What do you think?
Rate this book
Pacific Campaign: World War II the U.S. Japanese Naval War 1941-1945
Uses documents from the Naval Historical Center to reassess the war in the Pacific and reveal the long history of conflict between Japanese imperialism and American "manifest destiny"
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
About the author
Dan van der Vat
19 books10 followersDaniël Francis Jeroen van der Vat was born in the Netherlands and educated in Britain. He worked as a journalist for British newspapers including The Times and The Guardian.
His books on twentieth-century history include many works on Naval history.
His books on twentieth-century history include many works on Naval history.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 23, 2016
Four-and-a-half stars, and my third favourite read over the past summer. I cannot imagine there being a better single-volume history covering the entirety of the naval element of the Pacific theater of operations during the Second World War than this page-turner by Dutchman-cum-Brit van der Vat: though, with that said, I do have another book on my shelves, an earlier effort by Ronald Spector titled
Eagle Against the Sun
, which promises to provide serious competition. Composed entirely with the general reader in mind, the author discards such prose impedimenta as footnotes, end notes, annotations, etc. that his driving narrative might fully and fleetly align itself with the tautened import and tempestuous energy of the epic oceanic conflict being related. Not that he eschewed research, mind, nor mining the latest uncovered evidence from both sides—and the Japanese entries, ofttimes from NCOs or junior officers in the thick of the action, provides a provocative and appreciable perspective to the various campaigns, even when brutal in what they relate—back in 1991, when the book was published; van der Vat has a solid grasp of the facts, and a complementary ability for analyzing and sorting them in a manner that renders the complex amalgam of names, dates, ships, and battles which comprised the Pacific War into a whole that lends itself to a better understanding of that seminal clash between the two dominant Pacific powers of the mid-twentieth century.
Right out of the gate, in his impressive introduction, van der Vat makes clear that while he intended upon presenting a balance in the point-of-view of the two combatant nations, he saw no such equality in the moral force each possessed—the Japanese empire being a brutal military despotism whose inflamed sense of racial self, combined with nursed grievances against a West in which every compromise was deemed a national humiliation, fueled the aggression that drove them into a non-winnable war. The author also briefly, but informatively, sets the historic stage for the conflict that was unleashed, again apportioning the majority of space to the character and complicity of Emperor Hirohito and the military junta that inexorably seized the reins of power in the empire—particularly excoriating the nakedly aggressive officer corps of the Kwantung Army, whose perfervid junior officers exerted a zealous pressure upwards upon a generalship in Tokyo whom, out of an admixture of fear, lethargy, and indecision, proved themselves disastrously malleable to that baleful influence. The Japanese ministers and officials who strove desperately to avoid war with the United States, increasingly isolated [and in danger of assassination], had no chance at all once Hirohito sided with the rabid factional leadership of the Imperial Army and Navy—and, after the Hitler-Stalin pact made the Soviet Union off limits, it was inevitable that the hungry, avaricious eyes of the Empire would turn southwards and westwards to the Asian landmass and its attendant cluster of resource rich islands.
Van der Vat's critical eye continues finding strategic errors even in the wake of the great tactical victories of the opening six months of the Pacific War, beginning with the Pearl Harbour attacks that not only failed—through the intervention of Lady Fortune—to eliminate the American carrier threat, but also, under the caution of the commanding admiral Nagumo, declined to launch a third sortie against the naval base's infrastructure, which meant that Pearl Harbour's fueling and repair docks remained functional, a grievous fact when set against the ultimate stakes upon which the first strike gamble was made. He also blames a Japanese obsession with bettering Britain, whose navy served as a model for the IJN, for ordering Nagumo's Fast Carrier Force—six fleet carriers combining the best naval aircraft and pilots in the world—on a rampage in the seas south of Indochina—after the sinking of the flag battleship of the British fleet and reduction of Singapore to tributary status—and sending the ragtag remainder of the Royal Navy fleeing westwards to attempt a defense in the face of aggression towards India and/or Ceylon. In the author's estimation, that awesome mobile air power ought to have been directed at hunting down the American carriers and forcing a battle in which the Japanese would have had pressing advantages—that they didn't meant the vast prosperity zone established across the western Pacific, though an incredible accomplishment in so short a time, remained yet at risk from what had proved to be the decisive vessel in oceanic warfare. Yet his most piercing criticism is saved for the Japanese failure to take full advantage of its having, in the infamous Long Lance, the most destructive and reliable torpedo to have been produced in the Second World War. Hoisted upon the petard of naval tactical conservatism, the majority of their not inconsiderable submariner force was assigned to fleet duty in patrolling for hostile ships, whereas van der Vat—and, more pertinently, the frustrated German naval advisors in Tokyo who knew how close the U-boat wolf packs were to crippling the British war effort—insisted that, if subs had been sent on dedicated missions to attack ships in passage through the Panama Canal, along with the transport routes across the eastern Pacific corridor—and that combined with a successful hunt of the American fleet carriers by Nagumo's aerial strike force—then the Japanese goal of forcing American acceptance of their Prosperity Zone through attritional stalemate might have been achievable.
