Met or exceeded my expectations after reading reviews of it in the New York Times and the WSJ.

Relatively few people are alive today who experienced any aspect of WWII as a teenager or older. Fewer still live in countries where the WWII experience can be freely discussed, as in the United States and UK. The Soviet Union considered the war to be a people's war and only recently have stories of individual experiences been forthcoming. In Germany, less and less attention is paid to the horrendous crimes of the German people. France dramatizes its miniscule, if even existent, role. And in Japan, as Hastings points, out widespread denial is still the norm. As a result, accurate knowledge of WWII and its horrors and few glories is rapidly fading from human consciousness - and with that forgetfulness comes the danager of new and even more horrible wars.

Max Hastings writes highly readable military histories. He eschews footnotes and the minutia of academic writing in favor of a friendly narrative style. There is considerable depth, however. In its 550 pages, Hastings covers a war that spanned the years 1931 - 1945 and a bit beyond. It covered a larger geographic area than any other conflict in history, though most of the area was the Pacific Ocean.

The book opens on the saddest possible note: the dedication is to Max Hasting's son who apparently died at age 27 in 2000. And on that sad note, the deaths of millions and unspeakable cruelties at the hands of the Japanese are chronicled in the following pages.

In twenty-two chapters, Hastings treats every major aspect of the war against the Japanese by the primary combatants: the United States, Britain, China and late in the game, the Soviet Union.

Hastings begins with a look at the motivation and goals of the United States. President Roosevelt had announced the goal was unconditional surrender. In recent years, revisionist historians have claimed that this policy prolonged the war. Throughout the book, Hastings demolishes these arguments over and over again. It is quite something to see: Hastings has a clear mastery of the subject.

He then goes on to describe the various battlefronts and he is equally at home here. He uses dozens, if not hundreds, of interviews and memoirs to create his descriptions of battles like the British Burma campaign, the Battle of Leyte Gulf and so on, all the time weaving in the machinations of the main players in the Japanese, US, British and other governments. It is a very effective approach. His descriptions of the battles on Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the sea war at the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the kamikazee campaign leave no room for doubt as to why the Americans feared the blood cost of an invasion of Japan.

This is a critical history and Hastings heaps it on. The vastly overrated Douglas MacArthur is cut appropriately down to size, though Hastings does laud his post-war stewardship of Japan. Hastings criticizes the revisionists, apologists and anti-Americans who condemn the United States for its actions, such as the use of nuclear weapons. He spares nothing in his criticism and outright condemnation of Japanese leaders, past and present for the widespread atrocities.

I devour history and there are few well-written histories, so I found myself dealing with "Retribution" as if it were a great thriller and couldn't wait to get from one page to another. I truly wish that books like this were require reading in America's schools so chilren would grow up with an understanding of why they enjoy such lavish freedom. It did not come free and Hastings gives new life to the tens of thousands of Americans who died in the Pacific and Asian campaigns. It is a sobering book and one that I hope will be widely read.

Jerry

Not much new here as far as new insights or evaluations, but the interviews and anecdotes from the battlefield and seas are priceless in conveying what WWII in the Pacific was like without the sanitized Hollywood filters. One must also remember that the Japanese, much like the Russians, have yet to admit their horrible scale of atrocities, genocide and massive raping even to this day. Germany has paid billions in reparations, banned Mein Kampf, and erect memorials to the suffering it has caused. Until both the official Japanese and Russian history reflects it's responsibility, they are both worthy of suspicion.

Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45. "Retribution" is a dramatic, precise, powerful and certainly appropriate word to describe the death throes of the short-lived Japanese empire that started with incursions into China in 1931 and ended with the last inglorious battle, the city of Hotu, on the Chinese-Russian border, in late August 1945. Hastings provides a clear, consistent narrative of the last year of the war. With extensive interviews, first-person accounts, and a broad, multicultural perspective ranging from India to Hawaii, with soldiers and civilians from Africa, Asia, America, Australia, and Britain, along with a few Dutch and French colonists, Hastings describes, analyzes and reflects on what is quickly becoming "dead" history as the people who participated in the war 65 years ago complete the long lives they deserved after such a miserable period of their existence.

Hastings is hard but not harsh on the Japanese. He admires the American naval skills and thinks not-that-highly of Douglas MacArthur, better known to the American public as the "face" of the Pacific War but actually the beneficiary of American material and naval power (including scores of aircraft carriers and their thousands of planes). In the end, the Pacific war was primarily an American-Japanese affair. British and other Allied numbers were few. The Russians opportunistically waited until August 1945 to make a brutal, neo-colonial grab in Manchuria. The Chinese split into two factions - Mao and Chiang Kai-shek, spent more of their time squabbling and acting more as bandits than soldiers. And, in the final analysis, American basically starved and squeezed the once-haughty, honor-bound, "bushido" warrior class and their people.

