Hideki Tojo was Japan’s most important policymaker of WWII. As detailed in Gary Bass’s 2023 study Judgment at Tokyo, he was the highest official to face the death penalty at the ensuing war-crimes trials. Yet apart from Robert Butow’s Tojo…
With the Old Breed is a harrowing, visceral account of a US Marine’s combat experience fighting the Japanese in Peleliu and Okinawa in 1945. Together with Robert Leckie’s Helmet for My Pillow, it provided the material for HBO’s acclaimed 2010 television series The Pacific. Excellent though the latter was, the book offers much more.
When it first took to the skies in 1935, the Douglas TBD-1 Devastator represented a significant leap forward in aircraft design, with its all-metal construction and single low-mounted wing. It was the first plane type in the US fleet with…
With Marc DeSantis
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD General Douglas MacArthur is arguably the most controversial military leader in US history. His command career was bookended by two divisive episodes. As Army Chief of Staff in 1932, he earned notoriety for forcibly removing the…
Underwater archaeological investigations have located the missing bow of the USS New Orleans in the Solomon Islands’ Iron Bottom Sound. The US Navy cruiser was heavily damaged during the Battle of Tassafaronga on 30 November 1942 when it was hit…
In the last part of our series marking the 80th anniversary of World War II’s final months, Taylor Downing asks whether the Allies had any choice but to use their devastating new weapon to end the war.
What would have happened if Japan hadn’t surrendered? David Porter examines the Allied plans for the largest amphibious assault of all time.
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
REVIEW BY MARK DeSANTIS The Battle of Midway in early June 1942 is arguably the most significant naval encounter of the Second World War, and easily one of the most notable battles in all history. The three-day fight in the…
REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND Most of us have an opinion about the two atomic attacks made by the United States on Japan in August 1945, which brought about the end of the Second World War, and most of us probably…
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history releases.
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
From Burma to Iwo Jima, armoured fighting vehicles played a key role in some of World War II’s most challenging environments. Our military technology expert David Porter takes notes.
The wreck of the ‘legendary’ American submarine that sank the most Japanese warships during Second World War has been found, 80 years after she was lost. USS Harder was discovered 914m below the surface, off the island of Luzon, in…
Haunting new images have been revealed of shipwrecks caused by one of the most significant naval battles of the Second World War. The Battle of Midway, fought on 4 June 1942, saw the United States Navy inflict a crippling blow…
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
REVIEW BY TOBY CLARK Anyone who enjoyed the HBO television series The Pacific or Eugene Sledge’s memoir With the Old Breed will want to read Saul David’s new book, Devil Dogs: first in, last out – King Company from Guadalcanal…
The bleakest moment for Britain's wartime prime minister came not in 1940 – when his popularity soared and he was convinced a German invasion was impossible – but in 1942, as Taylor Downing explains.
The Japanese surge between December 1941 and June 1942 – between, that is, Pearl Harbor and Midway – created a huge Far Eastern empire comparable with that of the Nazis in Europe. But at that point Japan’s capacity for expansion…
James Kelly Morningstar describes the Philippine resistance to the Japanese occupation during WWII.
David Porter charts Japan’s heady ascent from secluded feudal dictatorship to Pacific superpower in less than a century.
It was, according to a famous speech made by US President Franklin D Roosevelt the following day, 'a date which will live in infamy'. Shortly before 8am on Sunday 7 December 1941 – 80 years ago next month – 360 aircraft launched in two waves from carriers belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) made a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
David Porter analyses the Japanese surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet.
How many Imperial Japanese aircraft took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941?
Japan in WWII, Zulu & Societ Propaganda images
I commend Alexander Izza on his excellent article on Okinawa (MHM 119, October/November 2020) but would take issue with a couple of points.
In this year of reflection on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, too often our Western gaze falls solely on events in Europe. We rightly mourn those who died in the final, catastrophic battles in Nazi Germany and celebrate the final end of war in Europe on VE Day. But when the guns fell silent in Europe, the desperate fight between the Allies and the Japanese raged on. In Crucible of Hell, Saul David takes the reader on a journey to Okinawa, ‘the last great battle of the Second World War’.
Alexander Izza reviews the strategy, tactics, weapons, and morale of the opposing forces in the culminating land battle of the Pacific War.
Marking the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in the Pacific, Alexander Izza analyses the ferocious last stand of the Japanese Empire.
Diver Rod Macdonald describes the underwater remains of a Pacific War battle that resulted in the largest two-day loss of shipping of WWII.
Neil Faulkner analyses the strategic situation in the Pacific in early 1942 and the military balance of forces.
Neil Faulkner analyses the Battle of Midway phase by phase.
Colonel Ronnie McCrum takes a critical look at a battle that was lost before the war began.