Japanese military strategy in the Pacific War : was defeat inevitable? / James B. Wood.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this provocative history, James B. Wood challenges the received wisdom that Japan's defeat in the Pacific was historically inevitable. He argues instead that it was only when the Japanese military prematurely abandoned its original sound strategic plan--to secure the resources Japan needed and establish a viable defensible perimeter for the Empire--that the Allies were able to regain the initiative and lock Japanese forces into a war of attrition they were not prepared to fight. The book persuasively shows how the Japanese army and navy had both the opportunity and the capability to have fought a different and more successful war in the Pacific that could have influenced the course and outcome of World War II. It is therefore a study both of Japanese defeat and of what was needed to achieve a potential Japanese victory, or at the very least, to avoid total ruin. Wood's argument does not depend on signal individual historical events or dramatic accidents. Instead it examines how familiar events could have b

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CHOICE Review

In this extended essay, Wood (Williams College) takes issue with the widely accepted thesis that by initiating a war in the Pacific in 1941, the Japanese embarked on a hopeless venture, predestined to disaster. Had the Japanese fought a smarter war, Wood argues, they could have avoided total defeat in August 1945. Wood believes that Japan's greatest strategic blunder was dropping their original war plan of in-depth defense in 1942 in favor of continued expansion into the Pacific; or, as he labels it, succumbing to "victory disease." Tactics that the Japanese should have employed include a convoy system to protect merchant shipping, using submarines to disrupt US lines of communication between the US and the battle zone, and concentrating forces in more strategically vital islands to force more Okinawa-type battles, thereby delaying US ability to bomb the homeland. Wood describes his book as a "counterfactual" or "what if" study, more an exercise in critiquing military strategy than a work of history. While some of his analyses are more effective than others, he has raised many provocative points worthy of debate. Unfortunately, he places little emphasis on the political, cultural, and social factors that made it difficult to alter either Japan or US strategy. Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries. C. J. Weeks emeritus, Southern Polytechnic State University