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  • Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945
  • Michael Kort
Max Hastings , Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. 615 pp. $35.00.

In the preface to Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945, British journalist and military historian Max Hastings writes that his purpose is not to provide yet another detailed recitation of the campaigns during the last year of World War II in the Far [End Page 162] East. Instead, he seeks to "portray [the] massive and terrible human experience" of the final phase of the struggle that brought about the defeat of Japan, focusing on "how and why things were done, what it was like to do them, and what manner of men and women did them" (p. xix). In this, and in a great deal more, Hastings succeeds admirably. Retribution ably chronicles the fighting during that pivotal year, consistently conveying—via memoirs and numerous author interviews—the experiences and perspectives of infantrymen, sailors, pilots, civilians, and prisoners-of-war on both sides while keeping the overall strategic picture clearly in view and providing insightful commentary on long-standing debates regarding the methods used by the United States and its allies to defeat Japan.

Hastings does not hesitate to pass judgment on Allied civilian leaders and military commanders, often subjecting the performances of the latter in particular to withering criticism. Nor does he overlook the offenses the Allies committed in Asia both before the war as colonial powers and during the war itself. At the same time he emphatically rejects moral equivalency in assessing the fundamental issue of what the two sides stood for and how they fought the war. Japan was a fascistic, militarist state and ruthless conqueror whose actions, beginning with its attack on China, caused tens of millions of deaths. This is why Hastings approves of the war crimes trials the Allies conducted once peace was restored, even though he acknowledges that the trials were flawed. He stresses that whatever faults the Allies had, their behavior at its worst pales in comparison to the brutality the Japanese routinely directed against their Western adversaries and, pointedly, against Asians whose countries they invaded and ruthlessly exploited for their own ends. Hastings likewise convincingly argues that, given Japan's refusal to consider surrender terms even minimally acceptable to the Allies and Tokyo's undeniable determination in the summer of 1945 to fight on to the bitter end, the methods used in defeating the Japanese, including the nuclear bomb, were justified. Hence the title "Retribution," the severe fate that Japan—or, more accurately, its leaders—brought upon itself by its conduct during the war.

Hastings ranges widely to include aspects of the struggle that until now have received limited coverage from Western authors. This includes detailed coverage of the 46-month-long British struggle against the Japanese army in Burma, the lengthiest single campaign of World War II. Two chapters on Burma enable Hastings to chronicle the considerable scale of the British Empire's effort against Japan and the achievements of General Bill Slim, the officer Hastings calls Britain's ablest field commander of the war. Yet Hastings admits that not only was the effort of Slim's "Forgotten Army" almost unacknowledged in Britain but that it contributed little to the core effort to defeat Japan. Hastings's coverage of the China theater highlights the dreadful suffering the Chinese people endured at the hands of the Japanese, a fate compounded by the ineptitude of China's Nationalist regime. He adds that the "terrible price" China paid "contributed almost nothing to the Allied victory" (p. 222). Hastings also effectively debunks the myth that Mao Zedong's Communists were an alternative to the Nationalists with respect to enhancing the war effort against Japan. Hastings correctly notes that Mao during the war focused almost exclusively on preparing for the [End Page 163] postwar struggle to gain control of China. Mao worked to build his power base, financing his efforts with large-scale opium trading, and fought the Japanese only when he had to. China's failure to be an effective ally in 1944-1945 increased the importance of the Soviet Union's pledge to...

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