This collection of diaries gives readers a powerful, firsthand look at the effects of the Pacific War on eight ordinary Japanese. Immediate, vivid, and at times surprisingly frank, the diaries chronicle the last years of the war and its aftermath as experienced by a navy kamikaze pilot, an army straggler on Okinawa, an elderly Kyoto businessman, a Tokyo housewife, a young working woman in Tokyo, a teenage girl mobilized for war work, and two school-children evacuated to the countryside. Samuel Yamashita's introduction provides a helpful overview of the historiography on wartime Japan and offers valuable insights into the important, everyday issues that concerned Japanese during a different and disastrously difficult time.

"The Thought War" is the first book in English to examine the full extent of Japan's wartime propaganda. Based on a wide range of archival material and sources in Japanese, Chinese, and English, it explores the propaganda programs of the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945, demonstrating the true scope of imperial propaganda and its pervasive influence, an influence that is still felt today. Contrary to popular postwar rhetoric, it was not emperor worship or military authoritarianism that led an entire nation to war. Rather, it was the creation of a powerful image of Japan as the leader of modern Asia and the belief that the Japanese could and would guide Asia to a new, glorious period of reform that appealed to imperial subjects. Kushner analyzes the role of the police and military in defining socially acceptable belief and behavior by using their influence to root out malcontents. His research is the first of its kind to treat propaganda as a profession in wartime Japan. He shows that the leadership was not confined to the crude tools of sloganeering and government-sponsored demonstrations but was able instead to appropriate the expertise of the nation's advertising firms to "sell" the image of Japan as Asia's leader and modernizer. In his exploration of the propaganda war in popular culture and the entertainment industry, Kushner discloses how entertainers sought to bolster their careers by adopting as their own pro-war messages that then filtered down into society and took hold. Japanese propaganda frequently conflicted with Chinese and American visions of empire, and Kushner reveals the reactions of these two nations to Japan's efforts and the meaning of their responses.

Nearly 50 years after Japan's attack, this text takes a fresh look at the air raid that plunged America into World War II. Michael Slackman scrutinizes the decisions and attitudes that prompted the attack and left the US unprepared to mount a successful defence.

Magic was the name given to the American decoding of the secret Japanese codes used in diplomatic communications before and during the Pacific War of 1941-45. Presenting a Japanese perspective, this work argues that, in the final phase of the eight months of US-Japan talks leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor, serious mistranslations in Magic were a significant factor in the cumulative effect of mutual misunderstandings which grew between the two sides over a longer period.

On October 25, 1944, the Samuel B. Roberts, along with the other twelve vessels comprising its unit, Taffy 3, stood between Japan's largest battleship force ever sent to sea, and General Douglas MacArthur's transports inside Leyte Gulf. Faced with the surprise appearance of more than twenty Japanese battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, including the Yamato, at seventy thousand tons the most potent battlewagon in the world, the twelve-hundred-ton Samuel B. Roberts turned immediately into action with six other ships. The ship churned straight at the enemy in a near-suicidal attempt to deflect the more potent foe and buy time for MacArthur's forces. Of 563 destroyers constructed during World War II, the Samuel B. Roberts was the only one sunk, going down with guns blazing in a duel reminiscent of the Spartans at Thermopylae or Davy Crockett's Alamo defenders. The men who survived faced a horrifying three-day nightmare in the sea, where they battled a lack of food and water, scorching sun, numbing night time cold, and nature's most feared adversary - sharks. The battle would go down as history's greatest sea clash, the Battle of Samar - the dramatic climax of the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

This volume tells how an experienced, principled man faltered when confronted by the tremendous challenge posed by the intersection of war, diplomacy, and technology. Malloy examines Stimson's struggle to reconcile his responsibility for 'the most terrible weapon ever known in human history'.

When the Japanese invaded the beautiful Indonesian island of Java during World War II, Clara Kelly was four years old. Her family was separated, her father sent to work on the Burma railway, and she together with her two brothers, one a six-week-old baby, were sent to a "women's camp". They were interned there until the end of the war.;Clara describes the appalling deprivations and impersonal brutality of the camp, such as standing in the baking heat for hours of "Tenko" rolecall and living on one cup of rice a day. These descriptions are countered by the courage and resilience shown by all the internees, most poignantly her own mother. Remarkable too is the way the children, Clara and her elder brother, and their friends keep their spirits high, finding ways to play even in the darkest times with death one false move away.;Just as the painting of a Flamboya tree miraculously survives every last-minute flight and surprise search by the Japanese, Clara carries her mother's spirit of love, humour and courage through all of her experiences.

"Leckie's smooth narrative deals with all aspects of the Okinawa battle...and his style adds some nice touches, including autobiographical flashes that go back as fas as Guadalcanal."—Washington Post Book World.

A vividly detailed account of life aboard U.S. submarines in the Pacific during World War II.