MacArthur in Asia


Book Description

General Douglas MacArthur's storied career is inextricably linked to Asia. His father, Arthur, served as Military Governor of the Philippines while Douglas was a student at West Point, and the younger MacArthur would serve several tours of duty in that country over the next four decades, becoming friends with several influential Filipinos, including the country's future president, Emanuel L. Quezon. In 1935, he became Quezon's military advisor, a post he held after retiring from the U.S. Army and at the time of Japan's invasion of 1941. As Supreme Commander for the Southwest Pacific, MacArthur led American forces throughout the Pacific War. He officially accepted Japan's surrender in 1945 and would later oversee the Allied occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1951. He then led the UN Command in the Korean War from 1950 to 1951, until he was dismissed from his post by President Truman. In MacArthur in Asia, the distinguished Japanese historian Hiroshi Masuda offers a new perspective on the American icon, focusing on his experiences in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea and highlighting the importance of the general's staff-the famous "Bataan Boys" who served alongside MacArthur throughout the Asian arc of his career-to both MacArthur's and the region's history. First published to wide acclaim in Japanese in 2009 and translated into English for the first time, this book uses a wide range of sources-American and Japanese, official records and oral histories-to present a complex view of MacArthur, one that illuminates his military decisions during the Pacific campaign and his administration of the Japanese Occupation.




U.S. Army Divisions of the Pacific War


Book Description

A new narrative and analytic history of the twenty U.S. Army divisions that fought in the Pacific War. Despite the prevailing view that the Marine Corps bore the brunt of the fighting in the Pacific War, the men of the US Army played a decisive role in the conflict. Indeed, GIs did most of the war’s heavy lifting on the ground by conducting more amphibious assaults and prosecuting more operations than the Marines. By the end of the war there were 1.77 million U.S. Army troops in the Pacific and Asia, compared to the USMC’s 484,000. The Pacific was as much the Army’s war as the fighting in the European theater. The U.S. Army deployed twenty combat divisions to fight in the Pacific, including famous ones such as the 1st Cavalry Division and the 25th “Tropic Lightning” Division. Most were infantry, and included Regular, National Guard and draftee divisions. The divisions were deployed and maneuvered by theater, field army, and corps commanders around the Pacific’s geostrategic chessboard to battle and defeat the Japanese. The Army may have wanted its divisions to be interchangeable and uniform, but this proved impossible. Their quality and performance depended upon their resources, the geography and terrain on which they fought, experience, leadership, and organizational culture. Historians, though, have made little effort to examine their records in a systematic way before now. In addition, almost all of the Army’s divisions, some after admittedly rocky starts, became units capable of winning their engagements. Indeed, not a single Army division fighting the Japanese during the American counteroffensive across the Pacific was completely destroyed in combat. Whatever problems these divisions faced tended to grow out of the society that produced them, not fundamental flaws in Army doctrine. This is a tribute to the Army as a whole and to the twenty divisions that the Army deployed against the Japanese. This new history uses a narrative approach to describe and analyze each division's history, characteristics, and battles during the conflict, concluding with an assessment of their battlefield records, taking into account the innumerable factors affecting their combat performance.




Army History


Book Description







Bataan Survivor


Book Description

A forgotten account, written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, which vividly portrays the valor, sacrifice, suffering, and liberation of the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor through the eyes of one survivor. The personal memoir of Colonel David L. Hardee, first drafted at sea from April-May 1945 following his liberation from Japanese captivity, is a thorough treatment of his time in the Philippines. A career infantry officer, Hardee fought during the Battle of Bataan as executive officer of the Provisional Air Corps Regiment. Captured in April 1942 after the American surrender on Bataan, Hardee survived the Bataan Death March and proceeded to endure a series of squalid prison camps. A debilitating hernia left Hardee too ill to travel to Japan in 1944, making him one of the few lieutenant colonels to remain in the Philippines and subsequently survive the war. As a primary account written almost immediately after his liberation, Hardee’s memoir is fresh, vivid, and devoid of decades of faded memories or contemporary influences associated with memoirs written years after an experience. This once-forgotten memoir has been carefully edited, illustrated and annotated to unlock the true depths of Hardee’s experience as a soldier, prisoner, and liberated survivor of the Pacific War.