Hastings also examines the critics and the post-war, armchair second-guessing and apologies for the decision to drop the atomic bombs; to engage in the bloody, if perhaps unnecessary conquests of Iwo and Okinawa; and the all out or "total" bombing effort that killed tens of thousands of civilians. He finds the criticisms untimely if not unfounded. At the time, these were the best decisions to bring the war to conclusion, to save American lives, and to force a very stubborn Japanese military government to bow.

Here is the basic outline: Five hundred eight-five pages, almost thirty pages of notes and sources and an index just as long. Twenty-two chapters, starting with two parts, War in the East, Summit in Oahu; followed by the British in Burma, Titans at Sea, America's Return to the Philippines, Leyte Gulf, Battle for the Mountains, Luzon, China, Iwo Jima, Blockade (American submarine warfare), LeMay (fire bombing), Mandalay, Captivity and Slavery, Okinawa, Mao, the (atomic) Bombs, Manchuria, the Last Act and Legacies.

The entire book is highly readable, rich in details, and full of personal memories. It is as much a story of people and personalities as it is of naval or air power. It provides a good history lesson and wisely closes with the admonishment that Americans should not have assumed such an air of superiority after this war. That is, the contrast of Japanese hubris and American assets made this a unique, one-sided war, one that we will fortunately never see again, but that should leave Americans a bit more humble about their post-war position as a superpower being asked - and at times, asking -- to police the world.

Noted historian Max Hastings has written a compelling and comprehensive book about the final year of the Pacific War that is destined to become a classic.

By the summer of 1944, it had become clear that defeat was inevitable for the Japanese. Defeats in the Marshalls, Marianas and Philippines had put the Japanese back in their own front yard. American B-29s operating from bases in the newly-won Marianas islands were bombing the Japanese home islands with startling regularity. Many Japanese cities were literally burned to the ground as a result of American incendiary bombing. Tokyo itself lost over 16 square miles.

The American Navy, Marines, and Army was busy vanquishing the Japanese from such places as Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. The American Navy, operating with over 100 aircraft carriers of various sizes, roamed virtually unopposed across the Pacific, delivering carrier-based planes to attack the Japanese homeland. American ships managed to get close enough to Japan to bombard the islands. However, kamikaze units posed a very real and tremendously dangerous threat to American ships. Many kamikazes managed to score hits on American vessels, sinking dozens and damaging hundreds more.

By the time the Atomic Bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, Japan was a battered, starving and defeated nation on the brink of total collapse. This was accomplished by the American armed forces who, in the eyes of the Japanese, would never fight to the end and were not known as aggressive or willing to die for their country. The attack on Pearl Harbor changed the mindset of the American fighting man, and the Japanese found out just how much they changed.

This is a spectacular book. Max Hastings covers every aspect of the final year of the Pacific war. Included are descriptions of the well-known battles of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the re-capture of the Philippines, but what makes this book stand out among other similar titles is Hastings' concentration on the lesser-known theaters of the Pacific war, such as Burma, Malaya, China, India, and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Each campaign has been meticulously researched by Hastings, and this book offers a wealth of information on the "hidden" side of the Pacific war. Also included in this volume is a discussion about Japanese atrocities and how, even today, Japan refuses to acknowledge responsibility for these terrible acts against civilians and POWs.

I give this excellent book my highest recommendation. I've been reading World War II history for 35 years, and this book rates as one of the best I've read. This book is destined to become the standard on the history of the final year of the war in the Pacific. This book is a must-read for World War II history fans.

I packed this for a trip to Asia, where I go every month, and was totally absorbed for the entire 12 hour flight.

Retribution covers the last two years of the War in the Pacific - pretty much the period after the Allies turned the tide until surrender. It covers all aspects of the Japan theatre, including little known ones like Burma. Here are some observations:

- After reading this, you can't help but think that MacArthur was a total megalomaniac who killed thousands of troops just to satisfy his own personal desire to recapture the Philippines.

- Australia really didn't pull its weight in the war. On the domestic front, strikes held up shipping and loading since the Australian unions were more concerned about internal power than they were supporting the war (the side-by-side comparison of Australian vs. U.S. ship loading efficiency is damning)

- I found the Asia mainland chapters a bit boring (the only parts of the book that were). England's Burmese campaign was little cared for then and virtually unknown today for good reason - it did little to advance the cause of the war. The China chapters are interesting, only because they provide the background up for that country's civil war (the bottom line is that the Chinese factions were more concerned about fighting each other than they were fighting the Japanese).

- The naval battles and island campaigns are, of course, the most fascinating parts of the book.

- Everyone knows about Japanese brutality during WWII, but this book really hits it home. Everyone thinks the Germans were the only ones vivisecting live humans. It also covers the brutality of their occupied "colonies" and prisoner camps.

