Unconditional Defeat: Japan, America, and the End of World War II (review)

The second book in a new series on World War II, Thomas W. Zeiler's Unconditional Defeat accounts for the manner in which the United States destroyed Japan's armed forces and its newly acquired empire in twenty-two months of American offensives beginning in November 1943. Chair of the Department of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Zeiler characterizes Japan's resistance after that date as a brutal and senseless waste of lives and treasure.

Facing a more populous and overwhelmingly better armed and supplied opponent, one capable of fighting on shifting fronts along multiple axes of advance, Japan proved unable either to protect its earlier gains or devise sound strategic options. Only by desperately defending every point might it hope to make the war so costly that Americans would seek a negotiated peace. Having already established a record of cruelty, Japanese fanaticism therefore intensified as the war progressed, prompting an equally fierce American reaction and an unimaginably violent and merciless war.

After sketching the opening November 1943 attacks on Bougainville and the Gilbert Islands, Zeiler skillfully describes both American strategy and the bloody tactical combats as Douglas MacArthur's forces leapfrogged along the New Guinea coast before moving on to the Philippines and as Chester Nimitz sent his carriers against the Japanese fleet and his ground troops island-hopping through the Marshalls and Marianas. With photographs and deft descriptions of Japanese defenses and American heroism, Zeiler repeatedly exposes the war's savage nature.

By the summer of 1944, Zeiler claims, even the Japanese high command recognized the need to pursue peace. Its ground forces were falling back in Burma and had lost their hold on New Guinea, its merchant and battle fleets had been severely crippled, and B-29s dropped their first bombs on targets in the Home Islands. In October, MacArthur returned to the Philippines, and U.S. forces in the Central Pacific seized Peleliu and began planning assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Even so, Zeiler writes, "honor, fear, and bureaucratic gridlock defied logic, and Japan fought on, helplessly but with heightened cruelty" (p. 90) until B-29s launched from Tinian in the Marianas dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Except for MacArthur's behavior, most often attributed to vanity, Unconditional Defeat provides brief but balanced assessments of the Pacific war's principal strategic debates and its most controversial tactical actions. At greater length, Zeiler fair-mindedly handles President Harry Truman's decisions to employ the atomic bomb and accept less than unconditional surrender by allowing the Japanese emperor to retain his throne. In every other respect, Zeiler accurately claims, "Japan's defeat was unconditional, for in terms of lives, matériel and supplies, and territory lost, the United States and its Allies had wrought utter defeat on the empire" (pp. 190-91).

This brief but comprehensive history of the Pacific war's last two years is written in a style that should please both general readers and undergraduates studying military history. Not groundbreaking by design, Unconditional Defeat nevertheless draws together the war's recent scholarship. Better editing would have ensured that all locations in the text also appeared on the abundant maps.