The Stalin Organ (Gert Ledig/Michael Hofmann)

This is not a book about the Katyusha rock launcher, it is a novel about the fighting in the Eastern Front graphically described. The author, Gert Ledig, was a veteran in the war at the Eastern Front and so what he described in the novel is probably from his experience in the war.

What strikes the reader immediately is the brutality of the conditions of the battle. A Russian advance bogged down, the Germans on the other hand had run out of everything, food, water, ammunition and replacements. Combatants from both sides were lost, some surrendered, if just to get away from that constant bombardment or in the case of the Runner, to avoid another run between the frontline and the Battalion HQ. Those who were injured and could not get away were either treated or ravaged, depending on the random deal of luck. And then there was the absurdity of the command, some of which appeared to have come out of "a children's storybook." (pg 79), though nothing beats the attempt to carry out a court-martial in the middle of raining bombardment and strafing planes (pg. 138).

The author's success in the graphic descriptions is helped much by his ability to describe, using the most imaginative words and sentences. Take for example:

A geyser of earth from a shell impact swallowed him up and spat him out again. (pg. 9)

The reader immediately imagines earth and dust shooting out of the ground and 'him' having miraculously survived, emerging from the cloud of thick dust and shrapnel. Examples like this are found throughout the book.

The one failing I find was the attempt at a love story which while might just have been real enough, didn't sit well anywhere in the book and feels unnecessary. Besides that, I think this short book is a good read and one that allows readers to get a good idea of what the fighting at the Eastern Front was like. Since there does not seem to be many English (or translated) novels set in that theatre, this one is recommended for anyone who is interested.

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Main Fleet to Singapore (Russell Grenfell)

This relatively short book has an interesting title: Main Fleet to Singapore which gives one the impression that it is about the naval decisions concerning British dispositions in the Far East. This is largely correct if one were to look at the proportion of the book dedicated to the events and decisions leading up to the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. But it has a sub-title: An Account of Naval Actions of the Last War. This suggests that the book is more ambitious and it indeed covers the Dutch Indies which fell after Singapore, going all the way to the Battle of Midway. A book that is a little more than 200 pages might not be able to give adequate cover to the naval aspect of the Malayan Campaign, let alone the naval campaigns leading up and including the Battle of Midway. Readers should therefore not expect too much if it is the strategic and tactical details they are looking for. But what make this book invaluable are critical analyses and therefore persuasive arugments and great writing.

The first few chapters of the book detailing the situation in the Far East including the rise of Japan and the Singapore Base is largely a historical account. From Chapter 9 Inquest on the Disaster (the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse) onwards however, the author's incisive analysis starts to come through and he was able to persuade the reader as to why the situation was rather precarious for the British after the loss of Southeast Asia to the Japanese - the Japanese would be able to move into the Indian Ocean against a weak British naval force and do untold damage to the Indian subcontinent and would potentially be able to link up with the Germans in the Middle East. Indeed the Japanese had attacked Ceylon from sea and was simultaneously moving to India through Burma overland; this theory is not far-fetched.

From this point on, the author concluded subsequent chapters with equally thoughtful analyses. In the final chapter he presented his views on how British naval domination for centuries were handed over to the Americans. He traced how it happened to the British sentiment at the turn of the century when it became increasingly pacifist, even rejoicing at the outcomes of the Washington Conferences where the naval treaties were signed. That would not be the only reason for the subsequent difficulties that Britain found herself in when defending her interests in the Far East but I would leave readers to get the rest from the book.

What I particularly enjoy about the book is the writing. That the writer has a great command of the language is beyond doubt. His combination of adjectives, verbs and other elements of the English language is greatly appreciated if not educational. I shall share three examples:

"If fortune was against the Japanese that day, they had invited its disfavour." (pg. 173)

Referring to how military people tend to look at defensive tactics with disfavour:

"And a system that leads to the destruction of the highest proportion of enemy warships cannot have much wrong with it, whatever it is called." (pg. 206)

My personal favourite is this. Referring to Admiral Spruance's realisation that he might be able to catch the Japanese carriers unready at the Battle of Midway:

"... a chance had opened out to catch the enemy carriers when they were embarrassed with the recovery of the Midway force." (pg. 198)

I could not help imagining the carriers with their pants down.

All in all, a very readable book that is informative and engrossing if a little dated. Yet, if the reader is going for a critical perspective rather than the history, he will not be disappointed with this enjoyable book.


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Percival and the Tragedy of Singapore (Sir John Smyth, V.C.)

The title of this book accurately describes the foci of the book: General Percival and the fall of Singapore. However, the objective of tying the man and the campaign together can only be achieved if the narrative is weaved carefully and in this, there were points when the book risked achieving neither.

The book started off fine enough, concentrating on General Percival's early military career, detailing his time in Northern Ireland, his time in staff college and his first stint in Singapore where he made some good calls about what the defence of Singapore would entail should the Japanese ever attack south. All went well until the middle section of the book on the Malayan Campaign. Here it became less clear if the book was about the General Officer Commanding (GOC) or if it was about the campaign. Of course, as the GOC, he was intricately tied to the campaign, but the author focused overwhelmingly on the Japanese's tactics and the British's countermeasures and only gave the GOC passing mentions. Part of the reason could be the author's attempt to show the hopelessness of the situation right from the start and so to absolve the GOC of responsibilities for the inevitable outcome.

But once the campaign was over, the focus went back to the General and on his years in captivity and the post-war life, closing on a bitter-sweet note on his passing on January 1966. Again, if the book is on the General, the post-war section should receive as much attention as the pre-war part which is unfortunately not the case. I found this part well worth reading for it allows me to know a little more about his life after the war. Equally interesting is the author's description of his work with the general in the Far East Prisoners of War Association which was set up to support the POWs taken in Malaya/Singapore and Burma.

Since the publication of this book (1971), a lot more information has become available, scholars have published many articles on the subject, and other books have also been written on the Campaign. If it is the Malayan Campaign that a reader is interested in, this is one that can be considered: Singapore Burning by Colin Smith. For one written from the Japanese perspective, readers can consider Japan's Greatest Victory/ Britain's Greatest Defeat by Masanobu Tsuji. There is a more recent (1993) book that takes on a similar thread Scapegoat: General Percival Of Singapore by Clifford Kinvig that readers may want to consider as well.

(I could not find a picture of the cover of this book, so I used the most dignified picture of General Percival available.)