Philippine-American Military History, 1902-1942


Book Description

Military obligations rested lightly upon the Filipino people for much of the period that America occupied the Philippines, but Filipinos could enlist in the United States Army and Navy, attend the service academies at West Point and Annapolis, or join military organizations restricted to duty in the islands such as the Philippine Scouts, Philippine Constabulary, Philippine National Guard, and the navy's insular force. In the 1930s, the Philippine government established its own armed forces. Throughout much of this time, the U.S. army also kept a substantial portion of its troop strength in the Philippines. This annotated bibliography of nearly 700 titles highlights the extent and variety of the Philippine-American military experience from the conquest of the islands by the United States in 1902 to the defeat of Philippine and American forces by the Japanese in 1942. The bibliography includes memoirs and biographies of Filipino and American officers and enlisted men (from MacArthur to Ferdinand Marcos), unit histories, army post and navy base histories, medals and insignia books, and the most extensive list of prisoner-of-war memoirs yet published. Annotations address controversies such as the widely disparate estimates of American deaths on the Bataan Death March and include previously unpublished information, such as casualty figures for American and Philippine forces in 1941-1942.




Racing for the Bomb


Book Description

In September 1942, Colonel Leslie R. Groves was given the job of building the atomic bomb. As a career officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, Groves had overseen hundreds of military construction projects, including the Pentagon. Until now, scientists have received the credit for the Manhattan Project’s remarkable achievements. And yet, it was Leslie R. Groves who made things happen. It was Groves who drove manufacturers, construction crews, scientists, industrialists, and military and civilian officials to come up with the money, the materials, and the plans to solve thousands of problems and build the bomb in only two years. It was his operation, and in Racing for the Bomb he emerges as a take-charge, can-do figure who succeeds in the face of formidable odds. Revealed for the first time in Racing for the Bomb, Groves played a crucial and decisive role in the planning, timing, and targeting of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions. Norris offers new insights into the complex and controversial questions surrounding the decision to drop the bomb in Japan and Groves’s actions during World War II, which had a lasting imprint on the nuclear age and the Cold War that followed. Grove’s extensive influence on key institutions of postwar America has been overlooked for too long. In this full-scale biography, which includes archival material and family letters and documents and features several previously unpublished photographs, Norris places Groves at the center of the amazing Manhattan Project story. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.




MacArthur's Airman


Book Description

A fighter pilot who flew 75 combat missions in World War I, George C. Kenney was a charismatic leader who established himself as an innovative advocate of air power. As General MacArthur's air commander in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, Kenney played a pivotal role in the conduct of the war, but until now his performance has remained largely unexplored. Thomas Griffith offers a critical assessment of Kenney's numerous contributions to MacArthur's war efforts. He depicts Kenney as a staunch proponent of airpower's ability to shape the outcome of military engagements and a commander who shared MacArthur's strategic vision. He tells how Kenney played a key role in campaigns from New Guinea to the Philippines; adapted aircraft, pilots, doctrine, and technology to the demands of aerial warfare in the southwest Pacific; and pursued daring strategies that likely would have failed in the European theater. Kenney is shown to have been an operational and organizational innovator who was willing to scrap doctrine when the situation called for ingenuity, such as shifting to low-level attacks for more effective bombing raids. Griffith tells how Kenney established air superiority in every engagement, provided close air support for troops by bombing enemy supply lines, attacked and destroyed Japanese supply ships, and carried out rapid deployment by airlifting troops and supplies. Griffith draws on Kenney's diary and correspondence, the personal papers of other officers, and previously untapped sources to present a comprehensive portrayal of both the officer and the man. He illuminates Kenney's relationship with MacArthur, General "Hap" Arnold, and other field commanders, and closely examines factors in air warfare often neglected in other accounts, such as intelligence, training, and logistical support. MacArthur's Airman is a rich and insightful study that shows how air, ground, and marine efforts were integrated to achieve major strategic objectives. It firmly establishes the importance of MacArthur's campaign in New Guinea and reveals Kenney's instrumental role in turning the tide against the Japanese.




World War II in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, with General Sources


Book Description

A broadly interdisciplinary work, this handbook discusses the best and most enduring literature related to the major topics and themes of World War II. Military historiography is treated in essays on the major theaters of military operations and the related themes of logistics and intelligence, while political and diplomatic history is covered in chapters on international relations, resistance movements, and collaboration. The volume analyzes themes of domestic history in essays on economic mobilization, the home fronts, and women in the military and civilian life. The book also covers the Holocaust. This handbook approaches each topic from a global viewpoint rather than focusing on individual national communities. Except for nonprint material, the literature, research, and sources surveyed are primarily those available in English. The volume is aimed at both experts on the war and the general academic community and will also be useful to students and serious laymen interested in the war.