But that's a big might, because van der Vat, in gauging the comparative advantages the Americans operated with, finds the field tilted in Western favour in nigh every way—and in nothing greater than the penetration of Japanese codes and ciphers by the [expectedly brilliant but highly eccentric] operatives of Naval and Military intelligence. Forewarned in almost every event of Japanese action subsequent to Pearl Harbour, American forces were blessed with the opportunity, time after time, to take the initiative on a watery battlefield of numbing immensity. Yet, in several excellent and thoughtful essaying pieces, the author posits that the moral advantage stemming from the US cultural, societal, and political attitudes carried greater weight than one might appreciate: in particular, he traces the fate of a single wounded US Marine—attention in a battalion field dressing station; then immediate removal to a medical ship anchored offshore; from there sent on military transport to a hospital in Hawaii for critical operations; then further journey, via airplane, to a convalescence hospital in the Central Valley of California; in total, a trip of some seven thousand miles just to save one individual's life. This is set against the Japanese tendency to viewing their wounded as an [embarrassing] liability—considered part of a force designed purely for attack, or tenacious, at-all-costs defense, a wounded Japanese soldier, by comparison, stood a good chance of succumbing to his wounds due to a lack of facilities, and, more importantly, will for implementing an ordered system of such at the higher echelons of the military hierarchy. It was the same kind of aggressive thought that lay behind the negligence of military authorities to design aircraft with self-sealing fuel tanks—a step widely undertaken by the Americans and their allies which saved countless aircraft and lives to fight another day. Van der Vat also contrasts the two nations' effects in the fields of diplomatic strategy, revealing that America—with its inclusion of allies at the command level, even if only nominally; the drawing up of treaties of mutual exchange in the event of further war or liberation; the preparation for a global commission of nations to work towards righting the wrongs that had existed during the terrible years after the Great Depression—established tangible and desired benefits for its partner nations, in contrast to the arrogant one-sidedness of the Japanese Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, in which a bullying Imperial attitude, and last-minute, hastily-conjured, and readily-circumvented, partnerships, with the likes of disaffected Indian dissident Bose, engendered a bitter despair and made not a whit of difference to the longing of its subjugated client states to embrace the freedom proposed by the United States. In the treatment of their partners, there was no comparison between the two—as on the military field, the American methodology proved superior in virtually every way.
Not that the US didn't make mistakes, many of them crucial. Amongst the chief ones that the author delineates was the utter failure on the part of naval authorities to attain a measure of quality control over US torpedoes until the latter stages of the war. Indeed, disbelieving and frustrated submarine skippers wrote scathing reports about how, on stealth attack routes ranged across the breadth of the Pacific, a typical sub-crew might find only three or four torpedoes that worked properly out of a complement of thirty-five or forty launched at targets. It was a costly and absurd process of correcting, requiring the enraged threats of Naval CINC King to string up bureaucratic miscreants ere a concerted effort was made to address this critical flaw—and the US still never attained the lethality of the Japanese Long Lance. It's a bizarre bifurcation: the US implementing the correct strategy of unrestricted warfare on Japanese shipping, but ill-arming their boats; the Japanese wielding a deadly projectile in their torpedoes, but refusing to use that potency to concentrated effect against the US merchant marine. A bizarre tableau, perhaps only attainable in war.
The author also criticizes the decision to split the US attack into two zones proper—a naval one under Pacific CinC Nimitz, based in Pearl, and undertaken by the interchangeably named US Third and Fifth fleets when commanded by Admirals Halsey and Spruance respectively; and a primarily Army one, under the overall command of General MacArthur, whose path of attack, initiating in Australia, led through the New Guinea-Philippines-Formosa axis. This duality, which effected a splitting of US resources, was a compromise delivered by a Roosevelt who sought to neutralize the ambitions of MacArthur, and placate his voluminous supporters, in so doing. Van der Vat, whose attitude towards the infamously self-aggrandizing general could be summarized as harsh, denigrates the man's character in demanding this, and the bipartite strategy as not making the most effectual result of the vast US resources. However, there are counter-arguments available for a majority of his own that are reasonable—and it cannot be disproven that the pronged attack forced the Japanese themselves from ever concentrating their forces in one area. Considering that, by 1944, the preponderance of Stateside industrial power meant US forces were overwhelmingly superior, in number and armaments, to what their foe could muster, it boils down to determining were more American lives lost, and more time expended, upon the retaking of the south Pacific by doing things this way than would otherwise have been the case: and it's a counter-factual that can be argued, but IMO never decisively—and van der Vat does not do so herein.
