Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
Max Hastings
As a historian, one is taught to identify one’s biases before writing a review, so here we go. I love Max Hastings: I believe he is one of the most accomplished and interesting historians writing today, and based on the sales and reviews of his books many others agree. I was fortunate enough to attend one of Hastings’ lectures last year in Oxford, and got him to sign a copy of Armageddon, his previous book, which I also highly recommend. Armageddon deals with the last year of the war in Europe, 1944 to 1945, in exceptional detail. This book is a companion piece, one might say, and it deals with the last year of the war in the Pacific. Given my affection for this author’s works, I did my best to review Nemesis in as neutral and unbiased a manner as possible.
There is no shortage of books written about the Pacific war, ranging from either 1941 to 1945 or 1931 to 1945, depending on your point of view. In the last decade, there have been some remarkable works added to the scholarship of the field, such as the groundbreaking ‘Downfall’ by Richard Franks, which deals with a very similar topic as this book: the end of the Japanese Empire. So it was with some surprise that I learned that hasting was writing Nemesis, another text dealing with the end of this well-documented struggle. It was unclear to me exactly where this book would fit in the scholarship, and what exactly it could add.
Yet Hastings surprised me. Nemesis is an incredible book filled with intricate detail and exceptionally in-depth analysis: and this last is really Hastings’ strength, the careful and rational analysis he does of the events he describes. Where other offers have remarked just how poorly the Japanese Navy performed in the final stages of the war, Hastings gives us a careful and well documented explanation of why this is the case, and then gives us a history of these same root causes. The result is a remarkable knowledge of not only the ‘whats’ and ‘whens’ of the war, but the ‘whys’ as well. Hastings is also very careful to document his assessments with hard facts, and he also identified cases where different sources give different statistics. He does not accept standard assertions as being fact, but challenges and explores them in order to get at the truth. A good example is the exceptionally low surrender rate of the Japanese, which was always attributed to their banzai spirit: Hastings points out that this is largely the case, but it also might have to do with the fact that, by the later stages of the war, the US soldiers and marines were not inclined to take prisoners even on those rare cases when Japanese troops did give up.
Hastings’ other gift is to examine a situation with contemporary eyes: he explains to us the horror of the Kamikaze attacks, especially during their first mass deployment in the seas around Okinawa. He shows us, though personal accounts as well as documentary evidence just how shocking this was, especially for sailors who were fairly sure the end of the war was close. This ability to see things through the eyes of 1945 gives his analysis added legitimacy, as it is largely untainted by hindsight.
The book does not shy away from voicing on the main controversies of the period, and evidencing its conclusions. I particularly liked his statement that the argument that Japan was about to surrender in July 1945 has been so completely and convincingly disproven in recent scholarship that it is a wonder anyone voices it anymore. But Hastings does not stop with making claims, he backs them up in a very convincing manner, drawing from primary documentation and contemporary accounts, and pointing out where these contradict post-war accounts. His analysis of why the US chose to drop the bombs was one of the most detailed I have ever read, and could only have been done by somebody with a deep understanding of the manner by which the US military and the US government interacted.
The book is detailed and clear about the nature and manner of atrocity committed by the Japanese, which Hastings puts on the scale, if not the manner, of the German holocaust. But he is not one-sided, pointing out stupidity or error on the American side when they occur: his analysis of Macarthur is particularly damning.
The last, and to my mind, one of the best, novel feature of this book is that it really is all encompassing. It is not just a story of the big battles between the US and Japan, it is a history of the entire Pacific theatre of operations, including information all too frequently left out of other texts. He explores the British advance across Burma, and the August 1945 Russian advance into Manchuria. He spends a great deal of time exploring the sadly shameful actions of Australia during the latter months of the war, something I had never even heard about previously. Max Hastings presents not only a startling depth of knowledge, but also an amazing breadth of knowledge on minor and seemingly inconsequential fronts in this great war, never once losing track of the home fronts of the reasons behind decisions, both good and bad, on both sides.
In fact the only areas where the book does not spend a lot of time is on the nitty-gritty detail of the actual battles. Huge conflicts like Midway, Coral Sea or Leyte Gulf are summarised in a few pages rather then exhaustively explored: Hastings openly acknowledges that other books have done an admirable job of exploring the minutiae of the battles that do not need to be repeated here, yet enough information is provided so that those who may not have read these other books still understand what is going on.
Finally, the book may be long (over 500 pages) but it is eminently readable, written in open and inclusive language for both the historian and the casual dabbler. Carefully organized into thematic chapters dealing with specific fronts, major battles or strategic themes (such as the bombing campaign, or the submarine blockade), it is straightforward and unconfusing, even if this was your first encounter with the history of the period.
I believe that Nemesis may well be one of the best books by one of the top historians of the Second World War writing today, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who has any interest in this fascinating and pivotal period of modern history.