- The book totally annihilates critics who argue against the use of the atomic bombs. All data, then and now, support the use of the devices, and this book hammers it home.

If you have just a little interest in the Pacific War, you should pick up this book

Hastings has portrayed the sweep of these great campaigns, often from the viewpoints of the dwindling number of eyewitnesses. His vignettes of life at war in Burma, China, on the hotly contested specks of land all over the south and western Pacific and in war-torn Japan flesh out the narrative very effectively. Of particular interest to me was his less-than-complimentary treatment of Mac Arthur, entirely fair in my view. What a contrast with authors like William Manchester in "American Caesar" and the published opinions of those such as Alan Brooke and Winston Churchill. I agree that Mac Arthur's shining moments began with the ceremonies aboard the USS MISSOURI and continued with his stewardship over a defeated Japan and later his brilliant landing at Incheon during the Korean War. However his arrogance and hubris tripped him up with Harry Truman and, quite rightly, he got canned, thus illustrating to any other would-be Caesars the subordination of the military to the elected civilian authority in our system of government.

Complex reading; need to have knowledge of politics and history and Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Excellent

I have literally read hundreds of books on the Pacific War but this is the best. Well written with scores of new info and acute observations. Not a re-telling but a new interpretation. He lays to rest the myth that the bomb was not necessary. As the son of a combat engineer who was scheduled for the first wave in the invasion, the bomb was always viewed as a life saving event. Hastings expounds and explains this seeming paradox. As fine as his prior volumes. I put down the Coldest Winter to read this as soon as it arrived.

This book, while lengthy, is very well written and takes the reader behind the typical military operations. It involves the more humane, or rather inhumane, stories of the blunders of both the Allies and the Japanese war machine. I found it very educational and full of many eye-witness accounts. The author seems very balanced in his approach and delivers praise where due as well as criticsm. The author points out that sometimes the Japanese Navy just blundered, not so much that the U.S. Navy made a brilliant tactical move. As uisual, Macarther is wrapped up in his ego and oblivious to the real needs of the war.

Highly recommended for followers of Japan's involement in WWII.

Max Hastings' well written book, Retribution, is a grippingly powerful story about the final campaigns of World War II in the Pacific Theatre of Operations. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, many of them personal accounts, Professor Hastings provides a well focused look inside the desperate fighting that took place in the final year of the war against the "Empire of Japan." Combined with his insights into the leaders of the different forces, and the shambles that were happening in China, Hastings explodes many of the popular "myths" that came out of WW II surrounding the fighting in the closing year of the war. He sets the stage for much of what is going on today in the region politically and economically.

Max Hastings has produced a unique and insightful view into the last year of the war in the pacific. Retribution offers the standard viewpoints of the American side which we have all come to know and are well acquainted with, but he also offers unique insider views on the Russian and Japanese sides which up until now have been underreported. Mr. Hastings does an excellent job at portraying both the military events of the last year and splicing in the impacts they had on civilians. He also does a wonderful job making it a story worth reading and keeping the reader engaged with insightful commentary and strong and identifiable character both famous and less well known.

Overall, this is a highly readable and interesting book for anyone who would like to learn the complete story of the end of the Pacific War.

This is one of the finest books about WWII that I have ever read. I would recommend it to any one who studies WWII history

Max Hastings' Retribution presents a fascinating analysis of the Pacific Theater endgame against Japan. Hastings weaves in "worm's eye" views of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines but also presents grand strategy. Overlooked aspects of the Pacific war include Japan's total dominance of China, including their successful "Ichigo" offensive that deprived the US of B-29 bases.

Hastings also explores the British role in ousting the Japanese from Burma, with a strong emphasis on the role of colonial troops such as Sikhs and Gurkhas from India.

However, Hastings' critiques of Gen. MacArthur and Gen. Chennault reek of British arrogance. Hastings rebukes MacArthur's entire Phillipines campaign by claiming that the islands could have been bypassed. Really? The Japanese would not have held the Filipino people hostage? The huge garrison there would simply surrender at some future date? US troops would not need the combat experience of seizing these islands?

Hastings' scorn for Gen. Claire Chennault, of "Flying Tigers" fame, is most unusual. He calls Chennault overrated, a "charlatan" and views this innovative commander as a pure fake. Unfairly, Hastings does not give Chennault credit for his outstanding leadership of the Flying Tigers prior to US entry into the war.

His disapproval of the kamikaze offensive is not quite right. He raises the very legitimate point that the kamikazes should have attacked the troop filled transport vessels and not frittered themselves against the well armed and well defended carriers. But to suggest that the kamikazes enraged American forces and thus created the climate that led to the firestorms and nuclear attacks is wrong. That hatred already existed.

Finally, Hastings is too quick to justify and dismiss the massive civilian casualties caused by US firebombing raids. This is a common symptom of British historians, including Robin Neillands. Hastings does provide a great deal of evidence of Japanese atrocities vs. POWs and captive populations, especially China and the Phillipines. This evidence in turn helps explain LeMay's firebombing attacks and the atomic raids.