For me, the highlight of the book was the recounting of the pivotal Battle of Midway. Most everybody is familiar with this turning point of the Pacific War, and one in which so many of the elements mentioned above came into play: the desperate gamble on Japanese naval CinC Yamamoto's part to expand the GCP Sphere to the midpoint of the ocean, and, in so doing, effect a sneak attack on the remaining American carrier strength; that US intelligence captures allowed Nimitz to have that carrier force deployed and ready to the northeast of Midway Island; that the torpedoes launched by the carrier- and island-based American bombers failed, almost to a one, to do any damage to the opposition, either harmlessly running underneath their target vessel, or bouncing, unexploded, off its side; and the differing existential purviews of the two sides, in that American forces endeavored to rescue every downed pilot, or sunken sailor, from oceanic exile, whereas a considerable component of the Japanese senior officers elected to go down with their ships, leaving too few of their crews adrift awaiting rescue, either by friendly subs or enemy ships.
It has always been the case that, every time I partake of this particular episode of the Pacific War, I believe I come close to experiencing, full-on, the essence of Greek tragedy that such as Nietzsche wrote about. That the crews of the obsolete Vindicator torpedo bomber squadrons from the Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown—coming in without fighter cover due to the escorting Wildcats, having veered off course, running out of fuel—hung tough to a man, suffered dreadful casualties during the attack on the Japanese carriers, losing almost the entirety of their planes and crews to the ferocious fighter cap of Zeros; well, the determination of these men, their sacrifice, never fails to stir something deep inside me. It's like I'm drawn into a vortex of awe each time that feat—one after another, after another, after another, launching dud torpedoes ere death arrived as they plunged into the ocean waters—is absorbed anew. It all seemed so hopeless, the day so lost; and yet van der Vat, perhaps better than any other author I've encountered—and in part because he provides testimony from surviving Japanese sailors who were on board the carriers and swept up in the chaotic confusion—makes it crystal clear how these torpedo runs affected the Japanese fleet, with the carriers maneuvering frantically to avoid their finned missiles dropped into the water, and the fighter cap exhausting all their fuel and ammunition in carving the Vindicators to pieces (and a previous sortie by the Marine pilots of Midway itself), while being drawn down towards surface level in the doing. So it is that the near simultaneous arrival of the Dauntless dive bomber squadrons from the Enterprise and Yorktown, as the cloud cover miraculously parted, revealing the carrier fleet scattered below them on the surface, sitting ducks for their steep-angled delivery of bombs, serves as a cathartic release. In spite of myself, I ever thrill with that radiating force of interior awe as, within the space of minutes, the mighty chambers of the heart of the Imperial Navy's Mobile Carrier Force—the Akagi, the Kaga, the Soryu—were in flames and irreparably damaged, on their way to the ocean bed. The surviving Hiryu managed to launch the planes that would sink the Yorktown, but was rendered helpless to defend against the dive bombers sprung from the surviving two American carriers—and she shortly joined her sisters at the bottom. There was no recovering from this disaster for the Japanese—more than anything, in the loss of its precious, experienced pilots and aircrew.
The author also excels in describing the Battle for the Solomons, particularly on the US invasion of Guadalcanal, and the nightly runs down The Slot by Japanese vessels to deliver food and reinforcements to their troops. These battles, short and loud and vicious, nearly always were tactically won by the experienced Japanese crews—but van der Vat shows how these tactical successes were part of an overall strategic failure on the part of the IJN and its Imperial superstructure: each battle saw precious destroyers and cruisers sunk, losses that could be ill-afforded and not easily or quickly replaced. Even more damaging, Japanese air power, of both Navy and Army, was being gradually worn down in attritional attacks against a US foe whose aircraft were continuously improving in design, performance, and armament. The arrogant presumptions of superiority on the part of Imperial Japan meant that few allowances had been made to furnish a steady supply of pilots and planes to replace those in existence at the start of the war; while the general practice was to keep their best flyers fighting at the front until the numbers game caught up, and most had been either killed or incapacitated. Conversely, the US routinely rotated its best pilots stateside, to train the echelon of new flyers who would be coming across the ocean to fight. During 1942 and early 1943, things still felt tight for the US, and some (delusional) Japanese could still believe that victory was attainable: but by mid-point 1943, fifteen month's worth of wartime industry came online, and the resultant output was staggering: whereas the US had made do with a varying number of operational fleet carriers that never totaled more than three during any point for the opening year of the war, by then there were six new fleet carriers, and thirteen new fast escort carriers, available to join the three fleet warhorses—with the unsinkable Enterprise holding pride of place—still in existence. Eight more fleet carriers were in production, with some three dozen escort carriers slotted alongside—and all would have a full complement of aircraft. It was a lopsided state of affairs—naval task forces could routinely put six hundred aircraft up together for a first wave strike—that meant that each battle would inevitably end in a victory for the US. The only thing in dispute was the time it would take, and the cost in manpower it would demand, in the completion.