Choosing War (Fredrik Logevall)

In this book, Prof. Logevall argued that the US's involvement in Vietnam was not inevitable, there were opportunities where the US could have left Vietnam, none better than the months immediately after Lyndon Johnson was elected as President. Unfortunately he was not of the temperament to read the signals coming from his own electorate or the international community. In the end, he would have to bear a big part of the responsibility for bringing the US into war.

Whether one agrees with the thesis, this is an excellent book. Extensively researched, logically argued, and fluidly written, the book takes the reader through an exploration of the circumstances surrounding Vietnam after the French left. It takes a broad frame of reference, tackling the issues including presidential leadership, their advisers, the attitude of the electorate and the international political climate. He examined the options available at each point between 1964 and 1965 and whether a different decision could have been made. 'Yes', he argued, and in hindsight might not have been difficult, but no, these roads were not taken.

The different questions he explored include: Would JFK keep the US out of the war had he lived as some came to argue (e.g. McNamara in his book In Retrospect)? Were the attitudes of the elites at that time as they said they were after the war (eg. George Bell)? Did the 'Domino Theory' really hold? To the first of these questions, the author examined JFK’s fundamental doubts about the US’s agency in dealing with the political issue in Vietnam (pg. 37) and compared it against his actual actions. In that section the author started one of the paragraphs with these two words: And yet. That’s the author's lament. JFK, despite his doubts, first adopted a wait-and-see attitude, but would later boxed himself in with his rhetoric. The author systematically dismantled the enduring myth that JFK would have kept the US out of the war if only he had lived.

Of more interest is why LBJ, despite having won a large mandate from an electorate that expected him to keep the US out of the war, continued to stay the course and in fact progressively up the stakes, eventually Americanising the war. This the author explored in detail, taking care to explain that it was not because he felt that LBJ had managed the situation worse than JFK would have, but because he had a much longer time in the game and so was able to make many more decisions. I shall not spoil the plot by leaking his conclusions here, enough for me to say that the argument was convincing.

The final chapter of the book is a summary of the arguments but the author also expanded it to consider a few counterfactual scenarios. The fact that Prof. Logevall revisited questions he asked earlier and gave them a somewhat different treatment shows the nuance he employed in investigating this important issue of why the US ended up caught in Vietnam. The Vietnam War receive a lot of attention by historians, journalists and people who fought and suffered in the war. In all cases the motivation is to understand why and how it happened and hopefully we are able to avoid getting in such a situation in future. How much we have succeeded we still do not know, but if this book has gotten it right then we are looking at a complex mix of flawed logic, personality, arrogance and career management. Any one of which can lead any nation down this unfortunate road.

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Yamashita's Ghost (Allan A. Ryan)

This book is about the trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita in the Philippines at the end of the Second World War. It is not a simple narrative of the events that took place during the trial. The author argued that the trial was a show done to satisfy the vanity of General Douglas MacArthur. As a result, the first trial of its kind, saddled with the destiny to set a precedence, was relegated into a theatre that contravenes all manner of good legal process (pg. 88).

The book started with the concept of a military tribunal, stressing that it is a challenging one. While it is grounded in legal practice, the process is often carried out by people not trained in the legal profession. More importantly, the idea of laws governing behaviours in wars is a tenuous one. Therefore it is easy for a tribunal to end up miscarrying the justice it is supposed to uphold. This appears to be the case with the tribunal trying Yamashita.

Yamashita was charged with failing in his duty as commander of Japanese forces in the Philippines to prevent them from committing atrocities in the dying days of the war leading to what is called the Rape of Manila. The author raised two questions to this charge: the first is whether Yamashita indeed knew about what was going on, and if he did, whether he could do anything about it. The answers to both questions appear to be a resounding ‘no’. Yamashita did not know about the rampage of that was going on in Manila because he had ordered all troops to vacate the city and was not informed of any atrocities that took place later. Secondly, even if he had known, by then the American forces had so effectively cut off his communication lines that there was no way he could stop the troops even if he had wanted to.

In the end Yamashita was found guilty and sentenced to death, a verdict the author felt was unjust, conceived through a ‘legal’ process flawed in so many ways. Most of his dissatisfaction however, is directed at the presiding judge, Maj. Gen. R. B. Reynolds. To him, General Reynolds was unfit to preside over the tribunal and was portrayed as incompetent (pg. 121, 161, 244) and unfair. On numerous occasions, he allowed the prosecution the latitude that would not have been in a proper trial. He admitted ‘hearsay’ and even double or triple hearsay to be admitted as evidence and when asked to make a judgement on the legality of the prosecution’s methods, could only say “sustained”. Yet, this might not have been the case had it not been for General MacArthur’s haste in wanting the tribunal to conclude quickly, therefore the sub-title “MacArthur's Justice”.

This is a book that requires careful reading and reflection; the author can easily be accused of being a revisionist arguing that a high-ranking Japanese officer was not responsible for the suffering of prisoners-of-war and civilians. To the author, war crimes tribunals is a self-contradictory concept. Wars are started for different reasons but killing of soldiers and civilians are implicit, to put it within the framework of law is oxymoronic. However, we intuitively think that people who perpetuate atrocities must be brought to justice, the question is whether it can be done properly. Despite the difficulties there is value to a war crimes tribunal (which the author argued in the last chapter of the book) and when it is convened, it has to be done properly, and given the self-contradictory nature, carefully. This was obviously not the case in the Yamashita tribunal. I do not think that the author is sympathetic to the Japanese, but he recognised that a tribunal that is not carried out properly would allow those sympathetic to the defendants to claim that it was “victors’ justice” (as argued by Maurice Bardèche in his book, Nuremberg or the Promised Land).

At the end of the book, I asked myself what would have been the right thing to do. While I agree with the author’s argument, I found it impossible to imagine that Yamashita would be acquitted in that climate where everyone who suffered under the Japanese occupation wanted to see something done to members of the Japanese military. The author did not deny the Rape of Manila, he in fact showed data and described the atrocities without any attempt at whitewashing. To him the one that was responsible was Iwabuchi who openly ignored Yamashita’s order to vacate Manila. But Iwabuchi was killed in Manila with almost all his troops. As such, there should not be a tribunal. Yet I cannot imagine this whole issue to不了了之 (a Chinese phrase to describe a situation where something is left unclosed and eventually forgotten). I can, being born a generation later, buy into the author’s argument, but I cannot imagine my grandparents or even parents accepting it. In the immediate aftermath of the war, it was politically untenable. Yamashita would have to be executed, even if purely out of vindication, whatever the consequences. This was acted out in the Chinese movie The Tokyo Tribunal where China’s representative on the prosecution, Mei Ju-ao, wondered to himself at the end of the movie – “I cannot imagine what would happen had we not gathered enough votes to put the accused to death.” This scene is probably made-up, but it reflected the sentiments at the time. The judges could judge according to the logic and spirit of the law, the people wanted their own form of justice.

