The campaigns in Asia and the pacific

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Notes

There are official multi‐volumed British, American, Australian, Indian, Chinese, Russian and Japanese accounts of the Second World War in the Far East, but the best one‐volume account is R.H. Spector's Eagle Against the Sun (1984, London: Penguin Books, 1987). John Toland's The Rising Sun (London: Cassell, 1971) has more graphic detail, and Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy (London: Heinemann, 1971), though crammed with interesting facts and speculations, is ruined by gruesome mis‐translation and a too overt polemical purpose. See also H.P. Wilmott Empires in the Balance (Annapolis, 1982), and A. Coox in Vol. 6, Cambridge History of Japan.

Gordon Prange's posthumous books are the best introduction to Pearl Harbor: At Dawn We Slept (London: Michael Joseph, 1982 and Penguin Books), and Pearl Harbor. The Verdict of History (New York: McGraw Hill, 1986). The endless controversy over Pearl Harbor — did Roosevelt fail to warn his commanders in Hawaii of the coming Japanese assault, in order to ease the US into war on the wide of Britain? — is best summed up in the latter, but see also Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor; Warning and Decision (Stanford, 1962) and D. Borg and S. Okamoto, Pearl Harbor as History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973). The cryptographic aspect has been renewed by the announcement of a book using evidence from the Australian code‐breaker Cdr. Nave, on which see C. Andrew, ‘The Growth of the Australian Intelligence Community and the Anglo‐American Connection’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol.4, No.2 (April 1989), 213–56. See also S. Falk's excellent summary of the debate in ‘Pearl Harbor: A Bibliography of the Controversy’, Naval History (Spring 1988), pp.55–6.

Arthur Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) gives the best view of deteriorating relations between the British and Japanese navies, leading to the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in 1941. As general accounts of the antecedents and narrative of the Malaya campaign, see L. Allen, Singapore 1941–1942 (London: Davis‐Poynter, 1977) and S. Falk, Seventy Days to Singapore (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1975). The two best Japanese accounts are, for the sea battles, Sudō Hajime Marēoki Kaisen (Sea battles off Malaya) (Tokyo: Shiragame Shobō, 1974) and, for the land battles, the official Marē Shinkō Sakusen (The campaign in Malaya) (Tokyo: Asagumo Shimbunsha, 1966) or the shorter version Marē Sakusen (The Malaya Campaign) (Tokyo: Hara Shobō, 1966); unfortunately the only translated account is the grossly egoistic and inaccurate Tsuji, Singapore: The Japanese Version (London: Constable, 1962, repr. Oxford University Press, 1988).