This is an outstanding, highly readable book. I hope Hastings produces more such fine work in the very near future.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I am a big Max Hastings fan. I find his writing superb, his narrative riveting and his facts enlightening. However, Retribution misses the mark.

The War in the Pacific is not as linear as the European theatre. No straight line maps work to enlighten the reader of positions and strategy. The messiness of the Pacific campaigns makes writing about it difficult. However, a master like Hastings should be able to overcome these obstacles. He fails to do so here.

So many recently released documents have made for several great recent histories of the Pacific war. Revisionist histories placing more critical light on the failures of Halsey and the role of Hirohito make for important reading. Nothing in Retribution rises to that level. After so many pages of text I found nothing new in Retribution to justify its writing or reading. I expected so much and got so little.

Sure a work by Hastings is important in and of itself to justify purchasing Retribution. However, if you are looking for new insights, prepare to be disappointed.

World War II history books were the first serious books I began reading as a kid. I've probably read over 100 titles ranging from autobiographies (like William Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness" or Saburo Sakai's "Samurai") to "big" history (like Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich") and everything in between (especially a lot of those great Ballantine Books from the 1960s and 1970s). The value I see with Max Hastings effort, "Retribution," is that while it supplies well written history, it also reminds us of the past. The book clearly demonstrates that war is brutal, ugly, and vicious and even this "Good War" from the "Greatest Generation" still proves there's no nice way to do it.

I would quibble with Hastings' recurring need to snipe at various historical figures like Douglas MacArthur, William Halsey, Patrick Hurley, and others. He frequently finds fault with decisions that appeared to make a battle worse and that the decision makers should have known better at the time, but because they were vain, arrogant, or incompetent, more people suffered as a result.

For example, Admiral William Halsey has been second guessed for his pursuit of what turned out to be a Japanese decoy force at Leyte Gulf. Halsey directed his naval forces after that decoy, leaving vulnerable other American forces in the area. Those remaining American forces had one helluva fight on their hands when the main Japanese naval force attacked, but they managed to more than hold their own and drive off the Japanese assault. Every history book I've read going back to very early titles published shortly after the war, commented that Halsey at the very least got fooled by the decoy and should have provided better communication to other American commanders in the area. Hastings comments that Halsey should have been relieved of command, but since things turned out okay and it was so close to the end of the war, Halsey's superiors let it go.

My take on this is simple: You're always the smartest guy in the room when it's not your job. Hastings often acts like that annoying backseat driver, Monday morning quarterback, . . . (insert your favorite cliche here) throughout the book, offering these tidy, smart smacks on the wrist of the historical reputation of men who are dead now. Most of the older history books I've read didn't go that far. They noted as descriptively as possible what happened and what people thought they knew at the time and left it at that. Hastings frequently has to weigh in with his wisdom. My concern here is that if this is the only book you'll ever read about this area, you'll come away with a negative opinion of a lot of folks and I don't think that's warranted or fair. Hastings cannot accept the "fog of war" as a legitimate explanation and instead prefers to make attributions to perceived character defects.

This weakness noted, I find "Retribution" to be an accurate, detailed, interesting and complete examination of the last year in the Pacific theater of World War II. You will both understand the "big picture" and you will also have a great deal of emotional connection to all the people, whether Allies or Axis. This is a well written book. Just remember: They did it. You're thinking about it.

"When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today," is inscribed on the War Memorial at Kohima. It commemorates a forgotten battle fought by forgotten soldiers of a forgotten army of a forgotten empire for a forgotten cause against a forgotten foe - I exaggerate only slightly, for what school child in any of the great democracies (assisted only at its dénouement by the dreadful Soviet dictatorship of 'Uncle' Joe Stalin) that eventually triumphed over a monstrous and militarist enemy can tell today of Kohima, of Imphal, of Leyte Gulf, of Iwo Jima, of Okinawa? Not many, I guess. I am deeply regretful that so few of our young know anything of the above. Max Hastings has performed a first-class service for those who know little or nothing of what happened then or of the need to destroy that 'monstrous and militarist enemy,' the Japan of Hirohito. Those of us who know of the need must never forget, nor permit others so to do. Read this book (published as "Nemesis" in England) in order to know why!

"When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today," is inscribed on the War Memorial at Kohima. It commemorates a forgotten battle fought by forgotten soldiers of a forgotten army of a forgotten empire for a forgotten cause against a forgotten foe - I exaggerate only slightly, for what school child in any of the great democracies (assisted only at its dénouement by the dreadful Soviet dictatorship of 'Uncle' Joe Stalin) that eventually triumphed over a monstrous and militarist enemy can tell today of Kohima, of Imphal, of Leyte Gulf, of Iwo Jima, of Okinawa? Not many, I guess. I am deeply regretful that so few of our young know anything of the above. Max Hastings has performed a first-class service for those who know little or nothing of what happened then or of the need to destroy that 'monstrous and militarist enemy,' the Japan of Hirohito. Those of us who know of the need must never forget, nor permit others so to do. Read this book to know why!