I came across a book on the Tokyo Military Tribunal – Beyond Victor’s Justice where in the foreword, Sir Gerard Brennan who was involved in the trial of General Nishimura in Australia claimed that it was the first time he came across the passing of the death sentence and it was appalling to him. This was despite Nishimura being quite clearly implicated in the massacre of wounded Australia troops left behind in Parit Sulong, Malaya. This is a contrast to the emotions that civilians who suffered under the Japanese experienced then. We see therefore on one side, a defence that would not convict an accused over slightest doubt in the interpretation of an order but on the other, the people who had suffered untold atrocities who would not care who had to pay for it.

This is a very thought-provoking book. The last few chapters of the book are short and are not on Yamashita’s trial. They are there to show the legacy of that trial and the impact it would have right up to modern times. The last chapter is where the author shared his thoughts on the concept of war crimes. If the rest of the book are well-worth reading, this last chapter is invaluable. Readers like me who are not familiar with this tribunal or the concept of war crimes will find this a very good introduction and will be richly rewarded for reading it.


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东京审判:被忘却的纽伦堡 (Etienne Jaudel/杨亚平/程兆奇)

This book on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East is translated from French, originally titled Le procès de Tokyo: Un Nuremberg oublié by Etienne Jaudel. It is a small volume and reads more like a dissertation than a book. Short as it is, this book has its value; for those who have not read much about the Tribunal, this book gives a very good overview of the various aspects of the tribunal, such as the prosecutors, the accused, the judicial proceedings and the criticism of the various aspects of the Tribunal since. More than that, the author actually has a thesis – the Tribunal, as flawed as it was, was important in giving closure to the victims and the families who suffered terribly in the hands of the Japanese in the Second World War.

Many political scientists and legal experts who study the Tribunal questioned the legality of the proceedings. This became especially so after Richard H. Minear published Victors' Justice: Tokyo War Crimes Trial which got many to start looking at the convicted as victims of miscarried justice. Jaudel gave a good account of the difficulties and disagreements in the literature. These include the sparing of the Japanese Emperor Hirohito (pg. 5, 32); the concept of Crime Against Peace having no precedence (pg. 67); the procedural issues (pg. 12, 52) and the suitability of the general prosecutor, Joseph Keenan (pg. 13).

His perspective is different however. To him, a crime so great deserves punishment for those accountable and while the proceedings were not without flaws, the defendants were given due representation including the provision of fifteen defence lawyers (pg. 35). And although the type of evidence admitted was not like those in a usual criminal trial, the circumstances and the deliberate destruction of documents by the Japanese at the end of the war made it necessary for personal diaries and evidence not produced under oath (pg. 52) to be admitted. Furthermore, the author asked, could one expect that the accused be only convicted after there was no longer any doubt in any part of the proceedings? He reminded readers that the accused had all the legal rights accorded by the prosecution and more importantly, the prosecution had the moral grounds to prosecute because they represent countries that did not commit the same crimes (pg. 148).

Admittedly this Tribunal was different from the Nuremburg Trials because the political structure in Japan and Germany were different. In the case of Germany, it was much easier to identify the culprits because they reigned supreme during the war. Japan on the other hand, had ten prime ministers in that time. With power seemingly diffused among the Emperor, the cabinet and the military, it is hard to establish who should take overall responsibilities for the war and the atrocities resulting from it. From the start, the Tribunal was besieged with the problem of whether it was individual crimes or collective crimes the accused were prosecuted for (pg. 39) and with such a confusing administrative structure, the author felt that it was just to convict the accused so long as the prosecution could prove that the accused have direct or indirect involvement in the policy-making process involving the war.

Two judges in the panel of 12 needs special mention here. The first is Judge Radhabinod Pal who was dissenting and would later write a book to explain his position (Pal, 1953). He was accused by a Japanese author, Saburo Ienaga, of being partial to the accused because Pal was anti-communist and China was slowly drifting towards Communism during the trial (Saburo Ienaga, pg. 201). This is hard to prove especially when Ienaga himself was accused of being a communist. However, the credibility of the Judge took a bit of a hit when it was revealed here that he missed 109 days out of 423 during the trials, making him the biggest absentee (pg. 47).

The second judge is Judge Bert Röling who was also dissenting. He was among the people who believed that it was right not to put Emperor Hirohito on trial because he was just a figure-head and did not really have a say (pg. 143). This is ironic because it was precisely because of this that many felt that the Tribunal was a farce (pg. 145). This case is instructive for it highlights the fact that while people many agree that the Tribunal was less than impeccable, they were of the opinion for different reasons. This lack of agreement among the critics of the Tribunal may actually strengthen its legitimacy.

This book is marred by lapses, some of which are minor like the exact dates when Yamashita left for the Philippines which had no material impact on this book (pg. 33, 78, 80, 137, 151) but others  are major  (pg. 37, 49, 60, 62) such as the date that Japan withdrew its membership of the League of Nations (pg. 78). Fortunately, the translator, 程兆奇 did a good job checking the facts and correcting them in the footnotes. What I personally like about the author was his willingness to consider non-scholastic work which he qualified (pg. 20). I think pure scholarly work done in the scholastic tradition is important because it is on this that future knowledge is built. Unfortunately this always leaves the output dry and the physical scenes incomplete. I found myself constantly forming images informed by pictures from books or even scenes from the television programmes especially when reading works on China in that era. I hope more scholars would consider non-scholastic works but of course with qualifications and proper citations.

Finally, two points made by the author is worth repeating here. First of all, he, in response to Minear’s term ‘Victors’ Justice’, proposed that the Tribunal could also be called ‘Losers’ Justice’ because the judges in the Tribunal were all from countries that have suffered under the Japanese, they therefore represent their civilians who have suffered when they were losers (pg. 65). Secondly, a position not widely considered, is the fact that the outcome of the Tribunal ironically relieved the Japanese of their war guilt, for now they can say that it was the responsibility of those convicted (pg. 150) that perpetuated the atrocities and cruelty throughout Asia and brought Japan to the brink of destruction.

