THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508040674
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BARRETT R. RICHARDSON
LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
AS THE 50th anniversary of V-J Day approaches, World War II-related books are pouring off the presses. With astounding variety, the books provide an in-depth look at nearly every facet of the global conflict. War history buffs and those who fought in and lived through the conflict will find much from which to choose.
Particularly disturbing are two books about the American bombing of Hiroshima 50 years ago today: Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (Little Brown, 194 pp., $19.95), by Ronald Takaki, and Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 425 pp., $27.50), by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell.
Takaki, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California-Berkeley, explores the mixed feelings that Americans had and still have about the bombing; some are deeply troubled, while others vigorously defend it. President Harry Truman, for whom ``the buck stops here,'' made the decision to drop it. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said he had ``grave misgivings.'' Pacific commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur was not consulted; after being informed of the decision, he said the bombing was ``completely unnecessary from a military point of view.''
A Japanese-American, Takaki argues that Truman's main concern was U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union and his hope was that a combat demonstration of the bomb in Japan would lead to Soviet postwar cooperation. He also accuses Truman of racism.
Ethical arguments aside, the atomic bomb ended the war, but it also altered the course of warfare and world affairs in the latter part of the 20th century. Warned Hanson W. Baldwin of The New York Times: ``We have been the first to introduce a new weapon of unknowable effects which may bring us victory quickly but which will sow the seeds of hate more widely than ever. We may yet reap the whirlwind.''
In Hiroshima in America, Lifton and Mitchell examine the U.S. response to the use of the bomb over the past 50 years. They cover much of the same ground trod by Takaki, analyzing the process by which Truman made his decision and examining the psychological, political and moral legacy of the bomb. They also offer a detailed account of the recent Smithsonian controversy over the Enola Gay exhibit.
Another book that throws light on the atomic bomb decision is Marching Orders: The Untold Story of World War II (Crown, 608 pp., $30), by Bruce Lee. Marching Orders mines the strategic wealth of ``The Magic Diplomatic Summaries'' - the Japanese code messages intercepted and decrypted by U.S. intelligence. In his research, Lee had access to 1.5 million pages of U.S. Army documents and 15,000 pages of decrypted messages sent by Japanese diplomats and military attaches from Germany to Tokyo, detailing German military secrets and Japanese plans.
This monumental work is must background reading to understand wartime decision-making and behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Lee exposes a propaganda campaign by Japan two weeks after its 1945 surrender. It branded British and Americans as racist war criminals for use of atomic weapons, deflecting attention from Japanese atrocities committed between 1937 and 1945.
Before the atomic bombing of Japan - which, although it took a terrible toll, was brief - London experienced continuous aerial assaults. The wartime life of the city that endured the saturation blitz of 1940 and 1941 and pounding from terrifying V1s (flying ``buzz'' bombs) and V2s (rocket-propelled missiles) later in the war is captured in rich detail in London at War (Alfred A. Knopf, 372 pp., $30), by Philip Ziegler. Ziegler brings the blitz up close and personal by profiling participants, such as a West Hamptead housewife, a retired Walhamstow schoolmaster and a Woolwich plumber. He also devotes considerable ink to the impact of American troops on London, which included tension caused by the presence of black soldiers and by the easy virtues of British women preying on willing GIs.
By war's end, London had suffered 354 air attacks, which caused 80,000 deaths or serious injuries and ruined 780,000 buildings. Ziegler lightens the enormity of the destruction with examples of good humor, even jollity, by those Londoners who coped.
Denis Richards provides a comprehensive British-eye's-view in The Hardest Victory: RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War (W.W. Norton, 416 pp., $29.95). Drawing on British aviation archives, seized German documents and recollections of bomber crews, Richards describes the horrendously costly battle waged by the RAF Bomber Command, which lost more than half of its members to death or serious injury. Richards rebuts revisionists who contend that much of the bombing was ineffective and needlessly killed civilians.
War correspondents weigh in with their perspectives in Typewriter Battalion: Dramatic Frontline Dispatches from World War II (William Morrow & Co., 397 pp., $23), edited by Jack Stenbuck. The book is a sampling of original dispatches from journalists on the front lines; it opens with Joseph C. Harsch's account of the Pearl Harbor attack and includes reports from Ernie Pyle, Richard Tregaskis and Walter Cronkite, who wrote the book's introduction.