Max Hastings takes his readers from the jungles of Burma to the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His human stories are taken from interviews, letters, diaries and memoirs.

Hastings describes the courage of men in combat on both sides of the fighting, and he is critical of military leaders and of military decisions that unnecessarily cost many lives. Examples: the Burma Road to resupply Chiang Kai-shek's armies was a sideshow "to restore [Britain's] imperial prestige and to indulge American fantasies about China." MacArthur's "I shall return" campaign destroyed much of Manila and caused enormous civilian casualties to satisfy MacArthur's "ego and wounded vanity"; MacArthur could have bypassed the Phillipines and attacked islands closer to Japan as part of the overall "Island Hopping" strategy.

Hastings writes that the Chinese suffered both from the Japanese and from Chiang and Mao Zedong seeking postwar power rather than fighting the Japanese; China "resembled a vast wounded animal, bleeding in a thousand places, prostrate in the dust, twitching and lashing out in its agony, inflicting more pain on itself than upon its foes."

Hasting admires the courage and selflessness shown on both sides on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, but believes that these islands and others might have been bypassed, saving thousands of lives. He notes that America possessed overwhelming naval and air superiority and believes it did not need to conquer Japan island by island. On the human side, he describes a Marine who tears off his own damaged arm to continue an attack, and a group of blinded Marines holding hands and singing "Three Blind Mice." A Marine on Okinawa stares at a dead Japanese machine gunner "lacking the top of his head; overnight rain had collected in the open skull."

Mr. Hastings's description of the naval battle of Leyte Gulf is powerful; he describes the kamikaze offensive that began there. Altogether, 4,000 Japanese kamikaze pilots died on their missions; one in seven hit American ships, causing more damage than all of the rest of the Japanese navy. Like the suicide bombers of al Qaeda or Hamas, the kamikaze was "institutionalization of a tactic that makes [death] inevitable."

Japan's tenacious tactics kept the war going. In March B-29 firebombing raids began, killing 100,000 civilians in one attack on Tokyo. Curtis LeMay is quoted: "We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." Hasting reports that by then it was total war: "American moral sensibility was numbed by kamikaze attacks, revelations of savagery toward POW's and subject peoples and general war weariness." He describes the cruelties imposed on Japanese civilians with the same detail he describes Japanese systematic cruelty toward its military prisoners, toward the Chinese and toward other peoples.

Hastings believes that dropping the atomic bombs were necessary not only to compel Japan's surrender but also to pre-empt Russia's invasion of Manchuria and other parts of Asia. President Truman "understood, as some people in the West did not yet understand, the depth of evil which Stalin's Soviet Union represented."

Finally, Hastings describes many of the results of the war: the end of colonial empires; the fall of China to communism; the outbreak of the Korean War; and the emergence of Japan as a peaceful and prosperous nation. The military lesson Hastings draws is less positive. "Only total war enabled a liberal democracy to exploit weapons of mass destruction." Limited war is much more likely to favor belligerents of limited means. Defeating Japan in a total war was "a freak of history."

I found this book big, densely written, and fascinating.

By mid 1944, it was becoming obvious that Japan would be defeated but the path to victory led straight through a minefield of destruction and suffering.

Master historian Max Hastings' "Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944- 45" dramatically chronicles the final year of the war against Japan.

In "Japan: Defying Gravity", Mr. Hastings explores the Japanese mind, which permitted wartime atrocities against prisoners and defeated peoples. The author contrasts the hero culture prevalent in the west with Japan's Kamikaze phenomena adopted by the Samurai warrior class.

Mr. Hastings takes the reader to the scenes of bloody, epic struggles -- wading through jungle mud in Burma and MacArthur's beloved Philippines --burning out snipers embedded in the invincible volcanic fortress of Iwo Jima -- raining thousands of incendiaries on tender box Japanese cities from LeMay's air armada of long range B-29 Superfortresses -- and swarming through Manchuria on board Stalin's countless T-34 tanks.

Mr. Hastings has skillfully woven interviews, letters, diaries and memoirs into the story of Japan's part in World War II.

Masterfully moving between the vast saga of the war against Japan to individual snippet's, Mr. Hastings sprinkles in the interesting tales of the ordinary soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians caught in this epic conflict.

But not everyone is praised for their efforts; the author is especially critical of key political leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek. Towering military figures -- especially General MacArthur, and Lord Mountbatten -- are scrutinized and exposed.

The author portrays Lord Mountbatten, "as a poseur with a streak of vulgarity, promoted far beyond his talents on the strength of fluency, film-star good looks, and his relationship to the royal family."

