Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free Press, 1985.
Much of American fascination with the Second World War begins and ends with the European theater of operations. Names such as Hitler, Patton, Rommel and Overlord are generally more recognized than Hirohito, Chennault, Genda, and Cartwheel. Casual enthusiasts can point to the Normandy beaches on a map and perhaps Bastogne but would struggle to find Guadalcanal or the Tarawa atoll. While the war in Europe has occasionally been portrayed as a glorified and immortalized conflict against a familiar foe in familiar places, the United States' armed forces and their allies who fought in the Pacific theater did so across trackless expanses of ocean, speckled by nameless islands defended by a fanatically idealistic enemy. Ronald H. Spector’s 1985 book Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan offers a scrupulous examination of that conflict.
Impeccably and exhaustively researched, Spector’s work draws from an incredible number of sources to compile an authoritative account of the United States’ war effort against Japan from the interwar period to the surrender of 1945. Spector himself labels this book as “primarily an interpretive work,” but his approach remains balanced and his treatments fair.[1] Spector writes that in the Pacific “plans themselves played a minor role compared to the beliefs and calculations behind them in shaping the course of the war.”[2] Interestingly, interwar planners for potential Pacific conflict saw no future for amphibious landings, something which became commonplace after mid-1942.[3] Rather, both Japanese and American planners anticipated a pitched fleet battle as the decisive moment for total control of the ocean, a hypothesis tested and proven wrong at the Battle of Leyte Gulf.[4]
On the eve of war, Japan’s military was the result of foreign influence in many areas, except that of its immense political power, and held terrific striking capability.[5] Japanese leaders, claims Spector, were resolved to the inevitability of the war that the U.S. still believed avoidable.[6] Simultaneously, the United States military of 1941 had not shaken off the lethargy of the interwar years.[7] Spector reminds readers that devastating surprises with advanced warning, like at Pearl Harbor, are not unique to that event. Stalin had been attacked in like manner earlier in 1941. Important to recall about the American war effort is the fact that the inevitable victory so clearly visible to us in hindsight did not exist in December 1941.[8]
The Pacific war both began and ended with dramatic displays of the preeminence of airpower.[9] Spector writes that “air power was to prove the decisive element in the Pacific War.” However, he adds that the manner in which United States military planners anticipated using this air power would prove incorrect.[10] He later adds that the results from conventional bombing carried out against Germany and Japan convinced United States commanders that Japan could not be forced to surrender through unrestricted use of airpower, signaling the falsification of interwar Douhetian theories on the role of airpower.[11]
Spector pays attention to several lesser-known areas and ideas of the Pacific conflict, including that the Japanese were not fighting a losing war in China. Indeed, they were very nearly masters of the country.[12] For Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and his nationalist forces, the war was merely one of survival, not just against the Japanese, but against their communist counterparts as well.[13] Spector records one instance of President Roosevelt becoming fed up with Jieshi’s constant demands and inconsistent performance.[14] However, after Stalin promised to enter the war against the Japanese in China and Manchuria, China’s role in the war effort dwindled in importance.[15]
Naturally, a portion of Spector’s work is delegated to women and minority soldiers, as well as POW’s. He handles the racial tensions of the wartime American military fairly well, acknowledging that the United Stated did ignore cases of discrimination against black servicemen. These were mostly relegated to garrison or transport duties.[16] For women, significant steps towards equal opportunity in the workplace occurred during this period.[17]
Before the war the United States adopted a position against unrestricted submarine warfare and strategic bombing of civilian populations. However, soon after Pearl Harbor United States commanders gave the order to engage in both unrestricted submarine and airpower usage.[18] Spector mentions other interesting and lesser-known facts, such as Japanese amphibious counterattacks at Okinawa[19] and the attempted revolt to seize the recording of the Emperor’s order of surrender of 14 August.[20]
The last portion of Spector’s book appropriately addresses the atomic bombs. Supposedly President Truman’s personal journals reveal more of a hesitation and sense of regret than he publicly let on, saying that to drop the atomic bomb was “a terrible decision.”[21] Yet Spector makes clear that plenty of uncertainty exists as to any alternative outcomes to the Pacific conflict. He also mentions that the Japanese were still not entirely convinced of the necessity of surrender even after two atomic bombs.[22]
Of the American victory in August 1945, Spector writes that the “United States had done the impossible. It had waged war on two fronts simultaneously […] and prevailed.” He continues that the record of the Second World War for the United States is not one of resolving squabbles between branches of the military, but rather improvising and adapting to avoid as many of them as possible. But one important legacy that Spector highlights is that Japan survived as a stable post-war presence in Asia, under MacArthur’s direction, which helped contain the spread of communism.[23] Overall, Spector’s work provides a detailed and comprehensive survey of the Pacific war. His book offers perspective on the familiar combats, but also a welcome wealth of comparatively unfamiliar information on the war’s organization and often bureaucratic prosecution.
ENDNOTES
[1] Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan(New York: Free Press, 1985), xii. Hereafter, Eagle.
[2] Eagle, 9.
[3] Eagle, 25-28.
[4] Eagle, 511.
[5] Eagle, 33.
[6] Eagle, 75.
[7] Eagle12.
[8] Eagle, 99-100.
[9] Eagle, xi.
[10] Eagle, 17.
[11] Eagle, 542.
[12] Eagle, 365.
[13] Eagle, 326.
[14] Eagle, 353.
[15] Eagle, 354.
[16] Eagle, 386-392.
[17] Eagle, 393-396.
[18] Eagle, 487.
[19] Eagle, 535.
[20] Eagle, 557.
[21] Eagle, 554.
[22] Eagle, 556.
[23] Eagle, 560.
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