Nemesis

Max Hastings is one of our best historical authors, being as objective as it is possible, while not avoiding moral judgments where the facts justify same. His books on the final years of the European war, Armageddon, The Battle for the Falklands, and The Vietnam War are classics, quite apart from his many others including, inter alia, Bomber Command, D Day (Overlord), and The Korean War.

This book concerns the Pacific theatre during the last two years of the Second World War, and, while giving general details of the military operations, is largely based upon the actual experiences of all those involved. It takes up the narrative as Japan is on the retreat, with the Americans, with some help from allies, such as the British, and the Australians, drive the Imperial forces back to their home islands.

It is clear from the text that, despite the presiding presence of the Emperor, Imperial Japan was a vicious military dictatorship, as evil as the Nazis, and in many cases, barring the Holocaust, exceeding even the latter in its despicable treatment of its victims. While we in the West were infuriated, and driven to great anger, by the treatment meted out to prisoners of war, and our civilians, even those atrocities pale in the face of what was suffered by the indigenous populations conquered by the Japanese.

We are familiar with the merciless murder, either directly, or by mistreatment, of Western captives, the killing of patients in their hospital beds, the rape, and then the murder, of the nurses caring for them, and the manner in which Japanese soldiers surrendered, and then attempted to kill their captors. However it was the Asian civilians who suffered the most, particularly the people of China, as millions were killed by the savages of the Japanese armed forces. Many who thought that the Japanese had come to free them from their European rulers were soon made aware that the former were basically demons, who cared nothing for human life, and killed without conscience.

What this book makes clear is that, once the USA had overcome the initial shock of Pearl Harbour, the industrial might of America, and the courage of its armed forces, meant that Japan was doomed to defeat, but that those ruling the latter would rather take down the entire world than give way, causing the deaths of millions. On the general stage, while Britain deserves the credit for being the first to hold the line against the fascist states, and the USSR sacrificed so much to beat the latter, without America evil would have triumphed. Even on the day Japan finally surrendered they had some seven million men under arms, and only the overwhelming power of the USA, particularly its navy, and air force, was responsible for destroying the iniquitous regime in Tokyo.

The final actions of the allies, particularly the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been the subject of much criticism by armchair liberals in the years since, who claim that the Japanese were going to surrender anyway, and that these use of these bombs was a war crime. The facts related by Max Hasting show this to be a nonsense, as the military lunatics in Tokyo, even after the bombing, were determined to see the total destruction of Japan rather than surrender, and it was only the intervention by the Emperor that forced them to submit. He was guilty of many things, but, in the end, redeemed himself a little, by overriding the maniacs. Without doubt all the POWs in Japan would have been murdered the day Western forces landed, and we would have suffered massive casualties defeating these fanatics in their homeland.

As Max Hastings points out, although Japan is a much changed nation today, unlike the Germans they still do not acknowledge the terrible crimes that they committed during World War Two. We who subscribe to the democratic values of the West should always be aware that the kind of monsters who existed then are still at loose in the world, in North Korea, in Iran, in China, in Russia, in Burma and in many other places. Instead too many are obsessed with nonsense about gender etc.

This book should be read by all those who want to learn the truth about the Pacific War.