserably to a relative in England. "...It must be lovely to soldier back home, just to get away from this heat and sweat, from these natives, to get together with white men...There it comes, the rain again, rain rain that's all we get, then the damp, it slowly eats into your bones, you wake up like nothing on earth, you always feel sleepy. I don't know whether I'm coming or going, better close now before I use bad words, remember me to dad, mum and all."

One of Hunt's senior officers, Maj.-Gen. Douglas Gracey, took as bleak a view from a loftier perspective: "Nearly every j.a.p fights23 to the last or runs away to fight another day. Until morale cracks, it must be accepted that the capture of a j.a.panese position is not ended until the last j.a.p in it (generally several feet underground) is killed. Even in the most desperate circ.u.mstances, 99 percent of the j.a.ps prefer death or suicide to capture. The fight is more to the last or runs away to fight another day. Until morale cracks, it must be accepted t