After the Solomons, the book does feel a tad rushed; but that seems to be because this is a naval history, and seeing as the Japanese forces were completely outclassed, the lengthy chain of island hopping settles into a routine comprised of a desperate Japanese retreat and reinforcement, a massive pre-assault bombardment from planes and capital ships, followed by an amphibious landing that is fiercely contested but inevitably successful, and capped by the slow but inexorable extermination of the defenders who, for the most part, were determined to die rather than surrender an inch of ground. The fanaticism of the Japanese military was of a part with its aggressive mindset—and in a culture that demanded such a self-abnegation in the name of Imperial honour and glory, it's not surprising to van der Vat to find that much of the repression such stringency exacted would be unleashed upon those whom fell into their hands. As the author sees it, the lack of regard the average soldier had for his own life left little room for feelings of pity or commiseration for that of his foe; and while US forces engaged in cruel behavior with their opponent, there is simply no comparison between that and the systematic brutality of Japanese intern camps, forced prostitution of the female population of subject peoples, slave labour, and sporadic civilian massacres and starvation. In one haunting episode, van der Vat offered up a portion of the diary entries of a Japanese corporal on New Guinea, detailing the beheading of a captured Australian pilot. The soldier manfully struggles with fellow-feeling for the doomed captive, particularly as he bravely and quietly accepted his fate. As for his executioner, the Japanese officer, frankly aware of the fact that his troops are surviving on a handful of roots and one potato a day, determines that he cannot afford to feed his captive, nor has any means, under the threat of the US naval presence offshore, to send him to a POW camp. The entry is harsh but powerfully, even beautifully composed; as a snapshot of the mindset that America was up against, it's one of the most compelling pieces in the entire book.
Right out of the gate, in his impressive introduction, van der Vat makes clear that while he intended upon presenting a balance in the point-of-view of the two combatant nations, he saw no such equality in the moral force each possessed—the Japanese empire being a brutal military despotism whose inflamed sense of racial self, combined with nursed grievances against a West in which every compromise was deemed a national humiliation, fueled the aggression that drove them into a non-winnable war. The author also briefly, but informatively, sets the historic stage for the conflict that was unleashed, again apportioning the majority of space to the character and complicity of Emperor Hirohito and the military junta that inexorably seized the reins of power in the empire—particularly excoriating the nakedly aggressive officer corps of the Kwantung Army, whose perfervid junior officers exerted a zealous pressure upwards upon a generalship in Tokyo whom, out of an admixture of fear, lethargy, and indecision, proved themselves disastrously malleable to that baleful influence. The Japanese ministers and officials who strove desperately to avoid war with the United States, increasingly isolated [and in danger of assassination], had no chance at all once Hirohito sided with the rabid factional leadership of the Imperial Army and Navy—and, after the Hitler-Stalin pact made the Soviet Union off limits, it was inevitable that the hungry, avaricious eyes of the Empire would turn southwards and westwards to the Asian landmass and its attendant cluster of resource rich islands.
Van der Vat's critical eye continues finding strategic errors even in the wake of the great tactical victories of the opening six months of the Pacific War, beginning with the Pearl Harbour attacks that not only failed—through the intervention of Lady Fortune—to eliminate the American carrier threat, but also, under the caution of the commanding admiral Nagumo, declined to launch a third sortie against the naval base's infrastructure, which meant that Pearl Harbour's fueling and repair docks remained functional, a grievous fact when set against the ultimate stakes upon which the first strike gamble was made. He also blames a Japanese obsession with bettering Britain, whose navy served as a model for the IJN, for ordering Nagumo's Fast Carrier Force—six fleet carriers combining the best naval aircraft and pilots in the world—on a rampage in the seas south of Indochina—after the sinking of the flag battleship of the British fleet and reduction of Singapore to tributary status—and sending the ragtag remainder of the Royal Navy fleeing westwards to attempt a defense in the face of aggression towards India and/or Ceylon. In the author's estimation, that awesome mobile air power ought to have been directed at hunting down the American carriers and forcing a battle in which the Japanese would have had pressing advantages—that they didn't meant the vast prosperity zone established across the western Pacific, though an incredible accomplishment in so short a time, remained yet at risk from what had proved to be the decisive vessel in oceanic warfare. Yet his most piercing criticism is saved for the Japanese failure to take full advantage of its having, in the infamous Long Lance, the most destructive and reliable torpedo to have been produced in the Second World War. Hoisted upon the petard of naval tactical conservatism, the majority of their not inconsiderable submariner force was assigned to fleet duty in patrolling for hostile ships, whereas van der Vat—and, more pertinently, the frustrated German naval advisors in Tokyo who knew how close the U-boat wolf packs were to crippling the British war effort—insisted that, if subs had been sent on dedicated missions to attack ships in passage through the Panama Canal, along with the transport routes across the eastern Pacific corridor—and that combined with a successful hunt of the American fleet carriers by Nagumo's aerial strike force—then the Japanese goal of forcing American acceptance of their Prosperity Zone through attritional stalemate might have been achievable.