All students of World War II are familiar with the legendary ego of General MacArthur. Hastings writes, "It was MacArthur's good fortune that, after presiding over the initial disaster in the Philippines, he served in a theatre when American material dominance became so overwhelming that his misjudgments and follies were redeemable."

The author describes Generalissimo Chaing Kai shek's, "absolute ruthlessness, vividly exemplified by his destruction of the Yellow River dikes in the path of a Japanese advance, exposing six million people to flooding and starvation. He was indifferent to his own armies' casualties, save where these threatened his power base."

However, the author offers praise and recognition for Admiral Nimitz. Hastings glowingly writes, "Nimitz, a supremely professional naval officer, neither sought nor received a due share of fame for his stellar performance in the Pacific ... "a natural diplomat, sober and controlled." When meeting with Roosevelt and MacArthur, "the undemonstrative Nimitz found himself perforce playing a subordinate role beside two showmen."

Moving to the campaigns, Mr. Hastings argues that the island- hopping race between MacArthur and Nimitz was too wasteful. The author suspects The Philippines campaign was a personal goal of MacArthur and militarily was not necessary.

In "Burning A Nation: LeMay", he explores the debate on how to execute the campaign against the Japanese home islands. Truman offered, "The best psychological warfare to use on these barbarians [is] bombs." The author quotes General LeMay's summation, "Bomb and Burn `em till they quit."

With the surrender of Nazi Germany, there was a mad scramble on both sides for the final battle -- Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan.

Vice-Admiral Abe "begged that the surviving German fleet, and especially its U-boats, should be sent to Japan."

Admiral Halsey purposely excluded British Navy aircraft from participating in action against the Japanese fleet, "It was imperative that we forestall a possible post-war claim by the British that [they] had delivered even a part of the final blow that demolished the Japanese fleet."

The Japanese frantically assembled defensive forces consisting of 450,000 servicemen, 10,000 largely obsolete kamikaze aircraft, rocket planes, human torpedoes, suicide boats, and 4000 teenage 'dragon divers' (all vigorously denied by MacArthur).

Addressing MacArthur's deception, Richard Frank speculated, "It is almost impossible not to believe that MacArthur's resort to falsehood was motivated in large measure by his personal interest in commanding the greatest amphibious assault in history."

Concerning the lack of remorse over Japanese civilian casualties, Mr. Hastings speculates that there was little compassion for Japanese suffering during the wholesale fire- bombing of cities, in part because of -- Japanese treachery committed at Pearl Harbor -- cruelty shown to allied prisoners -- -- Japanese insistence of dying to the last man.

"Retribution" contains 11 very good maps and 74 interesting photographs.


About the author

Max Hastings, author of twenty books, was editor of the Daily Telegraph for almost a decade, then for six years edited the Evening Standard in London. After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent for newspapers and BBC television. He has won many awards for his journalism. He was knighted in 2002.
he has three children.

By mid 1944, it was becoming obvious that Japan would be defeated but the path to victory led straight through a minefield of destruction and suffering.

Master historian Max Hastings' "Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944- 45" dramatically chronicles the final year of the war against Japan.

In "Japan: Defying Gravity", Mr. Hastings explores the Japanese mind, which permitted wartime atrocities against prisoners and defeated peoples. The author contrasts the hero culture prevalent in the west with Japan's Kamikaze phenomena adopted by the Samurai warrior class.

Mr. Hastings takes the reader to the scenes of bloody, epic struggles -- wading through jungle mud in Burma and MacArthur's beloved Philippines --burning out snipers embedded in the invincible volcanic fortress of Iwo Jima -- raining thousands of incendiaries on tender box Japanese cities from LeMay's air armada of long range B-29 Superfortresses -- and swarming through Manchuria on board Stalin's countless T-34 tanks.

Mr. Hastings has skillfully woven interviews, letters, diaries and memoirs into the story of Japan's part in World War II.

Masterfully moving between the vast saga of the war against Japan to individual snippet's, Mr. Hastings sprinkles in the interesting tales of the ordinary soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians caught in this epic conflict.

But not everyone is praised for their efforts; the author is especially critical of key political leaders such as Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek. Towering military figures -- especially General MacArthur, and Lord Mountbatten -- are scrutinized and exposed.

The author portrays Lord Mountbatten, "as a poseur with a streak of vulgarity, promoted far beyond his talents on the strength of fluency, film-star good looks, and his relationship to the royal family."

All students of World War II are familiar with the legendary ego of General MacArthur. Hastings writes, "It was MacArthur's good fortune that, after presiding over the initial disaster in the Philippines, he served in a theatre when American material dominance became so overwhelming that his misjudgments and follies were redeemable."

