The Battle for Singapore (Peter Thompson)

This book is an attempt to explain why the "impregnable fortress" of Singapore fell to the Japanese even while the Commonwealth forces hugely out-numbered the Japanese.

The book covers a lot of ground; the author, Peter Thompson, started by introducing the main characters, the defence situation in Malaya and Singapore, and the command structure. He then went briefly into the psyche of the different parties charged with the defence, particularly how they viewed the Japanese, carefully laying the groundwork for the later part of the story. When the fighting proper began he described the progress of each battle in sufficient details for one to get a good picture of the terrain and environment, the arms that were used on each side, and the mistakes that were made along the way.

The author wrote in a engaging manner, moving the book along very well thereby making the book an easy one to read. There were also many interviews with both military and civilian survivors adding richness to the account, and highlighting well the very human side to the tragedy. For someone like me who is just starting to explore the history of this event, this book provides a very good overall description helping to define the different dimensions when exploring this history.

To his credit, the author did not claim this to be a scholarly work despite citing references throughout. However there were a few things that disturbed me in regard to citations. There were times when information was presented which would benefit from citations but were not referenced. One example was when he said that "Japanese sources" claimed a certain number of troops had landed in Singapore without clarifying what these sources were (pg. 424). A related problem I have is with the many instances when the author quoted other sources verbatim. To be sure, sometimes this adds to the narrative, but too much of it gives the reader the impression that he is reading a collection of works already published. The author was occasionally not careful about being precise with facts. The Zero fighter was so named because it entered service in 2600 according to Japan's Imperial Year, not because of the big zeros painted on the fuselage as written in the main text. Although it was clarified in the notes at the end of the book, for readers who do not refer to the notes, this would be what they thought was the reason the plane was so named. The author's credibility is also eroded by the occasional dramatisation of the events such as the description "Sir Robert Brooke-Popham's proclamation flapped in the wind..." (pg. 236).

The title of the book is true to its contents, where the first portion was devoted to setting the scene followed by the bulk of which on the battles, if not solely in Singapore. Unfortunately the last hundred pages or so (out of 600) were wasted on an overly brief treatment of life in Singapore under the Japanese occupation. I would prefer that it be taken up in a separate volume in more detail. I also wished that there was more coverage on what was happening on the Japanese side, from the Japanese perspective. I counted but one instance of this (pg 418).

So in the end did the author fulfilled his aim as spelled out in the last question in his first chapter - "The unanswered question was: how had it happened?" One can read this in different ways. One of which is to interpret from the book that there is a complicity of reasons, including poor leadership, inferior weapons, raw recruits, Britain's engagement in multiple theatres, or under-estimation of the enemies. The other is to say that the author was vague and so it became hard to tell what he was attributing "how had it happened" to. Either way I did not get the impression that the author wanted to state clearly his position, perhaps preferring to let his readers make their own judgement.

Overall this is a very readable book which gives a good introduction to this part of history, including the main characters, the armies, and the location of the battle. The description of the pain and sufferings that soldiers and civilians underwent is also vivid. For a person making my first foray into this area, I have certainly benefitted from reading the book.

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It is hard for me to understand how the West can under-estimate Japan when they beat the Russians on a few decades before and was quickly developing technologically since then.

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昭和史第一部（上）(半藤一利/林錚顗)

Showa Shi (昭和史), roughly translated to The History of the Showa Period was written by Kazutoshi Handō (半藤一利). This work comes in two parts in a total of four volumes, covering the period between 1926 and 1989. This review is only on the first volume in the first part, spanning 1926 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The edition I read was Chinese translation by 林錚顗, a history graduate from the Department of History in the National Taiwan University and the Tokyo University.

The trouble with reading a translated book, besides having things lost (or gained) in translation, is that it is unclear how authentic the book is in its translated form. When one finds an impressively written sentence or phrase, he cannot tell if this was written by the original writer or was just well translated because the language that it has been translated into happened to have more appropriate words or idioms that can be used conveniently. In this review I shall assume that everything was translated as the original author intended.

This volume focusing on the period between 1926 and 1941 tries to address this question – what led to Japan’s involvement in the Second World War? The author started his narrative with the incident in 1928 where the Japanese Kwantung Army murdered Zhang Zuolin (張作霖) by placing a bomb on the train track on which Zhang’s carriage was travelling. Starting his narrative with this event is not just chronologically sensible, it is also the harbinger of a central theme in the book: the Japanese military is rouge and the civilian government is not able to control it. This, together with other factors, eventually led Japan into the tragedy of the Second World War ending in its defeat and destruction.

