Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings

Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945 by Max Hastings, 615 pages.

I found this book a slow but very satisfying read. As you might expect, there was a lot going on in the world in 1944 and 1945, as the fates of millions and millions of  people were being decided in the Pacific region. As with other Hastings books, I was surprised to find events and occurrences from the war that I had not encountered before. There is an excellent section in this book on British General William Slim and the Imphal campaign. Imphal and the battle of Kohima were among those major events in this global conflict that had largely escaped my attention before I read Hastings' account. Hastings does a very credible job arguing against many revisionist historians who feel that the Japanese have been overly demonized in many accounts.He argues that those who feel that the atomic bombs were somehow an unnecessary or an overly callous choice in ending the war are ignoring the facts surrounding the end of the war, given that many in the Japanese military wanted to fight on after Nagasaki and Hiroshima and that there was a coup attempted to prevent surrender.  While racism permeated the attitudes and actions of soldiers and leaders on all sides of conflict, Hastings clearly shows that the ruthlessness and the  inhumanity on an appalling scale were factors of the war from its beginning, before the Americans or Europeans joined the battle. Throughout the book, Hastings digs into the written records of and  interviews with Chinese, Indian, Burmese and Japanese combatants and civilians much more frequently than many other western historians.
Hastings is also the author of several other engaging books on the war, including the excellent Armageddon : the Battle for Germany, 1944-45  and Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945. He is among the best writers on twentieth century military history.
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