Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy Author: Eri Hotta | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CNQ7M6O | Format: EPUB
Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy Description
A groundbreaking history that considers the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese perspective and is certain to revolutionize how we think of the war in the Pacific.
When Japan launched hostilities against the United States in 1941, argues Eri Hotta, its leaders, in large part, understood they were entering a war they were almost certain to lose. Drawing on material little known to Western readers, and barely explored in depth in Japan itself, Hotta poses an essential question: Why did these men—military men, civilian politicians, diplomats, the emperor—put their country and its citizens so unnecessarily in harm’s way? Introducing us to the doubters, schemers, and would-be patriots who led their nation into this conflagration, Hotta brilliantly shows us a Japan rarely glimpsed—eager to avoid war but fraught with tensions with the West, blinded by reckless militarism couched in traditional notions of pride and honor, tempted by the gambler’s dream of scoring the biggest win against impossible odds and nearly escaping disaster before it finally proved inevitable.
In an intimate account of the increasingly heated debates and doomed diplomatic overtures preceding Pearl Harbor, Hotta reveals just how divided Japan’s leaders were, right up to (and, in fact, beyond) their eleventh-hour decision to attack. We see a ruling cadre rich in regional ambition and hubris: many of the same leaders seeking to avoid war with the United States continued to adamantly advocate Asian expansionism, hoping to advance, or at least maintain, the occupation of China that began in 1931, unable to end the second Sino-Japanese War and unwilling to acknowledge Washington’s hardening disapproval of their continental incursions. Even as Japanese diplomats continued to negotiate with the Roosevelt administration, Matsuoka Yosuke, the egomaniacal foreign minister who relished paying court to both Stalin and Hitler, and his facile supporters cemented Japan’s place in the fascist alliance with Germany and Italy—unaware (or unconcerned) that in so doing they destroyed the nation’s bona fides with the West.
We see a dysfunctional political system in which military leaders reported to both the civilian government and the emperor, creating a structure that facilitated intrigues and stoked a jingoistic rivalry between Japan’s army and navy. Roles are recast and blame reexamined as Hotta analyzes the actions and motivations of the hawks and skeptics among Japan’s elite. Emperor Hirohito and General Hideki Tojo are newly appraised as we discover how the two men fumbled for a way to avoid war before finally acceding to it.
Hotta peels back seventy years of historical mythologizing—both Japanese and Western—to expose all-too-human Japanese leaders torn by doubt in the months preceding the attack, more concerned with saving face than saving lives, finally drawn into war as much by incompetence and lack of political will as by bellicosity. An essential book for any student of the Second World War, this compelling reassessment will forever change the way we remember those days of infamy.
- File Size: 4193 KB
- Print Length: 352 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (October 29, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CNQ7M6O
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,722 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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in Books > History > Asia > Japan
- #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Asia > Japan - #12
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Asian - #13
in Books > History > Asia > Japan
This new look at the reasons why Japan took the path to war in 1941 offers new insights as well as previous treaded ground. The author was born in Tokyo and educated in Japan and researched Japanese archives to present a Japanese perspective on the events leading to war. The majority of the population were jubilant at the onset as the prevailing view was that America had been waging economic warfare against Japan for some time. Prince Konoe, prime minister from July 1940- October 1941, and Matsuoka Yosuke, foreign minister July 1940-July 1941 are portrayed as the ones most responsible for leading Japan onto the path of war. This alters previous readings of Konoe being a moderate influence in the imperial government. However, the author nearly exonerates Tojo Hideki as the former general had to make the best of an already complex situation and the military was set for war. The events of this time period is open for interpretations and there are numerous authors that can take widely different viewpoints. This author presents her findings and explains them in a good format. The Roosevelt administration was waging economic warfare against Japan. This fact has been written about before but this book actually details that it was waged in a manner that FDR knew could lead to retaliation. If a nation today tried to cut the US off from its oil supply or any other resource they would attack that country. Japan was mired in a conflict with China, taking over administration of Indochina from France, and was tied by treaty to countries that the west didn't like. The political method of the imperial government is explained and it really was a complex way of running a modern nation.
Everyone knows that, on December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Navy attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor. Numerous ships were sunk or damaged, scores of planes destroyed, and over 2,000 people were killed. But what led Japan to take such a drastic step to start a war that they had no hope of winning? Eri Hotta attempts to answer this question in "Japan 1941".
One could argue that World War II began when Japan invaded China in 1931. From that point forward, Japan was under scrutiny from the rest of the world, including the United States. By 1941, Japan was suffering from sanctions, including an embargo on oil and scrap metal from the United States. War with the United States was a distinct possibility.
But what of the preparations for this war? Hotta argues, rightly so, that the Japanese were unprepared to fight a successful war against the United States. The industrial might of the United States would overwhelm Japan. Japan, in the words of Winston Churchill, would be ground into dust.
Despite the vast difference in industrial might, many Japanese felt that war was the only answer. Others believed that success could be achieved through negotiation. It was this constant bickering and interservice rivalry that ultimately doomed Japan. Hotta states that none of Japan's top leaders had sufficient will, desire, or courage to stop the momentum for war. The attack on Pearl Harbor can be viewed loosely as a tactical success for the Japanese. But the result was a strategic nightmare, for only 6 months later, the Japanese advance was stopped at Midway.
I found this book to be an informative narrative about Japan's preparations for war in 1941.
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