But that's a big might, because van der Vat, in gauging the comparative advantages the Americans operated with, finds the field tilted in Western favour in nigh every way—and in nothing greater than the penetration of Japanese codes and ciphers by the [expectedly brilliant but highly eccentric] operatives of Naval and Military intelligence. Forewarned in almost every event of Japanese action subsequent to Pearl Harbour, American forces were blessed with the opportunity, time after time, to take the initiative on a watery battlefield of numbing immensity. Yet, in several excellent and thoughtful essaying pieces, the author posits that the moral advantage stemming from the US cultural, societal, and political attitudes carried greater weight than one might appreciate: in particular, he traces the fate of a single wounded US Marine—attention in a battalion field dressing station; then immediate removal to a medical ship anchored offshore; from there sent on military transport to a hospital in Hawaii for critical operations; then further journey, via airplane, to a convalescence hospital in the Central Valley of California; in total, a trip of some seven thousand miles just to save one individual's life. This is set against the Japanese tendency to viewing their wounded as an [embarrassing] liability—considered part of a force designed purely for attack, or tenacious, at-all-costs defense, a wounded Japanese soldier, by comparison, stood a good chance of succumbing to his wounds due to a lack of facilities, and, more importantly, will for implementing an ordered system of such at the higher echelons of the military hierarchy. It was the same kind of aggressive thought that lay behind the negligence of military authorities to design aircraft with self-sealing fuel tanks—a step widely undertaken by the Americans and their allies which saved countless aircraft and lives to fight another day. Van der Vat also contrasts the two nations' effects in the fields of diplomatic strategy, revealing that America—with its inclusion of allies at the command level, even if only nominally; the drawing up of treaties of mutual exchange in the event of further war or liberation; the preparation for a global commission of nations to work towards righting the wrongs that had existed during the terrible years after the Great Depression—established tangible and desired benefits for its partner nations, in contrast to the arrogant one-sidedness of the Japanese Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere, in which a bullying Imperial attitude, and last-minute, hastily-conjured, and readily-circumvented, partnerships, with the likes of disaffected Indian dissident Bose, engendered a bitter despair and made not a whit of difference to the longing of its subjugated client states to embrace the freedom proposed by the United States. In the treatment of their partners, there was no comparison between the two—as on the military field, the American methodology proved superior in virtually every way.
Not that the US didn't make mistakes, many of them crucial. Amongst the chief ones that the author delineates was the utter failure on the part of naval authorities to attain a measure of quality control over US torpedoes until the latter stages of the war. Indeed, disbelieving and frustrated submarine skippers wrote scathing reports about how, on stealth attack routes ranged across the breadth of the Pacific, a typical sub-crew might find only three or four torpedoes that worked properly out of a complement of thirty-five or forty launched at targets. It was a costly and absurd process of correcting, requiring the enraged threats of Naval CINC King to string up bureaucratic miscreants ere a concerted effort was made to address this critical flaw—and the US still never attained the lethality of the Japanese Long Lance. It's a bizarre bifurcation: the US implementing the correct strategy of unrestricted warfare on Japanese shipping, but ill-arming their boats; the Japanese wielding a deadly projectile in their torpedoes, but refusing to use that potency to concentrated effect against the US merchant marine. A bizarre tableau, perhaps only attainable in war.
The author also criticizes the decision to split the US attack into two zones proper—a naval one under Pacific CinC Nimitz, based in Pearl, and undertaken by the interchangeably named US Third and Fifth fleets when commanded by Admirals Halsey and Spruance respectively; and a primarily Army one, under the overall command of General MacArthur, whose path of attack, initiating in Australia, led through the New Guinea-Philippines-Formosa axis. This duality, which effected a splitting of US resources, was a compromise delivered by a Roosevelt who sought to neutralize the ambitions of MacArthur, and placate his voluminous supporters, in so doing. Van der Vat, whose attitude towards the infamously self-aggrandizing general could be summarized as harsh, denigrates the man's character in demanding this, and the bipartite strategy as not making the most effectual result of the vast US resources. However, there are counter-arguments available for a majority of his own that are reasonable—and it cannot be disproven that the pronged attack forced the Japanese themselves from ever concentrating their forces in one area. Considering that, by 1944, the preponderance of Stateside industrial power meant US forces were overwhelmingly superior, in number and armaments, to what their foe could muster, it boils down to determining were more American lives lost, and more time expended, upon the retaking of the south Pacific by doing things this way than would otherwise have been the case: and it's a counter-factual that can be argued, but IMO never decisively—and van der Vat does not do so herein.
For me, the highlight of the book was the recounting of the pivotal Battle of Midway. Most everybody is familiar with this turning point of the Pacific War, and one in which so many of the elements mentioned above came into play: the desperate gamble on Japanese naval CinC Yamamoto's part to expand the GCP Sphere to the midpoint of the ocean, and, in so doing, effect a sneak attack on the remaining American carrier strength; that US intelligence captures allowed Nimitz to have that carrier force deployed and ready to the northeast of Midway Island; that the torpedoes launched by the carrier- and island-based American bombers failed, almost to a one, to do any damage to the opposition, either harmlessly running underneath their target vessel, or bouncing, unexploded, off its side; and the differing existential purviews of the two sides, in that American forces endeavored to rescue every downed pilot, or sunken sailor, from oceanic exile, whereas a considerable component of the Japanese senior officers elected to go down with their ships, leaving too few of their crews adrift awaiting rescue, either by friendly subs or enemy ships.