Reference
Ienaga, S. (1979). The Pacific War, 1931-1945 : A Critical Perspective on Japan's Role in World War II. NY:The Pantheon Asia Library.

Pal, R. (1953). International Military Tribunal for the Far East: Dissentient Judgement. Kolkata:Sanyal & Co.

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太平洋戰爭 (家永三郎/何欣泰 ) The Pacific War 1931-1945 (Saburo Ienaga)

To many, the Pacific War is geographically limited to the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean, extending furthest south to the Coral Sea and west to the Philippines. It is also chronologically limited to the period between 8th December 1941 and 2nd September 1945. To the Japanese and Chinese however, the Pacific War extends to China and Southeast Asia and started on 18th September 1931, when the Kwantung Army invaded Manchuria. This distinction is important: to many Americans, Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack, requiring a full retaliatory response. To the Japanese, it was the outcome of the sanctions that the USA placed upon them, and having no  way out, they had to attack the USA in the hope they would sue for peace. These sanctions were put in place in step with the escalation of Japan's conquest in China, leading to the most drastic embargo of oil as Japan invaded Indochina, which could be traced back to Japan's actions in China. To the Japanese, the Pacific War is a 15-year war and their ultimate near-devastation is to be traced to 1931, which is why the characters that appear in Japanese and Chinese literature on the war is a lot more colourful and well-developed than the fleeting mention that they get in Western literature.

This book by Saburo Ienaga is a survey of the events leading to Japan's ultimate defeat and the conditions in Japan throughout that period. The author's motivation is to educate the post-war generation about Japan's recent past, and more importantly, to counter the resurgent right-wing narrative in Japan. In doing so, not only did he discuss the military and cabinet decisions, he also provided a view into the controls the military put place to ensure that the populace remained docile and abiding and would not raise any objections to the military's adventures.

In the 1920s and throughout the 1930s, militarism was pervasive and this started to make inroads into schools through systematic perversion of the school curriculum as well as the increase in imperialistic-mindedness of the teachers. There were those who tried to resists, but by 1940, there was largely no more open dissent (pg. 117) and even the "intellectual community not only caved in under pressure but accommodated with alacrity to the new order" (pg. 121). This being the case, and with the constant bombardment of news of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy scoring victories after victories over any adversaries, it became impossible for the Japanese civilian to know the truth.

The author's main concern was that there never seemed to be a time when the post-war Japanese society evaluated Japan's history in the early part of the 20th century. War memories started to fade and there are even signs that the war apologists were beginning to make a come back. Indeed, there were even people who advocated the reassessment the war because excessive emphasis on war responsibility "would produce a guilt-ridden nation," (pg. 253). And as if to prove his point, Inenaga published a draft of a Japanese history textbook for high school based on his New Japanese History. The draft was rejected by the Ministry of Education in 1952 because they did not like the way he depicted certain events, this resulted in him bringing a lawsuit to the ministry.

I cannot claim to be a scholar in Japanese literature on the War, but I observed a few interesting perspectives of Emperor Hirohito from the few works I have read. The right-wing perspective is that the Emperor might have a role in starting the war, but it was a just war and he did the right thing. Among those who disagree with the war and admitted to the atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army are two different views. One is that the Emperor had no choice and was not really in control of events. Respected academic and author, Kazutoshi Handō is of this opinion. The other perspective, to which this author subscribed, is that the Emperor should bear the responsibilities and at the end of the war, with everyone suffering the most difficult conditions, and the myth of the Emperor shattered, people were ready to indict him had the Allies so decided. Finally, there are those who chose to side-step the role of the Emperor. This is an interesting issue for further exploration and I hope that the book I'm currently reading would help to shed some light.

As a small volume, it is impossible for the author to go into enough details of any events or any aspect of the lives of the Japanese. I started reading the Chinese translation of the book and found it hard, mainly because of the style that I'm not used to. The English translation is much easier to read but seem to lack a certain depth. However, those who are interested in getting one Japanese perspective (a left-leaning one) of the Pacific War will find this book useful.

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Defeat into Victory (William Slim)

This book is about the Burma/India Theatre in the Second World War where the British arguably scored their first victory against the Japanese. While this theatre did not receive as much attention as the Malayan Campaign, the fighting was not less brutal and conditions possibly harder. Resources were scarce, understandable given the secondary status this theatre was accorded (pg. 24). Food was pathetic (pg. 178) and even uniform was not enough at first (pg. 42). Add to this the difficulty of sewing together combatants from different nationalities: British, Indian, Burmese, Nepalese (Gurkhas), American (airmen) and Chinese, the challenge of stopping the Japanese advance into India was formidable. On top of that, some people could be fighting for either side (especially the Indians who served in the Indian National Army) and with a foe that exhibited systematic cruelty and brutality in any theatre (pg. 51, 238), it was no wonder that many felt demoralised and were conditioned to think that there was no way to stop the Japanese.

The central theme of this book is how the Commonwealth soldiers, with the help of the Americans airmen, eventually re-grouped, trained and through small victories scored in patrols, turned their beliefs around and came to recognise that the Japanese were not invincible. The Japanese could be defeated by a side who trained better and planned better, a side that was determined not to be forced into retreat again. The story of how they overcame the lack of resources, broken promises of higher command due to exigencies in other theatres, and maintained and improved their morale makes for a good lesson in leadership and practical intelligence.

The writing is another reason I enjoyed the book. The writer was able to give very vivid descriptions of events (pg. 28), scenes and people (pg. 31) all written in a style uncommon in military history and rare today as we push for the use of Business English. There are a few occasions when I even felt the writing poetic. For that, one should see the author's description of Northern Burma (pg. 246), the opening of Chapter 12, and about the great Irrawaddy (pg. 416), written with such respect. He also had a great sense of humour such that the book is peppered throughout with funny anecdotes (see pg. 44, 61, 141, 330). His reflections on the loss of Burma (pg. 120 onwards) also contain invaluable insights.

Some may accuse the author of being a borderline racist in his writing (pg. 281) based on today's politically correct rhetoric but I personally did not detect disrespect. If he disapproved of his Asian allies or was disappointed by them, he did not link any of this to their race, but to the lack of training or the conditions under which they had to operate. In fact he had high praises for the Indian units fighting for him and maintained the highest respect for the Gurkhas.