The circumstances that landed Japan in its final state in 1945 can be understood through the interplay between the external environment and the emerging political philosophies that was eventually embraced by the country. The author carefully described the external environment and situations of that time, the most important of which included the Russo-Japanese War, the Great Depression, and Japan’s desire to be elevated to the status of a major international power. Against this backdrop, the author developed his arguments amid the complexities and intrigues that existed among the various power players, the army, the navy, the civilian parliament, and the advisors to the Emperor. Not only were the relationships among these players complex, within each there were also different factions subscribing to different philosophies, doctrines, and perspectives. Slowly however one of the factions within the army gained the upper hand sometimes through assassinations, other times through coercion. Eventually no one appeared to be able to control the army's field commanders, a situation epitomised by the graphic description of the Marco Polo Incident (pg 188). In the end a certain momentum was gathered and things gained a life of their own.

The style of the author is not one that I’m familiar with. Not having read enough, I don’t know if this is generally how Japanese historical accounts are written or it is just this author. But the prose is a mix of academic, personal, and poetic. For example, his account and analysis of the Nanjing incident is fair and well considered, admitting to the occurrence of the atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers, even apologising over it, but arguing with facts why the number 300,000 estimated at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East is a gross over-estimation (I do not intend to get into an argument over the accuracy of these numbers here.) Yet he would pepper his book with “Isn’t it so?” as if speaking directly to the readers. In addition, he could get into trivialities like why a certain politician has a particular nickname (pg 77). At other times he would include conversations between the actors as if he was quoting them verbatim. And then there would be flashes of brilliance, the most impressive of which is the way he described the end of the Young Officers’ Revolt (226 Incident).

可是，计划就在大高少尉与中侨中尉拔枪相向、四目相对之时结束了。。。(pg 164 - 二二六事件)

But the plan ended the moment Second Lieutenant Otaka and Infantry Lieutenant Nakahashi pointed their guns at each other, staring into each other’s eyes…

There is one issue that I have so far avoided, the author’s attitude towards the role of Emperor Hirohito. In this there is no doubt, the author went out of his way to absolve the Emperor of any responsibilities. The Emperor is either not informed of what had happened, misled by the military, or had his hands tied. This was clear from the start of the book when the author explained how the early events determined the limits of the Emperor’s power. The author made extensive reference to the Emperor's own biographical account 《昭和天王独白录》to gain insights into the Emperor’s thoughts. I wonder why I cannot find a translation of such an important record whether in Chinese or English.

If nothing, this book is important for its contribution to our understanding of what went on on the Japanese side throughout the years leading to the Second World War. It is more than just a chronicle of events which is available in many English accounts; it provided many details about how individuals thought, the dynamics between different individuals and groups, and the general psyche of the populace caught in those turbulent times. The author even had access to some of the important players for example Renya Mutaguchi, an important commander in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (pg 189). Not having read enough on this subject, I cannot recommend an alternative to this book, but I feel that most of us will benefit from this book if we are not trying to do scholarly research in this area.

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China's War with Japan (Forgotten Ally) (Rana Mitter)

This book is published in two different titles: 1) China's War with Japan 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival, and 2) Forgotten Ally: China's World War II 1937-1945. This review is made with reference to the latter.

The use of the first title conjures an impression of a chronicle, recording the events that took place in China between 1937 and 1945. In this, the author has more than fulfilled the promise of the title. In fact, to his credit, Dr Mitter even went way back to the Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) albeit briefly, an era commonly ignored by scholars. This reminder is important for two reasons. First of all, it was then that the Japanese began to station troops on the mainland (in Korea). Second, it became a base from which Japan fought the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) which really represented when the Japanese infringed upon China's territory.

The focus of the book however starts from 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which started off as 'just another skirmish' but took an unexpected turn when Chiang Kai-shek decided that he would make a stand and opened another front in Shanghai. From there the author took us through all the major events ending eventually with Japan's surrender. In between he culled documents and sources including diaries, official party documents, and reports from journalists to provide vivid details of the Nationalists' feeble attempts to govern 'Free China', their efforts to undermine the Communists, to draw any country into the war to help them, and to manage the aftermath of the defection of important party members, while fighting and initially retreating from city to city. Equally vivid are the descriptions of how the civilians caught in the war suffered from poverty, starvation, rape, and official corruption.

But if the first title reads rather blandly, the second title 'Forgotten Ally' proposes a thesis which the author made very clear - China was the forgotten ally of the allied forces in the Second World War. This powerful position can only come into consideration after Pearl Harbor, when Japan in a span of two days made itself the enemy of at least four other countries, the US, Britain, Australia and the Netherlands. The word Ally therefore was only relevant in the later part of the book. The main argument of the author is the Western powers are now at war with Japan, and China being also at war with Japan has become an ally to them and had even fought alongside them on at least one occasion (Burma). But even if that had not been the case, China has tied about half a million Japanese soldiers which might have been deployed against the Western powers, that would have qualified China as an ally. I do not feel qualified to dispute the thesis, rather I would like to offer my reflection on the significance of the worth Forgotten.

