Japan War History

Following their rampage through Southeast Asia and the Pacific in the five months after Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces moved into the Solomon Islands, intending to cut off the critical American supply line to Australia. But when they began to construct an airfield on Guadalcanal in July 1942, the Americans captured the almost completed airfield for their own strategic use. The Japanese Army countered by sending to Guadalcanal a reinforced battalion under the command of Col. Kiyonao Ichiki.

In this concise account of why America used atomic bombs against Japan in 1945, J. Samuel Walker analyzes the reasons behind President Truman's most controversial decision. Delineating what was known and not known by American leaders at the time, Walker evaluates the options available for ending the war with Japan. In this new edition, Walker incorporates a decade of new research - mostly from Japanese archives only recently made available - that provides fresh insight on the strategic considerations that led to dropping the bomb.

Richard Sorge was dispatched to Tokyo in 1933 to serve the spymasters of Moscow. For eight years, he masqueraded as a Nazi journalist and burrowed deep into the German embassy, digging for the secrets of Hitler's invasion of Russia and the Japanese plans for the East. In a nation obsessed with rooting out moles, he kept a high profile - boozing, womanizing, and operating entirely under his own name.

In The Cactus Air Force, Pacific War expert Thomas McKelvey Cleaver worked closely with Eric to build on his collection of diary entries, interviews and first-hand accounts to create a vivid narrative of the struggle in the air over the island of Guadalcanal between August 20 and November 15, 1942.

The last installment of the War in the Far East trilogy, Asian Armageddon 1944-1945, continues and completes the narrative of the first two volumes, describing how a US-led coalition of nations battled Japan into submission through a series of cataclysmic encounters. Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle ever, was testimony to the paramount importance of controlling the ocean, as was the fact that the US Navy carried out the only successful submarine campaign in history, reducing Japan's military and merchant navies to shadows of the former selves.

Frederick Rutland was an accomplished aviator, British WWI war hero, and real-life James Bond. He was the first pilot to take off and land a plane on a ship, a decorated warrior for his feats of bravery and rescue, was trusted by the admirals of the Royal Navy, had a succession of aeronautical inventions, and designed the first modern aircraft carrier. He was perhaps the most famous early twentieth-century naval aviator. Despite all of this, and due mostly to class politics, Rutland was not promoted in the new Royal Air Force in the wake of WWI.

In 1943, the United States military began to plan one of the most dramatic secret missions of World War II. Its code name was Operation Vengeance. Naval Intelligence had intercepted the itinerary of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander in chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet, whose stealth attack on Pearl Harbor precipitated America’s entry into the war. Harvard-educated, Yamamoto was a close confidant of Emperor Hirohito and a brilliant tactician who epitomized Japanese military might.

From the beginning, it was clear that Ralph Nutter was an exceptional navigator. Rapid promotion followed when he was assigned as Maj. Gen. Curtis the Eagle LeMay's personal navigator. Later, he was picked by Maj. Gen. Haywood Possum Hansell, the 20th Air Force Commander, to be his personal navigator. The author's vivid recollections of those halcyon years make for exciting, informative listening.

The First World War came at an unfortunate time for those who would fight in it, and while the role of Japan in World War II is widely known, Japan’s important role in the First World War is mostly overlooked...Japan and World War I: The History of the Japanese Empire’s Participation in the Great War analyzes the actions of the forgotten ally, and how Japan’s participation helped set the stage for its expansion across the Pacific. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Japan and World War I like never before.

In this scholarly study, Charles Stephenson describes the political, diplomatic, and military build-up to the Soviet offensive and its decisive outcome. He also considers to what extent Japan's capitulation is attributable to the atomic bomb or the stunningly successful entry of the Soviet Union into the conflict.

On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, a small port city on Japan's southernmost island. An estimated 74,000 people died within the first five months, and another 75,000 were injured. Published on the 70th anniversary of the bombing, Nagasaki takes listeners from the morning of the bombing to the city today, telling the firsthand experiences of five survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the devastation.

The American Provisional Tank Group had been in the Philippines only three weeks when the Japanese attacked the islands hours after the raid on Pearl Harbor. One of the tankmen parked his half-track on a runway and shot down a Japanese Zero that day, but the group's first tank-on-tank action - indeed the first American armor battle of World War II - would come two weeks later.

On the face of it, the three characters in this book seem to have little in common—aside from the fact that each committed wartime acts that led some to see them as national heroes, and others as villains. All three were mythmakers, larger-than-life storytellers, for whom the truth was beside the point. Felix Kersten was a plump Finnish pleasure-seeker who became Heinrich Himmler’s indispensable personal masseur—Himmler calling him his “magic Buddha.”

The Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria is sometimes described as the true beginning of World War II. The Second Sino-Japanese War: The History and Legacy of the Deadly Conflict That Lasted Through the End of World War II examines the notorious fighting, as well as the crucial aftermath. You will learn about the Second Sino-Japanese War like never before.

The heart-wrenching but ultimately redemptive story of two World War II soldiers - a Japanese surgeon and an American sergeant - during a brutal Alaskan battle in which the sergeant discovers the medic's revelatory and fascinating diary that changed our war-torn society’s perceptions of Japan.

One of the most fascinating aspects of World War II was Japan's use of suicide pilots known around the globe as kamikazes, though the Japanese referred to them as Tokubetsu kōgekitai ("Special Attack Units"). Translated as "God Wind", "Divine Wind", and "God Spirit", kamikazes would sink 47 Allied vessels and damage over 300 by the end of the war, but the rise in the use of kamikaze attacks was evidence of the loss of Japan's air superiority and its waning industrial might.

December 7, 1941. The Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was sucked into World War II. The nation was furious, and the public demanded revenge. Back home, Colonel James Doolittle of the United States Airforce was tasked with organizing a raid on Japan. On April 18, 1942, 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers were flown from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet off the coast of Japan. The daring mission was successful in creating fear within the hearts of the enemy and won support for the military back home. This is the story of The Doolittle Raid.

The Battle of Iwo Jima, a major event in the Pacific Theater of World War II - and one of the bloodiest in United States history - began on February 19, 1945. But what happened two days earlier has largely been a footnote - until now.... On February 17, Landing Craft Infantry 449 was among a dozen gunboats helping to prepare the area for their invasion two days later. US military leaders thought that they had weakened Japanese forces in the area.

The United States Navy won such overwhelming victories in 1944 that had the Navy faced a different enemy the war would have been over at the conclusion of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. However, in the moment of victory on October 25, 1944, the US Navy found itself confronting an enemy that had been inconceivable until it appeared. The kamikaze, meaning 'divine wind' in Japanese, was something Americans were totally unprepared for; a violation of every belief held in the West.

On the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes this heart-pounding account of the war-room drama inside the cabinets of the United States and Japan that led to Armageddon on August 6, 1945. Here are the secret strategy sessions, fierce debates, looming assassinations, and planned invasions that resulted in history’s first use of nuclear weapons in combat, and the ensuing chaotic days as the Japanese government struggled to respond to the reality of nuclear war.