Japan World War Ii

The Battle of Okinawa was the deadliest campaign of the Pacific during World War II. The Americans had come back from the demoralizing defeat at Pearl Harbor to mount a ferocious attack against the Japanese. To be able to invade Japan, the Americans had to take Okinawa. But the Japanese, determined to defend their homeland and preserve their way of life, would fight to the death against the invaders. As the Army and Marines fought bloody battles to gain Okinawa inch by inch, the Navy was subjected to kamikaze attacks.

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.

In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor in Ulithi Harbor, deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa erupted in a ball of flames. Japan's secret weapon, the Kaiten - a manned suicide submarine - had succeeded in its first mission. The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn't know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the shocking surprise attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage or inspect the sunken Mighty Miss.

The dawn of 1945 finds a US Army at its peak in the Pacific. Allied victory over Japan is all but assured. The only question is how many more months—or years—of fight does the enemy have left. John C. McManus’s magisterial series, described by the Wall Street Journal as being “as vast and splendid as Rick Atkinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Liberation Trilogy,” returns with this brilliant final volume.

For the first four months of 1942, U.S., Filipino, and Japanese soldiers fought what was America's first major land battle of World War II, the battle for the tiny Philippine peninsula of Bataan. It ended with the surrender of 76,000 Filipinos and Americans, the single largest defeat in American military history. The defeat, though, was only the beginning, as Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman make dramatically clear in this powerfully original book.

“I shall return”, General Douglas MacArthur promised the Filipino people following the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Philippines in spring 1942. The people there believed MacArthur’s vow - and even Americans were stirred by his dramatic pledge. Now, two and half years later, MacArthur was ready to fulfill his promise - the liberation of the Philippines was about to begin.

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.

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.

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.

One American soldier called it "a green hell on Earth". Monsoon-soaked wilderness, debilitating heat, impassable mountains, torrential rivers, and disease-infested swamps - New Guinea was a battleground far more deadly than the most fanatical of enemy troops. Japanese forces numbering some 600,000 men began landing in January 1942, determined to seize the island as a cornerstone of the empire's strategy to knock Australia out of the war.

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.

Stuart Goldman convincingly argues that a little-known, but intense, Soviet-Japanese conflict along the Manchurian- Mongolian frontier at Nomonhan influenced the outbreak of World War II and shaped the course of the war. The author draws on Japanese, Soviet, and western sources to put the seemingly obscure conflict - actually a small undeclared war - into its proper global geo-strategic perspective.The book describes how the Soviets, in response to a border conflict provoked by Japan, launched an offensive in August 1939 that wiped out the Japanese forces at Nomonhan.

After the Battle of Midway, the Japanese were forced into the position of trying to defend the territory they had previously taken; their dreams of expanding their acquisitions and becoming the dominant power in the Pacific were gone. The tide of war in the Pacific had shifted.

Marching Orders tells the story of how the American military's breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes during World War II led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and hastened the end of the devastating conflict. With unprecedented access to over one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, author Bruce Lee offers a series of fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war.

As smoke billows skyward from Pearl Harbor, Japan throws its full military might against the outnumbered and under-equipped Filipino forces. Admiral Hart sends his US Asiatic Fleet south, to the safety of Allied waters. When remnants of PBY Patrol Wing 10 depart with the fleet, Charles Beckner, corpsman for Squadron 102, is left behind with no apparent avenue for escape.

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.”

Tomi was born in Hawaii. His grandfather and parents were born in Japan and came to America to escape poverty. World War II seems far away from Tomi and his friends, who are too busy playing ball on their eighth-grade team, the Rats. But then Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese, and the United States declares war on Japan. Japanese men are rounded up, and Tomi’s father and grandfather are arrested. It’s a terrifying time to be Japanese in America. But one thing doesn’t change: the loyalty of Tomi’s buddies, the Rats.

In May 1942, Admiral Jack Fletcher's Task Force 17 closed in for the war's first major clash with the Japanese Navy. The Neosho, a vitally important tanker, was escorted by a destroyer, the Sims. The ships were attacked by Japanese dive bombers, and when the smoke cleared, the Sims had slipped beneath the waves. Scores of sailors were killed or wounded while hundreds bobbed in shark-infested waters.

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.

“It’s hell out there” was how one Marine described the assault on Tarawa, the US Navy’s first amphibious landing in World War II’s arduous Pacific campaign to bring the Empire of Japan to its knees. In 76 hours of fighting, the Marines lost nearly as many men as had died during the six months of the Guadalcanal campaign. Military intelligence had failed to take into account the reefs around Betio, the target of the assault, or the low tides which prevented transport vehicles from bringing the Marines safely to shore.