It has always been the case that, every time I partake of this particular episode of the Pacific War, I believe I come close to experiencing, full-on, the essence of Greek tragedy that such as Nietzsche wrote about. That the crews of the obsolete Vindicator torpedo bomber squadrons from the Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown—coming in without fighter cover due to the escorting Wildcats, having veered off course, running out of fuel—hung tough to a man, suffered dreadful casualties during the attack on the Japanese carriers, losing almost the entirety of their planes and crews to the ferocious fighter cap of Zeros; well, the determination of these men, their sacrifice, never fails to stir something deep inside me. It's like I'm drawn into a vortex of awe each time that feat—one after another, after another, after another, launching dud torpedoes ere death arrived as they plunged into the ocean waters—is absorbed anew. It all seemed so hopeless, the day so lost; and yet van der Vat, perhaps better than any other author I've encountered—and in part because he provides testimony from surviving Japanese sailors who were on board the carriers and swept up in the chaotic confusion—makes it crystal clear how these torpedo runs affected the Japanese fleet, with the carriers maneuvering frantically to avoid their finned missiles dropped into the water, and the fighter cap exhausting all their fuel and ammunition in carving the Vindicators to pieces (and a previous sortie by the Marine pilots of Midway itself), while being drawn down towards surface level in the doing. So it is that the near simultaneous arrival of the Dauntless dive bomber squadrons from the Enterprise and Yorktown, as the cloud cover miraculously parted, revealing the carrier fleet scattered below them on the surface, sitting ducks for their steep-angled delivery of bombs, serves as a cathartic release. In spite of myself, I ever thrill with that radiating force of interior awe as, within the space of minutes, the mighty chambers of the heart of the Imperial Navy's Mobile Carrier Force—the Akagi, the Kaga, the Soryu—were in flames and irreparably damaged, on their way to the ocean bed. The surviving Hiryu managed to launch the planes that would sink the Yorktown, but was rendered helpless to defend against the dive bombers sprung from the surviving two American carriers—and she shortly joined her sisters at the bottom. There was no recovering from this disaster for the Japanese—more than anything, in the loss of its precious, experienced pilots and aircrew.
The author also excels in describing the Battle for the Solomons, particularly on the US invasion of Guadalcanal, and the nightly runs down The Slot by Japanese vessels to deliver food and reinforcements to their troops. These battles, short and loud and vicious, nearly always were tactically won by the experienced Japanese crews—but van der Vat shows how these tactical successes were part of an overall strategic failure on the part of the IJN and its Imperial superstructure: each battle saw precious destroyers and cruisers sunk, losses that could be ill-afforded and not easily or quickly replaced. Even more damaging, Japanese air power, of both Navy and Army, was being gradually worn down in attritional attacks against a US foe whose aircraft were continuously improving in design, performance, and armament. The arrogant presumptions of superiority on the part of Imperial Japan meant that few allowances had been made to furnish a steady supply of pilots and planes to replace those in existence at the start of the war; while the general practice was to keep their best flyers fighting at the front until the numbers game caught up, and most had been either killed or incapacitated. Conversely, the US routinely rotated its best pilots stateside, to train the echelon of new flyers who would be coming across the ocean to fight. During 1942 and early 1943, things still felt tight for the US, and some (delusional) Japanese could still believe that victory was attainable: but by mid-point 1943, fifteen month's worth of wartime industry came online, and the resultant output was staggering: whereas the US had made do with a varying number of operational fleet carriers that never totaled more than three during any point for the opening year of the war, by then there were six new fleet carriers, and thirteen new fast escort carriers, available to join the three fleet warhorses—with the unsinkable Enterprise holding pride of place—still in existence. Eight more fleet carriers were in production, with some three dozen escort carriers slotted alongside—and all would have a full complement of aircraft. It was a lopsided state of affairs—naval task forces could routinely put six hundred aircraft up together for a first wave strike—that meant that each battle would inevitably end in a victory for the US. The only thing in dispute was the time it would take, and the cost in manpower it would demand, in the completion.