The one question that kept coming back to me as I read the book was why this theatre receive so little attention, especially given that it resulted in a convincing victory for the the British. Was it one that really mattered so little in the bigger scheme of things? Wouldn't it be disastrous had Burma/India ended up like Singapore? An earlier book I read had indeed speculated that the outcome of the war might be different had the British been defeated in Burma and India, and India, while geographically huge, might not be difficult to sway towards the Japanese, given the independence movement led by the Congress Party.

But like all speculations, it is hard to predict what really would happen. All we know is that the Japanese were defeated by the British and her allies for the first time and this is part of the general pattern of the war for the Japanese from then on. Interestingly, Japanese sources, both left and right-wing (Handō, 2009; Ienaga 2010; Yakuta & Watanabe, 2013), pay more attention to the defeat they tasted in Imphal, putting the blame squarely on Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi's lack of leadership, capabilities, and decisiveness.

Even if the victory here did not serve the overall cause strategically, there are reasons for one to learn about this theatre if just to know how an army, so lacking in resources could turn defeat into victory against an enemy that seemed so invicincible. And there is no one better to learn from than the one who was instrumental in the victory.

(This review is based on the edition published by The Reprint Society, Ltd.)

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References

Handō, K. (2009), Showa Shi 1926-1945 Volume 2, Heibonsha Limited, Tokyo: Japan.

Ienaga, S. (2010), The Pacific War 1931-1945, Pantheon Asia Library, NY.

Hyakuta, N and Watanabe, S. (2013), Zerosen To Nihontou, Maple House Cultural Publishing, Taipei: Taiwan.

Embers of War (Fredrik Logevall)

The Vietnam War has received extensive studies and spawn a great many books. Most of them focus on the USA's involvement in what the Vietnamese called the Second Vietnam War. Much less emphasis has been given to the First Vietnam War, that between the French and the Vietnamese. This excellent book goes a long way in adding to the small body of literature and does it with style.

The story started in the Second World War. Then, the French had to content with the Japanese. The Japanese wanted to be in Vietnam to stage the action to block aid from going to Chiang through Yunan. while there was initial apprehensions because they did not want a conflict with the US (pg. 41), they did not know that the US would counsel the French to accede to the demands of the Japanese (pg. 32).Yet this would eventually lead the US to make the fateful decision to increase economic sanctions on Japan who, by then, had decided that she had no choice but to secure the resources from Southeast Asia. Which brought it to war with the US, and having to surrender, gave the Vietnamese the opportunity to demand independence.

This book explores the question: how did the US eventually got caught in such a tragic war after the French left Vietnam? In doing so, the author spent a good amount of time focusing on the famous Domino Theory which in hindsight did not materialise. Immediately after the Second World War, the US was at best ambivalent to the Vietnam question and in fact leaned towards asking the French to give independence to the Vietnamese. The French though, would have none of that and was able to cleverly portray the fight against Ho Chi Min as that of a frontier against the spread of Communism which requires the materiel support of the US. The US would be persuaded (pg. 220, 356).

As the US got more involved, they eventually had to confront the dilemma: should they follow their anti-colonial instincts or should they support the French in the larger context of the Cold War? They first chose a position that was a non-starter for the French - to promise independence to Vietnam but at the same time fight the Communist. That was a logical recommendation to an ally helping them to fight a broader war against the spread of Communism; it was fantastical idea if one is fighting to hold on to a colony, which the French was. So the French led the Americans along, and eventually when they felt that the Americans were too bothersome, wanted to shake them off.

And I quote from Jack Higgins's book Touch the Devil: Touch the devil and you can't let go.

By 1952, the French felt that they had had enough. But by then the Americans felt that they had been in the game too deep to let the French quit (pg. 318, 346-347). The French would not be able to shake the Americans off, and would have no choice but to go on with the war, culminating in Dien Bien Phu. The Americans who at first had to underwrite the war would end up taking over from the French. There would be a few years of relative calm as the date of the promised election in Vietnam came and went and the Americans would have their own experience at not being able to let the devil go (pg. 186, 197).

Prof. Logevall is an engaging writer. I particularly enjoy the lead up to Dien Bien Phu with all the suspense and then the fiasco as the French parameters shrunk. But it is not just enjoyable writing that makes this book an important one to read. In it, one will see history rearing its head, the attitudes that the French had (eg. the sunken cost) could also later be seen on the Americans, the belief amongst the Vietnamese that the foreigners would eventually go home would be repeated in the Second Vietnam War. We are left to wonder about ourselves, do we learn?

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零戰與日本刀 (百田尚樹, 渡部昇一/ 張詠翔)

The title of this book (Zero Fighter and the Samurai Sword) is misleading in that only about a third of the book is about the Zero Fighter. But the rest of the book is eye-opening for me for I have never read anything written by a right-wing commentator in Japan. Let me first start with the first part of the book that compares the Zero Fighter to the samurai sword.

Why did the authors compare the Zero Fighter to the samurai sword? Much of it has to do with fact that they are built in the same spirit. Samurai swords are beautiful, deadly, yet very brittle, like the Zero Fighter. This Japanese fighter was once the most advanced aircraft in the Second World War. It was fast and maneuverable, but was known to be highly vulnerable. Even a single round from an enemy's aircraft could destroy it. This is unlike the American fighters which were generally robust but were either less agile or less quick. The authors argued that this is exactly aligned to the Japanese psyche: Japan doesn't have the concept of a shield, they only have the concept of a spear (pg. 13), this is almost unique in the world. As a result, they could sacrifice protection for their pilots in order to improve the speed and maneuverability of their planes.That is as far as the discussion on the Zero Fighter went. The rest of the book uncovers the attitudes of the authors towards Japan's participation in the Second World War.

The authors were critical of the Japanese military in the Second World War - not because they perpetuated a war that was unjust, but because they were incompetent, lacked efficiency and strategic vision thereby leaving Japan to the ultimate defeat (pg. 138). Their basic assumption is that Japan's invasion of grabbing of others' resources is totally within reason and they presented four arguments to support that position.

Japan had no choice
The nature of the Pacific War (in Southeast Asia)  is to gain resources denied to Japan by the USA (pg. 47). Japan had to find a way to accommodate their growing population, they needed space and resources and China looked like the natural place to get it, especially when there was a total breakdown of governance. So their entry into China was not unlawful and seriously, it was no different from the pseudo-colonisation imposed on China by the West. But the Americans would not play ball, and started tightening the economic noose around Japan. What else could Japan do? So they had to strikes first in Southeast Asia to ensure that the West could not deny them of the resources (pg. 111) and they had to strike at Pearl Harbor in order to get the Pacific Fleet out of the way so that the Japanese Navy could secure the oil resources in the East Indies failing which, the Japanese Navy would not be able to move their ships, it's now or never (pg. 123).