Dr Mitter was clear about who the forgotten party was and seen from the Nationalists' perspective, it would probably aptly describe their sense of indignation. They had been fighting the allies' enemy for six years before the allies themselves entered the war. If China was by then "a battered nation on its knees, waiting for the Americans and British to save it from certain destruction at the hands of the Japanese", it could be partly attributed to, as the book made clear, the fact that they had been fighting the Japanese alone. Yet one can hardly blame the West for seeing it this way, for Japan, while surely on their radar even prior to December 1941, was secondary in relation to Germany then. Had Japan not made the blunder of attacking Pearl Harbor, their invasion of South East Asia would have at most threatened the European colonies, and not the European homeland, it would still have been of secondary importance.

Other reasons also made 'forgotten' inevitable. Firstly, the question of whether China really did contribute to the fighting (when they seem to lose on all fronts, not helped by the opinion of Stilwell)  or whether it was just a corrupt regime always seeking more from the allies (Chiang's request for a US$1 billion loan certainly did not help) also left many questions of China's position and value as an ally in the minds of the US and Britain. Secondly, the cold war narrative also quickly distorted the history of that time, focusing people's attention on China's political ideology rather than their history in the Second World War. Finally, the outcome of the civil war in China meant that certain events must be emphasised, others diminished, and some invented.

Which brings me to this question I had as I read the book - who was forgotten really? If the answer is China, then who in China? The situation in China then reminded me of China during the warring states (between 481 BC and 403 BC) when at one stage China was divided into three kingdoms (三分天下), only this time among the Nationalists, the Communists, and the Japanese (through Wang Jinwei's Reorganized National Government of China). And if the West can be accused of forgetting their Nationalists allies as the author implies, then whatever the Nationalists did right (among the many wrongs) was comprehensively eradicated by the Communists when they came to power (see pg 333-334). And to be fair, post-Second World War and even current Chinese discourse on that part of history hardly give enough credits to the West (used loosely here) too.

I cannot accuse the author of falling short in his effort to support his thesis, he might have felt that the two-thirds of the book before China became an 'ally' was necessary to provide the context but that leaves only the last third of the book to try and develop his argument. I also feel that too little was given on the Communists side of the story, perhaps because in the context of actually fighting the Japanese they haven't done much. One last question was whether Russia was as inconsequential to the events in China as it seemed, for very little was said about them throughout. Still, for anyone who wants a source of information on that period of history in China this book is indispensable. Dr Mitter, with his great scholarship, vivid descriptions, and dynamic style will take you on a throught-provoking ride through his riveting narrative.

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The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (S. C. M. Paine)

The author has an important thesis, as this reader commented in Goodreads. To quote the author:

In other words, the long Chinese civil war precipitated a regional war between China and Japan so that by the time the conflict became global in 1941, the Chinese were fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war.

By that, she was trying to show the complexity of the war in China which she felt was treated in an overly simplistic fashion by the powers of that time, and the historians of our time.

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This book is remarkable for a few reasons. First of all not only are English books on this part of World War 2 relatively scarce, the author has a proposition: the war fought in China actually had a significant impact on the Second World War and can only be properly understood by examining the intricate relationships between a civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, a regional war that includes Japan (and more inconspicuously Russia), and the Global War, also known as World War 2. This is an interesting proposition, but to convince the reader through her narrative is an ambitious task, and I shall share my take on it later.

The second reason why this book is amazing is the author knows Chinese and Japanese and was therefore able to make references to many original documents. But beyond knowing the language, Prof Paine was able to show a more intimate knowledge of the Chinese and how they look at things. Finally, the scholarship is quite impeccable, one can tell not just from the amount of literature consulted (the references of which occupied a third of the book) but also from how she critique the literature in the first chapter of the book, and adding more throughout the book as the need arises. With good scholarship, one is left after reading the book to ponder upon many questions, some of which the author briefly alluded to. In order not to spoil it, I shall list, rather than quote from any part of the book.

1. A chapter was dedicated to Russia, indicating its importance. But Russia was to come back near the end, and indeed was always active in the background throughout the book. Exactly how instrumental was Russia in the whole scheme of things?
2. Did Chiang Kai-Shek, educated in Japan, make the same mistakes the Japanese made by focusing too much on operational success against the Communists, thereby trading away strategic initiatives?
3. Exactly how did both the Communists and the Nationalists view the Japanese? The populace, especially the students of that era were galvanised by a sense of nationalism to become strongly anti-Japanese. But were the Japanese just a convenient boogey-man in the eyes or both Communists and the Nationalists?

