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Austin Trotter
HIST 4000
Dr. Morrill
Annotated Bibliography
Alexander, Joseph. Utmost Savagery: The Three
Days of Tarawa. US Naval Institute Press, 1995.
Alexander details the invasion of the Japanese
island of Tarawa on November 20, 1943. This was one of the first
amphibious assaults made by the US against Japan during WW2. Col.
Alexander attempts to break down the actual battle plan implemented for
the assault and whether or not it was successful. Col. Alexander does a
great job of detailing all the aspects of the invasion of Tarawa. From
the decisions of the leaders onboard navy ships to the implementation of
these orders by the common marine, the agony, brutality, and utmost
savagery of the war in the pacific is expressed throughout.
Bischof, Gunther and
Dupont, Robert L.
The Pacific War Revisited.
Baton
Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
From Pearl Harbor, to
Iwo Jima, to the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki this book
reviews the entire Pacific War during WWII. While the book does not
delve deep into any one subject, it does provide a solid overview off
the main events of the Pacific War. The Bataan Death March is a major
area of the book. The march from the Philippines is examined in great
detail. The murders, cruelty and atrocities committed towards the POWs
who were subjected to the march are relived through testimonies from
those involved. Overall this book provides a very good starting point
for understanding the war without being forced to read into too much
detail.
Gold, Hal.
Unit 731: Testimony. Tuttle Publishing, 2004.
Gold splits the book
into two parts. The first half of the book details the history of how
Japan attempted to improve the medical conditions and knowledge to help
their soldiers and civilians before WWII. The second half of the book
uses testimonies from those who participated in Unit 731 and specifies
the horrors that they took apart in. Biological experimentation,
vivisections, and deprivation were the primary atrocities attributed to
Unit 731 and this book examines numerous cases of each.
Harris,
Sheldon H.
Factories of
Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-1945, and the American
Cover-up.
Revised
edition. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.
Hersey, John. Hiroshima. The New Yorker,
August 1946.
The article focuses on the lives of six survivors
of the atomic bomb and how the event had changed their lives. Of these
survivors, two were ministers (both men); two were doctors (both men),
one female clerk, and one mother. The survivors ranged from a
three-quarters of a mile from the blast, the mother, to the edge of the
city several miles away, the ministers. Hersey writes a very un-biased
account. He simply writes about the lives of the survivors without
becoming emotionally attached to them.
Leckie, Robert.
Challenge For The Pacific: the Bloody Six-month Battle Of Guadalcanal.
Da Capo Press, 1965.
Leckie uses his own
experiences as a machine-gunner on Guadalcanal to tell the story of the
brutal, bloody battle that transpired there. Along with his own
memories, Leckie uses interviews with fellow marines to develop an
emotional, fact-based description of the Battle of Guadalcanal. He does
a good job of providing character sketches of the main figures for both
sides of the fight. While he does a very good and detailed job of
telling the stories of the individuals, the one major area he needed to
improve upon was the overall picture of the battle. The reader could
easily be confused as Leckie stumbles in his attempt to explain battle
maneuvers and strategy.
Newcomb, Richard F. Iwo Jima: The Dramatic
Account Of The Epic Battle That Turned The Tide Of World War II.
Macmillan, 2002.
Newcomb uses interviews with hundreds American and
Japanese soldiers, diaries, and official navy and marine records to
develop and write a full story of the battle of Iwo Jima. He is able to
put the emotions of the soldiers onto paper in a way that the reader
feels as though they are a part of the story themselves. The book
details the events of the battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the
soldier while providing overall details that allow the reader to fully
understand the full context of the event.
Schrijvers, Peter.
The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific
during World War II.
New York: New
York University Press, 2002.
Schrijvers book allows
the reader an inside look at the horrors of war that took place on
Okinawa. The brutality inflicted upon each other by both sides is
grotesquely detailed throughout the book. The full-fledged hatred of
the Japanese by American soldiers is repeated throughout through the
utilization of quotes found in diaries and journals of soldiers.
Schrijvers does an excellent job of reinforcing his thesis that while
the Japanese were brutal, the American soldiers evolved the same brutal
nature as that of their enemy.
Sledge, E. B. With
the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990
Sledge relies upon his
own experiences as he details his time fighting on Peleliu and Okinawa.
Throughout the book you can see the transition of Sledge from a new
recruit to a hardened combat veteran and how his reaction to war changes
as he does. The atrocities committed by the Japanese are detailed
throughout the book and the American soldiers reactions to them are
emotionally expressed as well. Sledge’s book provides a first hand look
into the life a soldier fighting during WWII and the physical and
emotional stress that one must endure in order to survive.
Tanaka, Yuki.
Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II.
Colorado:
Westview Press, 1996.
Tanaka examines the war crimes and atrocities
committed by Japanese soldiers during WWII. The murder of POWs, the
rape of women, cannibalism, dismemberment of Allied soldiers, and the
experiments conducted by Unit 731 were the atrocities detailed in the
book. The five different atrocities show the escalation of violence
taken by the Japanese. Tanaka writes a very detailed book that brings
to light evidence of atrocities and war crimes committed by the Japanese
that are usually not discussed.
Wright, Derrick.
To the Far Side of Hell:
The Battle for Peleliu, 1944.
Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005.
The battle for Peleliu is one of the most
obscure and least discussed battles of WWII. Wright does a very solid
job in examining this important battle. Instead of focusing on the
individuals who fought for Peleliu, Wright details the strategic
overview of the campaign and then details the operational and tactical
maneuvers taken by the U.S. forces. Wright’s ultimate purpose for
writing this book is to shed light upon the battle of Peleliu and to
give much deserved recognition to those that fought the bloody battle
for Peleiu.
Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi. The
Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt amid Fabricated
Illusions, 1971-75. Journal
of Japanese Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 Summer, 2000, pp.
307-340.
Wakabayashi details the contest
between two Japanese soldiers as to who could kill one hundred chinese
the quickest and the facuality of the tale. The atrocity created a stir
of anger and at the conclusion on the war, the two men were executed as
war criminals. Wakabayashi contends that the entire event was a
fabrication and as a result stimulates a debate as to whether the entire
“Nanking Incident” was a lie. Wakabayashi uses records from both Japan
and China in is argument that the “murder race” never took place and
that the two soldiers were unjustly executed.
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