It's other people's fault
Of course Japan would not have come to this had it not been for China's refusal to just accept Japan's annexation of Manchuria. This eventually led to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, an escalation that Japan was determined to avoid (pg. 170). The Chinese's refusal to back down meant that Japan had to try and destroy the Chinese army which in turn caused international opinion to turn against them.

The locals in Southeast Asia welcomed the Japanese anyway
Although the current history textbooks in Japan said that Japan invaded the Southeast Asian countries, but seriously, Japan was not fighting the indigenous people of these countries, they were fighting their colonial masters, like the Dutch, French, Americans, and the British. These were the real invaders (pg. 201). To support this, the authors cited the example of the Indonesians who were asked by their colonial masters, the Dutch, to destroy the refinery facilities. But they hated the Dutch who had exploited them for more than 300 years and so had this notion that a 'yellow-face' God would come and save them. So when the Japanese paratroopers (were there?) came, the Indonesians thought that the God had come. As a result, none of them obeyed the Dutch and so the Japanese came as liberators instead of invaders (pg. 53).

Japan was the victim
Either way in the end, isn't Japan still the only country to suffer the atomic bomb - twice? And once Japan was defeated, the allies put together a show called the Tokyo Tribunal, which was actually just a farce. Beyond the documents at the tribunal, there were no other documents criticising the Japanese. Even McArthur said that Japan fought a defensive war(?) (pg. 180).

The authors even went as far as to consider the counter-factual of Japan prevailing in the Pacific against the Americans, or invading Russia during Operation Barbarossa which could result in the Americans suing for peace. The outcome would have been very different.

I personally found the arguments unpersuasive but I cannot say that they are totally without merits. However, I need to first state my position. I do not think that any country who faced a lack of resource has the right to build an army and go and grab the resources of another country. My own country has zero natural resources and is equally starved of land, that does not give us an excuse to eye other people's resources. So Japan's basic assumption that they could just go across to China and make demands is not acceptable to me.

Unfortunately, China was easy meat then. Fat with resources but in the era of the warlords, was devoid of a central government. Japan, like the other 8 nations, could easily walk all over China with impunity. Japan almost got a way with it, if one were to look at the annexation of Manchuria and the Chinese's response to it (I have reviewed books on this, see here and here).

As to the locals welcoming the Japanese as liberators, there were actually examples of this. A good number in India had looked upon Japan as the Asian country to liberate them from the British. Some of the indigenous people in Southeast Asia felt the same, except the Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia who were the target of vengeance of the Japanese. But once the Japanese revealed themselves to be even more brutal than the western colonial masters, their attitudes changed.

This is a short and easy book to read. It being the first book I come across as told from the right-wing perspective is educational and interesting. But I also happen to know that the authors are Nanking Massacre deniers. This has severely coloured my perception of the book, for it is one thing to disagree on the interpretation of facts, it is another thing to deny facts. Those who are looking for a book on the Zero Fighter would be disappointed, but if the reader is willing to entertain a different perspective of the Second World War, this book is an interesting one.

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The Manchurian Myth (Rana Mitter)

A little after 10.30 pm on September 18, 1931, a bomb went off at a section of the railway line belonging to the Southern Manchuria Railway. Although located in Manchuria, the railway was the property of the Japanese, having secured it from the Russians after the Russo-Japanese War. The event was the brainchild of two army officers from the Kwantung Army, Ishiwara Kanji (石原莞尔) and Itagaki Seishiro (板垣征四郎). Their intention was to create an excuse for the Kwantung army to send their troops into Mukden (now Shenyang) as part of their plan to occupy Manchuria. This is today known as the Mukden Incident or Manchurian Incident (9-1-8 Incident as known to the Chinese, 九一八事变). This incident would launch the 15-Year War with China, as it is known in Japan.

Manchuria was made up of the Three Eastern Provinces of China (东三省) and was the power-base of Zhang Xueliang (张学良), popularly known as the 'Young Marshal' (少帅). Zhang had a good-size army, but was told not to resist the Japanese. Zhang himself was not in Fengtian, the capital of Shenyang when the incident took place and neither were his deputies. In a short time, the Kwantung Army occupied Fengtian and in a few months, the rest of the three provinces.The Incident would precipitate a long list of discussion topics and scholarly research including the effectiveness of the League of Nations, the motivation of Chiang Kaishek, then leader of China, the stain on Zhang's reputation hence, and so on. Few, however, ventured into the lives of the Chinese caught in the unexpected turmoil, fewer have explored their attitudes towards the occupation.

In this book, Professor Rana Mitter attempted just that. But more, he wanted to explore why many in the occupied provinces even collaborated with instead of resisting the Japanese. This is dangerous grounds to tread. No Chinese today today would admit to not resisting or at least hating the Japanese during the occupation. As such, the author could only look to official documents, newspapers, records and also known events to reconstruct the climate in Manchukuo, as the three occupied provinces were known after they were made a puppet state by the Japanese. Prof Mitter's research question was this: how was the Kwantung Army, with relatively few troops in the area, able to control an area over 350,000 square miles with a population of 30 million with it own strength alone? Did they enlist the help of the local population since help was unlikely to come from Japan given the Japanese government's extreme disapproval of the incident?

Indeed the Kwantung Army was able to enlist widespread collaboration of many Chinese including the elites (pg. 6), local leaders (pg. 72), local warlords like Ma Zhanshan, and one might even argue, Chiang himself, for his assent to the Tanggu Truce was tacit agreement to the Japanese occupation. The commoners were however, largely indifferent; this applies to those from either side of the border separating intramural China (关内) from the three eastern provinces. The elites and students in intramural China were indignant to the occupation but the commoners were not really concerned.

