Pacific War
Spector, Ronald H.
BOOKS Pacific War EAGLE AGAINST THE SUN: THE AMERICAN WAR WITH JAPAN by Ronald H. Spector Free Press. 590 pp. $24.95. In 1950, recalling his elation when Pearl Harbor brought about the formal...
...Not the United States...
...Taken with absolute seriousness, such a statement diminishes to the disappearing point much of the drama of the actual fighting, from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay...
...The virtues of Eagle Against the Sun are many...
...Instead, he speaks in his final paragraph of the positive results for the United States of the Pacific war: "a strong democratic ally in the new Japan," greater stability in the area, and new and independent nations...
...the only map is the endpaper...
...That Spector should have to look so far for a "more sanguine" interpretation of the Pacific war—that fact alone tells us how far we have come from President Roosevelt's battle cry of December 15, 1941: "We are now at war...
...Fortunately for the reader, Spector, long a historian for the military and now a professor at the University of Alabama, does not allow analytical insights of this sort to keep him from telling his story dramatically...
...That Spector should look with such myopia tells us as much about him as about the Pacific war...
...The Chinese revolution, the Vietnamese revolution, and the two wars which attempted to destroy it, the Korean war, the Dutch war in Indonesia—how many of those revolutions can be traced as much to the impact of Japan before 1945 as to the effect of American actions...
...Vibrant, rapidly growing new nations of Asia," but which ones...
...I find his treatment of President Roosevelt's thinking immediately before Pearl Harbor too lenient...
...We are fighting in defense of our national existence, of our right to be secure, of our right to enjoy the blessings of peace...
...It is free of racist put-down, treating Japanese and Americans in an even-handed way...
...But these criticisms should not deflect attention from his considerable achievement: a lively and balanced one-volume account of a major chunk of Twentieth Century history...
...Safe and stable...
...Hold on a minute...
...Battle accounts without maps...
...Mussolini's fate was sealed...
...In these post-Vietnam years, one might expect Spector to set the Pacific war into the context of the rise and fall of the American military presence in East Asia...
...There are few photographs...
...Spector treats Japan fairly and shows us some American warts (such as General Mac Arthur's acceptance of a $500,000 payoff from Philippine President Manuel Quezon...
...It is based on broad reading of recent research...
...For some Americans, Vietnam served as the military and political catastrophe Barnes foresaw as a prerequisite to a rethinking of the war...
...growth clearly means economic development on the capitalist model...
...He wrote "Victors' Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial...
...On the map Okinawa is an eighth of an inch long, yet Spector spends eight pages on the battle for Okinawa...
...The book is well written, with telling use of vignettes and humor...
...Not China, not Vietnam...
...Perhaps weakest of all is the context into which he fits the war as a whole...
...The existence of three great powers in East Asia...
...has surely made that region more safe and stable than the older system...
...Not only is that map full of typographical errors, it is wholly inadequate...
...The text is well worth reading, but supply your own atlas of the Pacific...
...It will only become palatable, if ever, after we have suffered some devastating economic or political disaster which causes the American public to reverse its attitudes and policies on world affairs...
...The existence of the strong and stable independent nations of Asia is perhaps the most important and lasting legacy bequeathed by the men and women who perished in the American-Japanese war...
...The canvas is so huge, the issues so complex, that no reader will agree with all of Spector's arguments...
...And which of the three great powers Spector mentions owes its present standing to the American efforts in the Pacific war...
...And how does any of this relate to the Pacific war and America's declared interests...
...he criticizes Japanese strategy and tactics in precisely the same way he criticizes our own...
...Sadly, the production of Eagle Against the Sun leaves much to be desired...
...We are fighting in self-defense...
...In 1953, historian Harry Elmer Barnes wrote that his own brand of revisionism would "never be widely accepted directly on the basis of its factual merit...
...All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force...
...In 1950, recalling his elation when Pearl Harbor brought about the formal American entry into World War II, Winston Churchill wrote, "Hitler's fate was sealed...
...China, Japan, and the Soviet Union...
...Typographical errors abound...
...Richard H. Minear (Richard H. Minear is professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...
...Ronald Spector's new one-volume history of the Pacific war, Eagle Against the Sun, supports Churchill's point: "The major problem involved in defeating Japan," Spector writes, "proved to be less a matter of choosing the correct strategy than of breaking the logistical bottlenecks...
...He does not give us a fundamentally new look at the war in the context of the Twentieth Century...
...I find his analysis of the atomic bombs and Japan's surrender superficial and soft...
...Which three great powers...
...Rather hot fudge sundaes without the fudge, cafe-au-lait without the milk...
...This he does not do...
...Spector gives us Singapore, Taiwan, India, and Malaysia...
...We are fighting in defense of principles of law and order and justice...
...As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder...
...Iwo Jima is a mere dot, yet Spector follows the battle yard by yard, for ten pages...
...It is nicely balanced, including battle histories, essays (on codebreaking, on fifth columns, on logistics), accounts of interservice and intraservice politics, and opinions (Spector makes a strong and convincing attack on General Douglas MacArthur...
Vol. 49 • August 1985 • No. 8
