Asia Military

On the morning of August 15, 1945, Captain Jerry Yellin flew the last combat mission of World War II out of Iwo Jima. Today, Captain Yellin is a sharp, engaging, 93-year-old veteran whose story is brought to life by best-selling author Don Brown.

Westmoreland's War is a landmark reinterpretation of one of America's most divisive wars, outlining the multiple, interconnected aspects of American military strategy in Vietnam-combat operations, pacification, nation building, and the training of the South Vietnamese armed forces. Gregory Daddis offers a critical reassessment of one of the defining moments in American history.

In 1968, a small, dilapidated American spy ship set out on a dangerous mission to pinpoint military radar stations along the coast of North Korea. Packed with advanced surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by a charismatic, hard-drinking, ex-submarine officer named Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties.

A revealing and controversial account of the events surrounding Pearl Harbor. Pulitzer Prize - winning author John Toland presents evidence that FDR and his top advisors knew about the planned Japanese attack but remained silent. Infamy reveals the conspiracy to cover up the facts and find scapegoats for the greatest disaster in United States military history. New York Times best-seller.

Uniquely adopting a third-person omniscient point of view, Nightingale eschews the "I" of memoir in favor of multiple perspectives and a larger historical vision that afford equal time and weight to ally and enemy alike. Examples of the many perspectives based on real-life characters include: Hu, a VC "informant" whose false information led the Rangers straight into the jaws of a ferocious ambush; General Tanh, the COSVN commander; Major Nguyen Hiep, the 52d Ranger Commander; and Ranger POWs later returned by the North.

Invariably, armies are accused of preparing to fight the previous war. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl—a veteran of both Operation Desert Storm and the conflict in Iraq—considers the now crucial question of how armies adapt to changing circumstances during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared.

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was the third most powerful navy in the world at the start of World War II and came to dominate the Pacific in the early months of the war. This was a remarkable turnaround for a navy that only began to modernize in 1868. The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War details the Japanese ships which fought in the Pacific and examines the principles on which they were designed, how they were armed, when and where they were deployed, and how effective they were in battle.

For most of its history, the People’s Republic of China limited public discussion of the war against Japan. It was an experience of victimization - and one that saw Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek fighting for the same goals. But now, as China grows more powerful, the meaning of the war is changing. Rana Mitter argues that China’s reassessment of the World War II years is central to its newfound confidence abroad and to mounting nationalism at home.

The war in Afghanistan has consumed vast amounts of blood and treasure, causing the Western powers to seek an exit without achieving victory. Seemingly never-ending, the conflict has become synonymous with a number of issues-global jihad, rampant tribalism, and the narcotics trade - but even though they are cited as the causes of the conflict, they are in fact symptoms.

Twelve-year-old Sora and her family live under an iron set of rules: No travel without a permit. No criticism of the government. No absences from Communist meetings. Wear red. Hang pictures of the Great Leader. Don't trust your neighbors. Don't speak your mind. You are being watched. But war is coming, war between North and South Korea, between the Soviets and the Americans. War causes chaos - so war is the perfect time to escape. The plan is simple: Sora and her family will walk for weeks from their tiny northern village to the South Korean city of Busan.

Some of the cruelest deeds of Japan's war in Asia did not occur on the battlefield, but in quiet, antiseptic medical wards in obscure parts of China. Far from front lines and prying eyes, Japanese doctors and their assistants subjected human guinea pigs to gruesome medical experiments in the name of science and Japan's wartime chemical and biological warfare research. Author Hal Gold draws upon a wealth of sources to construct a portrait of the Imperial Japanese Army's most notorious medical unit, giving an overview of its history and detailing its most shocking activities.

On October 25, 1944, the Samuel B. Roberts and 12 other vessels stood between Japan’s largest battleship force ever and MacArthur’s transports inside Leyte Gulf. Facing more than 20 Japanese vessels - including the 70,000-ton Yamato - the 1,200-ton Samuel B. Roberts turned immediately to action, churning straight at the enemy in a near-suicidal attempt to deflect the more potent foe and buy time for MacArthur’s forces.

In Good Faith is the first of a two-volume, accessible narrative history of America's involvement in Indochina, from the end of World War II to the Fall of Saigon in 1975. The books charts the course of America's engagement with the region, from its initially hesitant support for French Indochina through the advisory missions following the 1954 Geneva Accords, then on to the covert war promoted in the Kennedy years, and then escalation to total war in the Johnson era....

Struggling to reassert control over their Indochinese colonies after World War II, the French established a huge air-land base in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. But when the opposing Vietnamese People's Army (VPA) began massing its forces against the base in late 1953, French commanders seized the opportunity to draw their elusive enemy into a decisive set-piece battle. Defending a series of fortified positions which were reliant upon a single airstrip for reinforcement and resupply, the French troops quickly discovered that they had underestimated their enemy.

Strategy and reality collide in Peter Fey's gripping history of aircraft carrier USS Oriskany's three deployments to Vietnam with Carrier Air Wing 16 (CVW-16). Its tours coincided with the most dangerous phases of Operation Rolling Thunder, the ill-fated bombing campaign against North Vietnam, and accounted for a quarter of all the naval aircraft lost during Rolling Thunder. The Johnson administration's policy of gradually applied force meant that Oriskany arrived on station just as previous restrictions were lifted and bombing raids increased.

Hired by the Tibetan government, Royal Air Force veteran Robert W. Ford put together a radio communications network for a nation that had up to this time relied on messages carried by foot over the highest mountains on the globe. More important, his radio connected the secluded nation to the outside world. When, in October, 1950, the Communist Chinese army began its march to subjugate Tibet, Ford risked his life by staying behind to send out reports over his radio to let the world know.

On 25 June, 1950, the invasion of South Korea by the Communist North launched one of the bloodiest conflicts of the last century. The seemingly limitless power of the Chinese-backed North was thrown against the ferocious firepower of the UN-backed South in a war that can be seen today as the stark prelude to Vietnam.

The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road - both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay 2000 miles apart; by the end, this distance had shrunk to 20 miles at some points.

In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march.

Victory at Saipan was the key that opened the door to the soft underbelly of the Japanese Empire. Yet because the Japanese were aware of this vulnerability, they were willing to throw everything they had against the ever-encroaching American forces and fight to the death to defend this island.