This is a complex problem. Although in contemporary China, everyone considers the three eastern provinces as integral to China, this was not always the case. While the Qing Dynasty was by then no more, the Manchus, who originated from the three eastern provinces, after differentiating themselves deliberately from the Han Chinese, made it difficult for the Han Chinese in the 1920s and 30s to see the three provinces as part of China proper. The occupation of the provinces did not appear to many Chinese as a violation of their own country (pg. 187). Even among those living in the occupied provinces, who by then were overwhelmingly Han Chinese (pg. 23), there was little evidence of active resistance. This might be down to two principal reasons. Firstly, the fear of reprisal. The Japanese were ready to take extremely brutal measures against those suspected of engaging in subversive activities (pg. 112-113). Secondly, non-resistance could mean that life went on as usual and in some cases, life even got better than under Zhang (pg. 56, 119, 122, 124). Adding to this was the fact that only a small portion of the locals had enough knowledge to understand what was going on (pg. 99), it therefore comes as no surprise that Manchukuo was more or less peaceful in its years. This state of affairs was similarly depicted by Cordes (2013) in his travelogue where he described the indifference he witnessed among the Chinese in Manchukuo, painfully living their cheap lives which could be taken away from them at any moment. This was also more or less how Chi (2004) depicted the lives of the Chinese in her novel. Some were resentful of the Japanese, but they largely went on living their lives by avoiding the Japanese where possible.

Which goes counter to the contemporary narrative from China about the determined resistance and even uprising against the Japanese. And if there was indeed resistance, it was mainly through propaganda efforts made by the elites and students in intramural China, far away from Manchukuo. Armed resistance was carried out by bandits who were ever ready to plunder the commoners when necessary and at times they would think nothing of switching sides (pg. 175). Organised armed resistance was dominated by people with nothing to lose, the bankrupt peasants and bandits (pg. 197).

But lest one thinks that Chinese were generally unpatriotic and would gladly identify with the Japanese, it must be stressed that they were never in doubt of their identity. Against the reality of the non-resistance policy of Chiang, what could a commoner do? Help was not forthcoming from the own government (KMT) nor from their most recent ruler (Zhang) and even less likely from an noncommittal League of Nations (see the findings of the Lytton Commission). Life had to go on, so most went about it pragmatically, fully aware of the Japanese presense and brutality but finding a way to cope.

Prof Mitter can be an engaging writer. This is evident from his other book, Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1941 (Mitter 2013). But the book under review is adapted from this PhD thesis and I must say that theses are seldom written to engage. While I'm sure this book has been edited for readability, the thesis undertone is still widely felt. Having said that, one must recognise the value of the work. If nothing, it presents the complexity of nationalism in China then. In contrast to what is popularly brandished about today, Chinese in all strata of the society were able to adjust and accommodate the reality of Japanese occupation. We are not talking about a few black sheeps, we are talking about a whole society. This is unlikely to be palatable to the Chinese government of today. They have conscientiously sought to portray that part of history as one of Japanese brutality and Chinese resistance. Some strategies they have used include blaming Chiang for his policy of non-resistance (correctly in my view) and instead using his army to pursue the Communists, and fervently referring to Manchukuo as 伪满洲国 (fictitious Manchukuo) to stress its illegitimacy (compare the title of Chi's novel in the Chinese and the Taiwanese editions). The truth, at least at the commoners' level, is more of ambivalence on one side of the border and trying to maintain life as usual on the other.

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Chi, Z. J. (迟子建) (2004). 伪满洲国. Beijing, China, 人民文学出版社.

Cordes, E. (柯德士) (2013). 沉睡的与惊醒的“满洲国”. Liaoning, China, 辽宁人民出版社.

Mitter, R. (2013). Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945. NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

父亲与我 （尤今）

You Jin (尤今) is a prolific Singaporean author whose genre spans short stories, fiction, travelogues and autobiography, among others. She is not a historian and did not claim to write this book as a piece of scholarly historical work. This is a book that is divided into two parts, the first about her father and his days as a member of Force 136, and the second on the life of her parents.

The first part is her arrangement of her father's (Tham) diaries and documents left from his days in Force 136, a branch under the Special Operations Executive (SOE) that operated in Malaya behind the enemy lines during the Second World War. Tham was an important member of Force 136 that was given training in special operations in China and India before returning to Malaya with fellow operatives in 1943.

The purpose of Tham's return to Malaysia was to set up a communications channel with the British Command, then in India in preparation for an eventual British landing in Malaya. But it was not the intent of this book to explore this issue in depth, rather, Tham's diaries provide readers with a very good peek into occupied Malaya between 1943 and 1945 particularly how the anti-Japanese militias with which Force 136 co-existed, lived and evaded capture. Ironically, this group of comrades would become the Malayan Communists Party after the war and would be pursue with deadly force by the British.

Personally, I feel that the most interesting parts of the books were on the few interactions Tham and members of Force 136 had with the populous. First of all, there was this divide between the Chinese and the other races. The Malays more or less went about life as usual and in fact viewed the Chinese with suspicion (pg. 60). Whether it was because of natural enmity or for fear that the Chinese would bring trouble to them because the Japanese tended to treat Chinese more cruelty is unclear. However, one experience with the Indians is instructive. On one occasion, in order not to arouse suspicion, Tham and his colleagues had to pretend that they were Japanese, shouting unintelligible Japanese, cowing the local Indians into silence (pg. 57). The enmity might therefore have also sprouted from the fact that the Malays and Indians could not tell Chinese and Japanese apart. Secondly, among the Chinese there also seemed to be people who were able to get on with life rather undisturbed by the Japanese, this is contrary to the more common narrative of popular Chinese resistance.

In fact knowing now that the British did not make any serious attempt to retake Malaya, one has to wonder about the agency of Force 136. What exactly did they achieve as operatives in Malaya? The current historical narratives surely make quite a big deal of them. There is no doubt their life was hard and fraught with danger and on many occasions they had to suffer deprivation and pain. But in the end did they matter? This would be an interesting area to explore in future.

Leading the team of operatives was John Davis, CBE, DSO. This Englishman, who could speak Cantonese, not only struck up a good relationship with the members of Force 136, on many occasions he provided strong leadership to the group. Whether it is going off to look for water in hostile territory (pg. 16) or getting everyone out of a the jungle when the local guides were lost (pg. 60), one can see that it was he who the rest of the team looked up to. His story is told in Margaret Sheenan's (2008) book Our Man in Malaya.

The story of Force 136 has been recounted in several books (see for example Chen & Tan, 1995; Taylor, 1989; Trenowden, 1983) and this one adds in a small way to that body of literature. But its contribution is more of a first-hand account of the operatives' life in Malaya. Although it was a bit too brief for me, this serves as a good introduction to a topic that a reader may want to delve deeper into in future.

(Find this book at Goodreads) 

Chen, C. and Tan, C. T. (1995). Force 136: Story of a WWII Resistance Fighter. Singapore, Asiapac Books Pte, Ltd.