After the Solomons, the book does feel a tad rushed; but that seems to be because this is a naval history, and seeing as the Japanese forces were completely outclassed, the lengthy chain of island hopping settles into a routine comprised of a desperate Japanese retreat and reinforcement, a massive pre-assault bombardment from planes and capital ships, followed by an amphibious landing that is fiercely contested but inevitably successful, and capped by the slow but inexorable extermination of the defenders who, for the most part, were determined to die rather than surrender an inch of ground. The fanaticism of the Japanese military was of a part with its aggressive mindset—and in a culture that demanded such a self-abnegation in the name of Imperial honour and glory, it's not surprising to van der Vat to find that much of the repression such stringency exacted would be unleashed upon those whom fell into their hands. As the author sees it, the lack of regard the average soldier had for his own life left little room for feelings of pity or commiseration for that of his foe; and while US forces engaged in cruel behavior with their opponent, there is simply no comparison between that and the systematic brutality of Japanese intern camps, forced prostitution of the female population of subject peoples, slave labour, and sporadic civilian massacres and starvation. In one haunting episode, van der Vat offered up a portion of the diary entries of a Japanese corporal on New Guinea, detailing the beheading of a captured Australian pilot. The soldier manfully struggles with fellow-feeling for the doomed captive, particularly as he bravely and quietly accepted his fate. As for his executioner, the Japanese officer, frankly aware of the fact that his troops are surviving on a handful of roots and one potato a day, determines that he cannot afford to feed his captive, nor has any means, under the threat of the US naval presence offshore, to send him to a POW camp. The entry is harsh but powerfully, even beautifully composed; as a snapshot of the mindset that America was up against, it's one of the most compelling pieces in the entire book.
September 23, 2008
A not bad, fairly comprehensive, and decently written account of the origins and course of the Pacific conflict. I would not describe it as meticulously researched and scholarly: it's more of a readable narrative, not without some unambiguous judgments on certain characters in the story. Sometimes Van der Vat's presence is intrusive. Although I thoroughly agree with his assessments of Hirohito (complicit in Japan's aggression and in fact a war criminal) and MacArthur (an unscrupulous, self-promoting and occasionally loopy SOB), the polemics, particularly against the latter, tend to be distracting. Also, I can't cite any specifics off the bat, but Van der Vat's account also allowed a few glaring historical inaccuracies to be printed. These don't detract from the narrative but can stick in your craw if you know the history well enough.
July 6, 2016
Pretty solid one-volume history of WW2 in the Pacific, though there are a half-dozen of those floating around out there. Author says that victory in the Pacific for the Allies was inevitable, so long as there remained a will to fight, and rather than tipping the scales one way or the other each side's advantages or errors were meaningful only in getting to the end sooner. Allied advantages were codebreaking and submarine warfare, and of course the A-bomb. Japanese disadvantages were ignoring crypto-warfare and subs, making Allied advantages loom larger. One irony author highlights is how Japanese intra-service rivalry at the top made strategy rigid and short-sighted, while American bickering created dialogue and consensus.
September 25, 2019
Thorough.
Extremely difficult to piece together the wealth of information presented. This has as much to do with editorial choices. More subheadings would have vastly improved the reading experience. Also, the author could have not mixed together 'character' (because he's keen to make them so) and facts. Although fastidious in 'keeping score' of tonnage and such destroyed in any given battle, a sort of grim 'who won this battle?' obsession; ultimately, it was very difficult to understand what actually happened, because all the elements are thrown in together.
For example, I know nothing but the name of the Battle of Midway. I read this and didn't really understand what happened. I had to go away and read something else to fill in a crucial part of the story.
Some people appreciated the 'focus on personalities.' Perhaps I could have tolerated it if the whole thing had been laid out more clearly. Oh, and don't forget the whopping judgments that swoop down (mostly damning those dastardly Japanese), which pads out the mulge and mush that is this book. I would have found a cold, calculating text book much more informative. In fact, due to that Midway experience, I might just go and read something else to check anything else they missed. They dropped...what...TWO bombs at the end? It's not entirely clear.
Extremely difficult to piece together the wealth of information presented. This has as much to do with editorial choices. More subheadings would have vastly improved the reading experience. Also, the author could have not mixed together 'character' (because he's keen to make them so) and facts. Although fastidious in 'keeping score' of tonnage and such destroyed in any given battle, a sort of grim 'who won this battle?' obsession; ultimately, it was very difficult to understand what actually happened, because all the elements are thrown in together.
For example, I know nothing but the name of the Battle of Midway. I read this and didn't really understand what happened. I had to go away and read something else to fill in a crucial part of the story.
Some people appreciated the 'focus on personalities.' Perhaps I could have tolerated it if the whole thing had been laid out more clearly. Oh, and don't forget the whopping judgments that swoop down (mostly damning those dastardly Japanese), which pads out the mulge and mush that is this book. I would have found a cold, calculating text book much more informative. In fact, due to that Midway experience, I might just go and read something else to check anything else they missed. They dropped...what...TWO bombs at the end? It's not entirely clear.
July 17, 2018
Initially I was excited by this book, thinking to recommend it as a good overview of the Pacific conflict. I have to downgrade that assessment to “marginal”.
As the author touched on subjects in which I was well read, I noticed he made glaring and sometimes sloppy errors. This causes me to mistrust the accuracy of the rest of the work.
He claims the commander of the Japanese forces on the Kokoda Trail led from the front and died fighting, whereas in truth he was drowned in a river crossing during an ignominious retreat. At one point on page 208 he says the total number of U.S. fleet carriers in the Pacific is four, and in the same paragraph says it is six. He states that John Basilone’s machine gun caliber was .50 caliber. It wasn’t. The second atomic bomb dropped on Japan was named “Fat Man”, not “Fat Boy”.
