By the summer of 1944 it was clear that Japan’s defeat was inevitable, but how the drive to victory would be achieved remained to be seen. The ensuing drama—that ended in Japan’s utter devastation—was acted out across the vast stage of Asia, with massive clashes of naval and air forces, fighting through jungles, and barbarities by an apparently incomprehensible foe. In recounting the saga of this time and place, Max Hastings gives us incisive portraits of the theater’s key figures—MacArthur, Nimitz, Mountbatten, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. But he is equally adept in his portrayals of the ordinary soldiers and sailors—American, British, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese—caught in some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns.

With unprecedented insight, Hastings discusses Japan’s war against China, now all but forgotten in the West, MacArthur’s follies in the Philippines, the Marines at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria. He analyzes the decision-making process that led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—which, he convincingly argues, ultimately saved lives. Finally, he delves into the Japanese wartime mind-set, which caused an otherwise civilized society to carry out atrocities that haunt the nation to this day.

Retribution is a brilliant telling of an epic conflict from a master military historian at the height of his powers.

--Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review

"Compelling . . . To the broad sweep of military events Mr. Hastings adds myriad human stories . . . and he does not hesitate to offer his own keen analysis along the way."

--Peter R. Kann, The Wall Street Journal

"The great merit of Max Hastings's many books on war is his skill at bringing the numbers, as it were, down to earth. Through the imaginative power of his writing, we get an inkling . . . of what it must have been like to slog one's way up a cliff at Iwo Jima, or be firebombed in Tokyo."

--Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books

"Hastings has another winner . . . This book is first-rate popular history, stiffened with a strongly stated point of view . . . A close-up and personal look at war as it affected real people, and how it felt to them at the time."--Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Explosive, argumentative, intensely researched . . . Demands to be read. A book of stunning disclosures."--Tom Mackin, Sunday Star-Ledger

"[A] masterful interpretive narrative . . . Hastings is both comprehensive and finely acute."

--Booklist

"Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful. Hastings makes important points about the war in the East that have been all too rarely heard."

--Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph

"A triumph . . . The key to the book's success lies not in its accessibility, nor in its vivid portraits of the key figures in the drama--although it has both--but in something else entirely: the author's supremely confident ambition."

--Laurence Rees, The Sunday Times

"Extraordinary . . . Anyone who believes that we're all living through a uniquely troubled time should read this . . . book."

--Georgie Rose, The Sunday Herald

"This is a book not only for military history buffs but for anyone who wants to understand what happened in half the world during one of the bloodiest periods of the blood-soaked 20th century."

--The Spectator

"Highly readable . . . An admirably balanced re-examination of the last phases of a conflict that it is not fashionable to remember."

--Dan van der Vat, The Guardian

"Engrossing . . . Its originality lies in the meticulousness of the author's research and the amazing witnesses he has found."

--Murray Sayle, The Evening Standard

"Hastings is . . . a master of the sort of detail that illuminates the human cost. It is the way he leaps so adeptly to and fro between the vast panorama and the tiny snapshot pictures that makes him such a readable historian."--Mail on Sunday

--Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review

"Compelling . . . To the broad sweep of military events Mr. Hastings adds myriad human stories . . . and he does not hesitate to offer his own keen analysis along the way."

--Peter R. Kann, The Wall Street Journal

"Explosive, argumentative, intensely researched . . . Demands to be read. A book of stunning disclosures."--Tom Mackin, Sunday Star-Ledger

"[A] masterful interpretive narrative . . . Hastings is both comprehensive and finely acute."

--Booklist

"Spectacular . . . Searingly powerful. Hastings makes important points about the war in the East that have been all too rarely heard."

--Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Telegraph

"A triumph . . . The key to the book's success lies not in its accessibility, nor in its vivid portraits of the key figures in the drama--although it has both--but in something else entirely: the author's supremely confident ambition."

--Laurence Rees, The Sunday Times

"Extraordinary . . . Anyone who believes that we're all living through a uniquely troubled time should read this . . . book."

--Georgie Rose, The Sunday Herald

"This is a book not only for military history buffs but for anyone who wants to understand what happened in half the world during one of the bloodiest periods of the blood-soaked 20th century."

--The Spectator

"Highly readable . . . An admirably balanced re-examination of the last phases of a conflict that it is not fashionable to remember."

--Dan van der Vat, The Guardian

"Engrossing . . . Its originality lies in the meticulousness of the author's research and the amazing witnesses he has found."

--Murray Sayle, The Evening Standard

"Hastings is . . . a master of the sort of detail that illuminates the human cost. It is the way he leaps so adeptly to and fro between the vast panorama and the tiny snapshot pictures that makes him such a readable historian."--Mail on Sunday

List of Maps

Introduction

Chapter One

Dilemmas and Decisions

1. War in the East

2. Summit on Oahu

Chapter Two

Japan: Defying Gravity

1. Yamato Spirit

2. Warriors

Chapter Three

The British in Burma

1. Imphal and Kohima

2. “The Forgotten Army”

Chapter Four

Titans at Sea

1. Men and Ships

2. Flyboys

Chapter Five

America’s Return to the Philippines

1. Peleliu

2. Leyte: The Landing

Chapter Six

“Flowers of Death”: Leyte Gulf

1. Shogo

2. The Ordeal of Taffy 3

3. Kamikaze

Chapter Seven

Ashore: Battle for the Mountains

Chapter Eight

China: Dragon by the Tail

1. The Generalissimo

2. Barefoot Soldiers

3. The Fall of Stilwell

Chapter Nine

MacArthur on Luzon

1. “He Is Insane on This Subject!”: Manila

2. Yamashita’s Defiance

Chapter Ten

Bloody Miniature: Iwo Jima

Chapter Eleven

Blockade: War Underwater

Chapter Twelve

Burning a Nation: LeMay

1. Superfortresses

2. Fire-Raising

Chapter Thirteen

The Road past Mandalay

Chapter Fourteen

Australians: “Bludging” and “Mopping Up”

Chapter Fifteen

Captivity and Slavery

1. Inhuman Rites

2. Hell Ships

Chapter Sixteen

Okinawa

1. Love Day

2. At Sea

Chapter Seventeen

Mao’s War

1. Yan’an

2. With the Soviets

Chapter Eighteen

Eclipse of Empires

Chapter Nineteen

The Bombs

1. Fantasy in Tokyo

2. Reality at Hiroshima

Chapter Twenty

Manchuria: The Bear’s Claws

Chapter Twenty-one

The Last Act

1. “God’s Gifts”

2. Despair and Deliverance

Chapter Twenty-two

Legacies

A Brief Chronology of the Japanese War

Acknowledgements

Notes and Sources

Index