The author descrubes Generalissimo Chaing Kai shek's, "absolute ruthlessness, vividly exemplified by his destruction of the Yellow River dikes in the path of a Japanese advance, exposing six million people to flooding and starvation. He was indifferent to his own armies' casualties, save where these threatened his power base."

However, the author offers praise and recognition for Admiral Nimitz. Hastings glowingly writes, "Nimitz, a supremely professional naval officer, neither sought nor received a due share of fame for his stellar performance in the Pacific ... "a natural diplomat, sober and controlled." When meeting with Roosevelt and MacArthur, "the undemonstrative Nimitz found himself perforce playing a subordinate role beside two showmen."

Moving to the campaigns, Mr. Hastings argues that the island- hopping race between MacArthur and Nimitz was too wasteful. The author suspects The Philippines campaign was a personal goal of MacArthur and militarily was not necessary.

In "Burning A Nation: LeMay", he explores the debate on how to execute the campaign against the Japanese home islands. Truman offered, "The best psychological warfare to use on these barbarians [is] bombs." The author quotes General LeMay's summation, "Bomb and Burn `em till they quit."

Readers today will learn that some massive fire bombing raids actually killed more Japanese than the Atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Concerning the lack of remorse over the air campaign, Mr. Hastings speculates that there was little compassion for Japanese suffering during the wholesale fire- bombing of cities, in part because of -- Japanese treachery committed at Pearl Harbor -- cruelty shown to allied prisoners -- -- Japanese insistence of dying to the last man.

"Retribution" contains 11 very good maps and 74 interesting photographs.


About the author

Max Hastings, author of twenty books, was editor of the Daily Telegraph for almost a decade, then for six years edited the Evening Standard in London. After leaving Oxford University, Max Hastings became a foreign correspondent for newspapers and BBC television. He has won many awards for his journalism. He was knighted in 2002.
he has three children.

Max Hastings takes his readers from the jungles of Burma to Iwo Jima, from hand-to-hand fighting in Manila to amphibious landings on Okinawa, from battleship in the Leyte Gulf to B-29 raids on Tokyo, and from the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria to the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His human stories are taken from interviews, letters, diaries and memoirs.

Hastings describes the fortitude of men in combat on both sides of the fighting, and he is critical of military leaders and of military decisions that unnecessarily cost many lives. Examples: the Burma Road to resupply Chiang Kai-shek's armies was essentially a sideshow "to restore imperial prestige and to indulge American fantasies about China." MacArthur's "I shall return" campaign destroyed much of Manila and caused massive civilian casualties largely to satisfy MacArthur's own ego and wounded vanity; MacArthur could have bypassed the Phillipines and attacked islands closer to Japan as part of the overall "Island Hopping" strategy.

Hastings writes that the Chinese suffered from the Japanese and from Chiang and Mao Zedong seeking postwar power rather than fighting the Japanese; China "resembled a vast wounded animal, bleeding in a thousand places, prostrate in the dust, twitching and lashing out in its agony, inflicting more pain on itself than upon its foes."

Hasting admires the courage and selflessness shown on both sides on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, but believes that these islands and others might have been bypassed, saving thousands of lives. He notes that America possessed overwhelming naval and air superiority and believes it did not need to conquer Japan island by island. He describes a Marine who tears off his own damaged arm to continue an attack, and a group of blinded Marines holding hands and singing "Three Blind Mice." A Marine on Okinawa stares at a dead Japanese machine gunner "lacking the top of his head; overnight rain had collected in the open skull."

Mr. Hastings's description of the naval battle of Leyte Gulf is powerful; he describes the kamikaze offensive that began there. Altogether, 4,000 Japanese kamikaze pilots died on their missions; one in seven hit American ships, causing more damage than the rest of the Japanese navy. Like the suicide bombers of al Qaeda or Hamas, the kamikaze was "institutionalization of a tactic that makes [death] inevitable."

It was Japan's tenacious tactics that kept the war going. In March B-29 firebombing raids began, killing 100,000 civilians in one attack on Tokyo. Curtis LeMay is quoted: "We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." Hasting reports that by then it was total war: "American moral sensibility was numbed by kamikaze attacks, revelations of savagery toward POW's and subject peoples and general war weariness." He describes the cruelties imposed on Japanese civilians with the same detail he describes Japanese systematic cruelty toward its military prisoners, toward the Chinese and toward other peoples.

Hastings believes that dropping the atomic bombs were necessary not only to compel Japan's surrender but also to pre-empt Russia's invasion of Manchuria and other parts of Asia. President Truman "understood, as some people in the West did not yet understand, the depth of evil which Stalin's Soviet Union represented."

Finally, Hastings describes many of the results of the war: the end of colonial empires; the fall of China to communism; the outbreak of the Korean War; and the emergence of Japan as a peaceful and prosperous nation. The military lesson Hastings draws is less positive. "Only total war enabled a liberal democracy to exploit weapons of mass destruction." Limited war is much more likely to favor belligerents of limited means. Defeating Japan in a total war was "a freak of history."