Cronkite's entry, ``First Fortress Flight Over Europe,'' describes his ride on a B-17 bomber during a raid Feb. 27, 1943, on Wilhelmshaven naval base in northwest Germany: ``It was a hell of burning tracer bullets and bursting flak, of crippled Flying Fortresses and flaming German fighter planes.'' The last dispatch was filed Oct. 16, 1946, by Kingsbury Smith from the Nuremburg Palace of Justice. It begins: ``I saw through peepholes in prison cell doors today the grim resignation on the anguished faces of most of the eleven condemned Nazi leaders.''
In September the Library of America will publish a massive two-volume journalistic account of the war, Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1946 (1,880 pp.; $35 per vol.).
Some other reading on the war:
Stalking the U-Boat: USAAF Offensive Antisubmarine Operations in World War II (Smithsonian Institution Press, 231 pp., $37.50), by Max Schoenfeld. The book's title is more titillating than its content; but Schoenfeld does a solid job of recounting an important and little-publicized aspect of the war conducted against German submarines in late 1942 and 1943 by the U.S. Army Air Force deployed to England and North Africa. Before the U.S. Navy assumed full responsibility for anti-submarine warfare near the end of 1943, the USAAF made a solid contribution to the battle of the North Atlantic, sinking nine U-boats, a third of all destroyed during this period. The Americans' mission was fraught with considerable danger from enemy aircraft.
Operation Iceberg: The Invasion and Conquest of Okinawa in World War II - an Oral History (Donald I. Fine, 480 pp., $24.95), by Gerald Astor. Although ``Operation Iceberg'' suggests a foray into the polar regions, the name had a certain ironic appropriateness because, Astor writes, ``the campaign resembled the topography of a seagoing glacial mass. While the visible Okinawan real estate seemed fairly benign, the island housed a deadly aspect hundreds of feet beneath its surface'' - the underground bunkers. The last great battle of World War II is essentially told through the eyes of those who participated in this savage encounter, which killed more than 12,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors, an estimated 110,000 Japanese and 80,000 Okinawa civilians.
The War in the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay (Presidio Press, 560 pp., $24.95), by Harry A. Gailey. Gailey explores the roots of the Pacific conflict as well as Japanese military preparations before launching into an overview of the war.
Eisenhower: A Centenary Assessment (Louisiana State University Press, 281 pp., $30), edited by Gunter Bischof and Stephen E. Ambrose. The book compiles 13 in a series of lectures sponsored by the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans. It presents various interpretations of the man and his times.
Treason in the Blood: H. St. John Philby, Kim Philby and the Spy Case of the Century (Houghton Mifflin/A Marc Jaffe Book, 657 pp., $29.95), by Anthony Cave Brown. Published last year, this fascinating story involves a treasonous father and a son who was a Russian mole while working for the British Secret Intelligence Service. Kim Philby fooled Hitler, Churchill and Stalin. His betrayal of military and scientific secrets is blamed for fostering the 40-year-long Cold War.
Other recent offerings:
Combined Fleet Decoded: The Secret History of American Intelligence and the Japanese Navy in World War II (Random House, 832 pp., $37.50), by John Prados.
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon & Schuster, 731 pp., $32.50), by Richard Rhodes.
lI, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual: A Memoir of Nazi Terror (Basic Books, 208 pp., $21), by Pierre Seel, translated by Joachim Neugroschel.
The Attack on Taranto: Blueprint for Pearl Harbor (Stackpole, 224 pp., $19.95), by Thomas P. Lowry and John W.G. Wellham.
The Battle for Okinawa: A Japanese Officer's Eyewitness Account of the Last Great Campaign of World War II (Wiley, 245 pp., $24.95), by Col. Hiromichi Yahara.
The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945 (Dutton, 730 pp., $35), by Stanley Weintraub.
Wings of Morning: The Story of the Last American Bomber Shot Down Over Germany in World War II (Addison-Wesley, 273 pp., $23), by Thomas Childers.
Women Pilots of World War II (University of Utah Press, 176 pp., $12.95 paper), by Jean Hascall Cole.
- MEMO: Barrett R. Richardson is a student of military history and a retired
staff editor who teaches English part time at Tidewater Community
College. by CNB