Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45

Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944–45
Max Hastings

A masterly narrative history of the climactic battles of the Second World War, and companion volume to his bestselling ‘Armageddon’, by the pre-eminent military historian Max Hastings.The battle for Japan that ended many months after the battle for Europe involved enormous naval, military and air operations from the borders of India to the most distant regions of China. There is no finer chronicler of these events than the great military historian Max Hastings, whose gripping account explores not just the global strategic objectives of the USA, Japan and Britain but also the first-hand experiences of the airmen, sailors and soldiers of all the countries who participated in the Far East and the war in the Pacific.The big moments in the story are chosen to reflect a wide variety of human experience: the great naval battle of Leyte Gulf; the under-reported war in China; the re-conquest of Burma by the British Army under General Slim; MacArthur's follies in the Philippines; the Marines on Iwojima and Okinawa; LeMay's fire-raising Super-fortress assaults on Japan; the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the kamikaze pilots of Japan; the almost unknown Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria in the last days of the war, as Stalin hastened to gather the spoils; and the terrible final acts across Japanese-occupied Asia.This is classic, epic history – both in the content and the manner of telling.

Nemesis

MAX HASTINGS

THE BATTLE FOR JAPAN, 1944-45

Copyright (#ulink_8e0ffe31-3f6a-5c4c-876a-53c2f69ffa0d)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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This ebook edition first published in 2009

First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2007

Copyright © Max Hastings 2007

Cover photograph © akg-images/Pictures from History

Max Hastings asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007219810

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344093

Version: 2017-03-23

Praise (#ulink_a926d1be-4965-501e-becb-6926cc31943d)

From the reviews of Nemesis:

‘The shocking, little-known story of the war against Japan. Absolutely excellent’

JOHN SIMPSON, Observer

‘Spectacular. Hastings is excellent, unsparing and compelling. Searingly powerful’

ANDREW ROBERTS, Sunday Telegraph

‘A triumph. Put all these elements together—the ambition, insight, sureness of touch—and you have a book of real quality’

LAURENCE REES, Sunday Times

‘An outstandingly gripping and authoritative account of the battle for Japan, and a monument to human bravery—and savagery’

DOMINIC SANDBROOK, Daily Telegraph

In memory of my son

CHARLES HASTINGS 1973-2000

Epigraph (#ulink_5c0b595b-eb97-53d9-ab1a-e2f48f8aa848)

War is human, it is as something that is lived like a love or a hatred…It might better be described as a pathological condition because it admits of accidents which not even a skilled physician could have foreseen.

MARCEL PROUST

‘Oh, surely they’ll stop now. They’ll be horrified at what they’ve done!’ he thought, aimlessly following on behind crowds of stretchers moving away from the battlefield.

Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov at Borodino, 1812

In 1944, there seemed absolutely no reason to suppose that the war might end in 1945.

CAPTAIN LUO DINGWEN, Chinese Nationalist army

Contents

Cover Page (#u32e81502-6d37-517b-b9d5-05b8fedc79bb)

Title Page (#ue3555f4f-784f-5e81-921b-ebadbef42f03)

Copyright (#ue01a6eee-e0c6-5a12-8a91-3781ea50346f)

Praise (#u66ff1fdb-af9e-5b50-b3f5-45001527baea)

Dedication (#u0d774d5b-7e9c-5c5f-9276-5735de67098e)

Epigraph (#u3014a518-8b48-56a9-9fd0-509bbfabf057)

Introduction (#u2290137a-3461-5f17-a1fc-1ee2534b969b)

1 Dilemmas and Decisions (#udcf5ca40-146a-5a57-93b0-d272bfa0453a)

2 Japan: Defying Gravity (#uc5840d67-739f-5f69-af13-fb141790d887)

3 The British in Burma (#u8405f498-6856-5ccb-ba82-91fdd07c960b)