To the uninitiated this might all seem trivial. To the nerd, not so much. If he missed things such as these, what else did he get wrong?
If there are no other accounts of the Pacific war this size that are said to be better, I suppose it would do as a basic primer...but be a bit skeptical of it.
As the author touched on subjects in which I was well read, I noticed he made glaring and sometimes sloppy errors. This causes me to mistrust the accuracy of the rest of the work.
He claims the commander of the Japanese forces on the Kokoda Trail led from the front and died fighting, whereas in truth he was drowned in a river crossing during an ignominious retreat. At one point on page 208 he says the total number of U.S. fleet carriers in the Pacific is four, and in the same paragraph says it is six. He states that John Basilone’s machine gun caliber was .50 caliber. It wasn’t. The second atomic bomb dropped on Japan was named “Fat Man”, not “Fat Boy”.
To the uninitiated this might all seem trivial. To the nerd, not so much. If he missed things such as these, what else did he get wrong?
If there are no other accounts of the Pacific war this size that are said to be better, I suppose it would do as a basic primer...but be a bit skeptical of it.
February 9, 2023
Found the narrative readable and absorbing, well written, but I also found several errors which stood out enough to me as a very amateur historian that I had to pause and do research to make sure I was remembering events correctly.
May 23, 2019
"The Pacific Campaign" ranks with the Pacific War treatment in Samuel Eliot Morrison's "Two-Ocean War" as a very useful one-volume treatment of its subject.
Read
August 7, 2024Comprehensive view of the Pacific conflict of WWII
Read
October 31, 2025Very detailed, step by step account of the pacific theater and the end of WWII.
September 18, 2009
Being shamefully ignorant of the chronology, geography, and other important details of the war in the Pacific, I grabbed this book at the library for an upcoming trip to the mainland. I've found this book very readable and seemingly well sourced. The intended audience is folks like me: ignorant and not looking for overly detailed analysis, just the facts ma'am. Van Der Vat gives very good background information on all the major players involved before diving into the outbreak of hostilities between Japan and basically everyone else. He also peppers in brief but informative biographies of significant individuals in the context of relevant events. He has a very easy to read style, even at times kind of funny (given the subject matter):
"Early that morning the convoy came under attack from the USS Sturgeon, a submarine which fired a salvo of torpedoes and was rewarded with some satisfying explosions. These prompted the facetious signal, 'Sturgeon no longer a virgin.' As no Japanese ship was actually penetrated, this claim was premature. So was the ejaculation of large numbers of torpedoes that night by the four old but dashing destroyers... alerted by air reconnaissance from Java."
A quick read for those wishing for general information on WWII in the Pacific. The book could be improved with the addition of more and better maps.
"Early that morning the convoy came under attack from the USS Sturgeon, a submarine which fired a salvo of torpedoes and was rewarded with some satisfying explosions. These prompted the facetious signal, 'Sturgeon no longer a virgin.' As no Japanese ship was actually penetrated, this claim was premature. So was the ejaculation of large numbers of torpedoes that night by the four old but dashing destroyers... alerted by air reconnaissance from Java."
A quick read for those wishing for general information on WWII in the Pacific. The book could be improved with the addition of more and better maps.
February 21, 2011
Bought this book at the USS Arizona Memorial about five years ago...finally got around to reading (most) of it. It is very detailed, and reads like a story. However, It is also quite long, and even though there are some good maps in the book, I felt like I needed more in order to follow the dialogue. By 2/3 through, I was ready to jump to the end - so I skipped the chapters on the Marianas Islands and the Battle of the Philippines.
I come away having learned a few things, and "piecing together" the other tidbits of WWII knowledge I have gained in my life. I would have liked more descriptions of the military equipment - the traits and characteristics of the major ships and aircraft (diagrams or pictures too).
Overall I was a bit disappointed. I hoped to have had some "breakthrough" understanding after finishing the book - but instead I just felt glad to be finished, and ready to read something lighter!
I come away having learned a few things, and "piecing together" the other tidbits of WWII knowledge I have gained in my life. I would have liked more descriptions of the military equipment - the traits and characteristics of the major ships and aircraft (diagrams or pictures too).
Overall I was a bit disappointed. I hoped to have had some "breakthrough" understanding after finishing the book - but instead I just felt glad to be finished, and ready to read something lighter!
April 8, 2013
Even better than his other book, "the Atlantic Campaign". It was a bigger war for the US Navy and it covered a lot of geography. Lots of interviews with Japanese and British soldiers and sailors for balance. Warning, It mostly revolves around the sea battles so its thin on the land battles of the Pacific Theater. Still absolutely facinating.
January 28, 2016
A great starting place for a student of the US-Japanese conflict, by no means exhaustive, but concise and a great reference to get the bigger picture. Probably the best is that Dan van der Vat is able to treat all campaigns and battles equally, instead of focusing more on his areas of expertise or interest.
December 20, 2010
Very well written account of the Pac. campain. Well detailed maps. Non bias and told well.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews