Twilight of the Gods Quotes

“Looking down, observers saw a sphere of purple-pink light burst through the cloud ceiling, like an air bubble breaking the surface of a body of water. William Laurence, watching from a window in The Great Artiste, was awestruck. The sphere merged into an ascending column of dirty brown smoke and ash, and “we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Looking down, observers saw a sphere of purple-pink light burst through the cloud ceiling, like an air bubble breaking the surface of a body of water. William Laurence, watching from a window in The Great Artiste, was awestruck. The sphere merged into an ascending column of dirty brown smoke and ash, and “we watched it shoot upward like a meteor coming from the earth instead of from outer space, becoming ever more alive as it climbed skyward through the white clouds. It was no longer smoke, or dust, or even a cloud of fire. It was a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“When one lies in a hole peering intently into die black, listening, smelling, hearing only the sound of one’s breathing, waiting, expecting, the stillness may become appalling, dead objects may rise slowly and live, the motionless may move, sounds of leaves stirred by the breeze may become the sneaking movements of human feet, a friend may be an enemy, an enemy a friend, until, unless controlled by toughness of mind, one’s imagination may become haunted by the unseen and the unheard.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“As between an ethical professional requirement that a journalist hold nothing back and a patriotic duty not to shoot one’s own soldiers in the back, we have found no difficulty in making a choice. Freedom of the press does not carry with it a general license to reveal our secret strengths and weaknesses to the enemy.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Musashi. As one of the two most heavily armored ships in the world, she could take a great deal of punishment, and she had—more than twenty bomb hits topside, and about nineteen or twenty torpedoes below the waterline, including fifteen in her port side.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Bushido meant stoicism, self-discipline, and dignity in one’s personal bearing; it emphasized mastery of the martial arts through long training and practice; it lauded sacrifice in service to duty, without the slightest fear of death; it demanded asceticism and simplicity in daily life, without regard to comforts, appetites, or luxuries. The samurai was “to live as if already dead,” an outlook consonant with Buddhism; he was to regard death with fatalistic indifference, rather than cling to a life that was essentially illusory. Shame or dishonor might require suicide as atonement—and when a samurai killed himself, he did so by carving out his own viscera with a short steel blade. But traditional bushido had not imposed an obligation to abhor retreat or surrender even when a battle had turned hopeless, and the old-time samurai who had done his duty in a losing cause could lay down his arms with honor intact.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Anyone middle-aged or older could remember the repressive censorship regime imposed during the First World War. The “dignity” of President Woodrow Wilson had been held inviolable, and any criticism of the president or his policies, no matter how mild or well-meaning, had been grounds to prosecute or shut down an offending newspaper.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Blond, silver, black, brown, red hair. Blue, green, brown, black eyes. White, black, skin colors of every variety. I was stunned. I realized then that we’d fought against all the peoples of the world. At the same time, I thought, what a funny country America is, all those different kinds of people fighting in”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“The welter of major policy decisions taken by American leaders between May and August 1945 were among the most complex in the nation’s history. Purely military strategy was amalgamated into high considerations of foreign policy; all minds, including those of senior generals and admirals, were turning toward the postwar order. The president’s men were absorbed in the day-in, day-out skirmishes with Stalin over the Yalta accords, the occupation and reconstruction of Germany, the political claims of Charles de Gaulle in France, and the charter of the United Nations. They were just beginning to think about the future of Asia, the status of former Japanese territories, the fate of British colonies, the red insurgency in China, the future of Japan under Allied occupation, and the still-uncertain matter of whether Japan’s overseas armies would lay down arms if ordered to do so by Tokyo, or if they would have to be beaten in the field even after the home islands were subjugated.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Observing his captors, Kojima was astounded by their racial and ethnic diversity: “Blond, silver, black, brown, red hair. Blue, green, brown, black eyes. White, black, skin colors of every variety. I was stunned. I realized then that we’d fought against all the peoples of the world. At the same time, I thought, what a funny country America is, all those different kinds of people fighting in the same uniform!”61 On”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“At stations along the way, they debarked to stretch their legs and buy a hot dog or a sandwich, but as they stepped down onto the platforms, an officer told them that any man who was not back aboard when the train left the station “would be considered AWOL and subject to courts-martial.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“During the postwar occupation, many of MacArthur’s policies reinforced and abetted the collective amnesia of the Japanese. By order of the supreme commander, there was no concerted public effort to preserve the history or memory of the war—no monuments, no references in school textbooks, no national museum.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Truman’s diary entry of July 25 remains an inexplicable curiosity. Perhaps he felt sudden qualms, and soothed them with therapeutic delusions. He might have sensed that future historians and biographers were reading over his shoulder, and hoped to be commended as a man of delicate conscience. If so, the entry was a feckless gesture, serving only to leave the impression that the diary was not a faithful record of Truman’s inner thoughts.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“In answer to seemingly ad hoc objections, they repeatedly struck all references to the emperor or his dynasty from American and Allied public statements. That did not change until the second week of August 1945, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but before the final Japanese surrender, when the Americans implicitly promised to leave Hirohito alone. In the end, as Grew put it ruefully, the United States “demanded unconditional surrender, then dropped the bomb and accepted conditional surrender.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Increasingly, U.S. submarines preyed upon the dilapidated little trawlers, junks, and sampans that were always found teeming in those waters. Most were innocently laden with noncontraband cargoes such as rice, grain, fish, coffee, sugar, or salt, and manned by Chinese, Thai, or Malayan crews. But they were plying the coastal trade between ports in Japanese-occupied territories, and that was enough to doom them. In a July 1945 patrol off the east coast of Malaya, the submarine Blenny sank sixty-three small craft with her deck guns. In most cases, but not all, skipper William Hazard gave the crews a warning before opening fire, allowing them to evacuate their vessels and take to their rafts and lifeboats.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Operation hotfoot,”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“It’s the age of the strong eating the weak.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“H. L. Mencken, recalling the travesties of 1917–1918, warned his colleagues that it was their duty, in wartime even more than in peace, “to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who operate this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“would likely bring them into the”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“A very smart man I once knew said that anticipation was sixty percent of life,”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“One could go on, but with diminishing returns. MacArthur was a serial confabulator,”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“The size and strength of the U.S. economy would count for nothing if it could not be mobilized for war, and the capitalist oligarchs would not consent to retool their lucrative industries.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“On July 24, Stimson made a last-ditch attempt to reinsert a provision offering to retain the Japanese monarchy. According to a diary entry he made later that day, Stimson met with Truman and “spoke of the importance which I attributed to the reassurance of the Japanese on the continuance of their dynasty and I had felt that the insertion of that in the formal warning was important and might be just the thing that would make or mar their acceptance.”102 Truman declined on practical grounds, explaining that a draft of the declaration had already been sent to Chiang Kai-shek for his signature.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“the Soviet leader had hoped that the U.S. president would issue a formal request for the USSR’s participation in the East Asian war, providing a pretense for the Russians to abrogate their neutrality pact with Japan.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Indiscriminate firebombing of the urban centers continued and intensified.”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

“Given Stalin’s recent backsliding on the political independence of Eastern Europe,”
― Ian W. Toll, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945