I found this book big, densely written, and fascinating.

I became aware of this book on the brink of its UK pubication. The UK title is: Nemesis: The Battle for Japan 1944-1945. I ended up getting the UK edition. I just didn't want to wait for the US edition, so I got it (and I live in Wyoming!). I'm glad I did. Hastings brings forth all his formidable powers, both in research, analysis and in his writing abilities.
Hastings praises the US Navy (especially the Submarine Service), condemns MacArthur (or more correctly, his oversized ego), Bill Slim is seen as one of the war's great captains (though Hastings believes Burma did little to contribute to the defeat of Japan), praises the courage of the Japanese, but damns their cruelty and their leadership's poor decisions.

Retribution is the companion volume to Armageddon. As is typical of Hastings, readers probably won't agree with 100% of his judgements and opinions. But the way he organizes his facts and presents his narrative, he presents a formidable case that's hard to deny.

What sets this book apart from the clear majority of Pacific war books, is that Hastings also has chapters on the war's neglected theaters, China and we see the war as both the Communists and Kuomintang, the Australians and of course, the Soviets. It's not just about the Americans, Japanese and to a lesser extent, the British. American readers may not agree with everything Mr. Hastings writes, but part of what makes him so interesting is that he's brilliantly provocative.

With age comes a bit of weariness, and I confess that huge books with small print have begun to intimidate me just a bit. But some of them are so well-written and so interesting that page-anxiety drops away after the first couple of chapters. So it was for me with Max Hastings' Retribution.

Retribution, which chronicles the final year of World War II's Pacific Theatre, is a companion to Hasting's Armageddon, a history of the European Theatre's final year. The new volume begins with General MacArthur's plans to retake the Philippines and ends with a quick summary of the war's effects on Japanese society and culture. In between, Hastings examines the infiltration of total warfare into everyday Japanese life; the battle for control of the sea corridors, the Burma campaign and the Aussies who fought it (which I found particularly fascinating, knowing virtually nothing about it); the air campaign over Japan, masterminded by Curtis LeMay (also an especially intriguing chapter, particularly for those who presume that the only big bomb damage in Japan were the nuclear blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki); the unspeakably horrific Japanese treatment of China and Manchuria; the ferocious battles on Iwo Jima (to which Hastings devotes an entire chapter); and the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led up to Japan's final surrender.

Hastings punctuates his history of the Pacific Theatre's final year with dozens of stories about individual people whose lives were affected--GIs, sailors, Japanese infantrymen and pilots, Chinese "comfort girls," generals, admirals, statesmen--and this is part of what makes his book such a fascinating read. Moreover, Hastings doesn't pull any punches in his estimation of the war's leaders. MacArthur, for example, comes off as one of the most overrated military leaders ever produced by the U.S. Hirohito also comes across badly. Despite the post-war efforts to paint him as a pacifist overwhelmed by sabre-rattling generals, Hastings argues that the Emperor advocated war right up to the end.

Three things in particular struck me in reading Hastings. The first was that bushido, the ancient code of honor embraced by the Japanese military, made life hell for ordinary foot soldiers, who could be savagely beaten by superiors for little or no reason. Apparently such abuse was seen as a way of toughening up the fighting spirit. Bushido also encouraged disdain for military technology on the part of Japanese officers. "Why do we need radar?" one of them asked. "Do we not have eyes that see perfectly well?" (p. 47) This attitude led to a constant technological lag throughout the entire war.

The second was that the Kamikaze strategy adopted by the Japanese toward the end of the war not only failed in its aim of striking fear and panic into the hearts of Allied sailors, but actually had the opposite effect. Sailors were so enraged by what they perceived as cowardly attacks that their ferocity against the Japanese intensified. As one seaman wrote, "seeing dead Japanese in the water was like making love to a beautiful girl" (p. 173). This is a point worth considering, given the current war on terrorism.

Finally, I was amazed to discover that Japanese civilians were so physically and psychologically exhausted by the war that the US occupation forces actually had to protect Japanese soldiers from their wrath when the war ended (pp. 547-48). Even before the end came, some Japanese were privately voicing reservations about the culture of bushido (p. 264). But with defeat came a desire to leave behind the old culture--to such an extent that only Japan, out of all the war's Axis powers, has refused to acknowledge any war guilt or offer reparations (p. 549).

Hastings' book is well worth reading, either straight-through or selectively. One better appreciates just how daunting a task the island-by-island Allied strategy was, as well as how hopeless (at least when viewed in hindsight) Japan's imperialistic aims were.
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* A message to Admiral Nimitz from Admiral Richmond Turner, commander of amphibious forces during the invasion of Okinawa. Nimitz's skeptical reply: "Delete all after 'crazy'" (p. 375).