There are a few specific things that I would like to point out in praise of the author. Firstly, as mentioned earlier, the author knows the Chinese language well and was therefore able to know some of the quirks of the language, for example being able to explain that Huai-Hai from the Huai-Hai Campaign is actually the amalgamation of the words Hua-he (淮河) and Hai-zhou (海州) which define the theatre. Another example is her use of  Chinese idioms at the start of each chapter which aptly describes the essence of the chapters.

In terms of her style and prose, the author is engaging and captivating. Some may feel that she has given too much details but these are necessary to flesh out her narrative to support her proposition. She was occasionally capable of humor (see pages 164 and 186). But most important of all she was able to portray the tragedy of the whole war vividly not by describing the sufferings of the soldiers and civilians on all sides, but the ironies of the outcomes of the war. She did this on three occasions (in ascending order of impact on me):

1. When she hinted that Chiang Kai-Shek might be right in the early stages of the regional war about fact that the bigger threat to him was the Communists and not the Japanese whom he thought would eventually leave.
2. When she recapitulated the reasons for Japan to embark on this misadventure (which could have been hugely successful) and how Japan eventually ended up (pg 219).
3. When she alluded to how Japan might have been right about the menace of the Russia and the spread of its ideology given how the West spent the next 45 years trying to contain it (see pg 284 for example).

Lastly, Prof Paine was rather accurate in her assessment of how the Nationalists were looked at from the eyes of many Chinese, in my view. Whether our opinions of the Nationalists were informed, they surely lost the PR war to the Communists.

As for the supporting materials provided, I particularly like the Chronology section included in the book which listed out the sequence of events clearly. As for the maps, as I am not one with high expectations, I find those included sufficient for my needs.

If I have any disagreements with the author, it is in regard to how she explained the rapid capitulation of the Nationalists after losing in Manchuria. While her use of the Chinese' idea of viewing time as a series of  'cycles' rather than in a linear fashion is novel, I feel it is a little simplistic. It is true that Chinese believe that dynasties (and even right down to individuals) expires at some point and another dynasty would take over, starting the cycle again, this does not always make people jump off the 'sinking ship' and change sides. And comparing how the Nationalists defected to how the the Germans "fought grimly back to Berlin" may not be appropriate because I think the Germans' determination may have something to do with the fact that they view their fight back to Berlin as defending their homeland against another country (in this case Russia). The Chinese were engaged in a civil war, changing sides does not mean selling out their country. That may make it easier to change sides, and may not necessarily be due to their belief that the Nationalists' 气数已尽 (my words, meaning 'time is up'). To know what it is for the individual soldiers caught in that civil war, one can refer to 大江大海：一九四九 by 龍應台 (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6902548?ac=1).

Finally, how do I feel about Prof Paine's effort to support her proposition? We should remember that this is no mean feat, for if one does too good a job at isolating the three layers of war (civil, regional, and global) for clarity, they start to look like unrelated events and the proposition is not supported. On the other hand, if one tries to mix the three layers too intimately, a reader would find it hard to untangle the layers and may accuse the author of doing a sloppy job. Finding the right balance is critical and yet terribly hard. In this, I would say that Prof Paine has been very successful in helping me to see the interplay of these three layers, thereby educating me that at every step between 1911 and 1949, the decisions made by all the parties involved in the war in one way or another are affected by their views of the world, their assumptions about their adversaries and allies, and the tactical moves and miscalculations made by their enemies, some of whom can be their own party members.

In the Conclusion, the author tried to demonstrate the confluence of events that led to an outcome, whereby the absence of any one of more may conceivably change the results significantly. This thought-provoking section leads the reader to many 'what-if' questions and I shall close with one of my own. What if the earliest events in this book were to occur a few years later, right when the Cold War was getting hot? Would Japan's occupation's of Manchuria not be warmly welcomed by the West as a contribution towards checking the spread of Communism in Asia? Then what?

This is not just a book to be read, but to be owned. Just Chapter 7 alone would have made it worth the while.

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Foreword

I originally started this blog to write about the books I've read. I write about the content of the books, the style of the writer, or the lessons I've learnt, depending on which is more prominent to me. I started writing when my reading interest shifted into the Second World War in Asia. Although Singapore (where I am) was also involved in that war, I found that I really have very little knowledge of the war in the Asia Pacific. What I know about the Second World War is mainly of that in Europe. It was not until I started listening to The History of World War 2 podcasts that I started to get interested in the Japanese's entry into the war. I also notice that while the action here is no less brutal, it has received much less interest compared to that in Europe. I decided therefore to read and learn about it.

But while this blog was started with this in mind, and while my interest has not shifted, it has evolved over the three years I've kept it. In the past year I have even started reading Chinese novels, a genre which I have not paid a lot of attention to. So now I allow myself to be more diverse in what I write here, although my aim remains primarily to write about the WW2-related history of Asia Pacific.

Hope we can all learn something through this blog and I hope you would like it.