Shennan, M. (2008). Our Man in Malaya: John Davis, CBE, DSO, Force 136 SOE and Post-War Counter-Insurgency. UK, The History Press.

Taylor, C. G. (1989). The Forgotten Ones of South East Asia Command & Force 136. NY, Hyperion Books.

Trenowden, I. (1983). Malayan Operations Most Secret Force 136. UK, Heinemann.

民國史抗戰篇：烽火八年 (唐德剛)

This book is a selection of Professor Tong Te Kong's works. Some are papers published in journals, others are his papers presented at conferences and a few were his editorials in the newspapers; there are even a couple of letters he wrote in reply to people who wrote in with comments about his works.

Professor Tong was born in China in 1920 and was in his teens in the tumultuous years when China was resisting Japan. He attained his PhD in Columbia University and stayed on in the US, becoming a naturalised citizen. This background is important because being an American citizen, he had the freedom to write without having to take sides, Chinese or Taiwanese. This is an important quality when one writes about China's modern history, for both sides (less the Taiwanese nowadays) try to narrate the story from their own perspectives, leaving one an incomplete if not biased picture of the history not made up by the narrative from the other side. 

Although a collection of essays, Prof Tong's position is a consistent one and the chronoligcal arrangement of the essays makes following the events easy. To the author, once the Japanese were given a foothold on the Asian mainland, opportunities were abundant for all kinds of conflict with the Chinese armed forces, and the Japanese (especially the Kwantung Army) made use of it to the fullest (pg. 21), culminating in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident that kicked-off the Second Sino-Japanese War proper. However, the situation following the incident was not only a series of battles, there were also political intrigues and double-crossing. The most famous of these no doubt is Wang Jingwei's defection from the KMT setting up an alternative government in the fallen Nanjing. A good number of chapters dealt with this and since one of the players was Prof Tong's father-in-law, his account of the incident has added weight. The value of these few chapters is not just in the special insights he was able to give, but his good analysis of why Wang is today considered the traitor of the first order. And it is just as well that a significant part of this book is on this treachery for if there is a thread running through the book, it is that of duplicity.

Besides Wang's own betrayal, there was also Chiang himself dabbling in such some rather dubious episodes when the need arises. His own management of the situation with the Japanese is a case in point. On the one hand he whipped up the nationalistic fervour among the students but on the other he sent his agents to talk peace with the Japanese (pg. 30). A similar ploy was employed when he was dealing with the Americans. At that stage though he was deep in the war with the Japanese, when it suited him, he would intentionally give the Americans the impression that he might seek a separate peace with the Japanese (pg. 303) just so that he could continue to blackmail the Americans.

However, the most chilling instance of betrayal of all was how Stalin might have dealt with China. It is not generally known, but it was said in the book (pg 261) that Stalin contemplated a deal with Japan in which they would split China into two, much like how he and Hitler split Poland. This is not something beyond Stalin, and if it happened, the history of China and indeed, the Second World War would be different. In the end, the only ones that seem to be straight-dealing are the Germans. (There is a story about the Oskar Trautmann, ambassador of Germany to China that bears reading, pg. 170).

Having been brought up on a diet of Western scholastic journals, I was rather amused by the style of Prof Tong. The Chinese language, like English, has been increasingly 'simplified' to make it 'user-friendly'. Prof Tong however, continued to write in a more traditional way and while sacrificing
'user-friendliness', he has shown me how the Chinese language, when used correctly, can be  economical but elegant. Yet at the same time, he used words that one would never see in Western scholastic work, such as the Chinese version of 'bullshit' (pg. 257).

Prof Tong gave a balanced in writing this book, being a scholar who must have intimate contact with colleagues from China, Taiwan and Japan, he has honed the skills required to carefully present his case while avoiding unnecessarily upsetting anyone. Despite that, when he thinks that his case is strong, he would not hesitate to say it for what it is. As an example, he was not afraid to give an unflattering description of the KMT soldiers (pg.13) or to smash the common CCP narrative of how much they contributed in resisting the Japanese (pg. 270). Yet at the same time, where credit is due, he would not be stingy about it (pg. 174). Similarly, while he obviously had great respect for the Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang (whom he had a chance to interview), he was quite ready to say that Zhang was naive (pg. 183) and even rash (pg. 353) in .

The author was obviously learned, just a clarification on whether the Marco Polo Bridge was supposed to be 《卢沟桥》 or 《芦沟桥》could be the subject of a paper that quoted very good examples. His own experience as a teenager in the war, his relations to people who were important players in those days, and his work as an oral historian all contributed to his huge base of knowledge. Add to this his very interesting and engaging style, I find his books well-worth reading and cannot wait to start on his other books in my collection.

"The reporter knows nothing but probes persistently hoping to hit the sweet spot which will induce the interviewee to start talking. The researcher, on the other hand, starts with a hunch. He probes in the hope of hitting the sweet spot which will cause the interviewee to bottle up, and that's it, the hunch is confirmed."
- Prof Tong on the difference between a reporter and a researcher (pg. 105)

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Guns of February (Henry Frei)

The Malayan Campaign involved three major parties: the allied forces, the Japanese army, and the civilians caught in the crossfire. The story from the allied perspective have been told in numerous books, spanning the view at the strategic level (Kirby, 1980; Allen, 1977) right down to the tales of the ordinary soldiers fighting the Japanese on land (Chapman, 1949) and in the air (Cull & Sortehaug, 2003). Similarly, the civilian side of the story has been richly documented, if not in English, then translated (Shinozaki, 1992; Chew & Lim, 1992). The story of the Japanese, on the other hand, tends to be less heard of. Besides one important albeit self-serving account that was written by the Chief Planner of the campaign, Col. Tsuji Masanobu (1988) that has been translated, little else has emerged.

Conspicuously missing is an account from the ordinary Japanese soldier. It appears that the dearth is not just a result of the lack of translation, but the Japanese soldiers seems rather reticent about their experience in the Malayan Campaign compared to their western counterparts. This book, Guns of February: Ordinary Japanese Soldiers' Views of the Malayan Campaign & the Fall of Singapore 1941-42 is an attempt to fill this gap. Collated from diaries of those who were there, archival materials, and also interviews, this book presents a picture of the Japanese that is generally unknown.

The Japanese war machine at its peak between the end of 1941 and the middle of 1942 appeared almost invincible with soldiers like mechanical and robotic cogs acting mindlessly in unison in the big machinery. Perhaps not known to us are that many of these soldiers are individuals who like soldiers in all other conscripted armies are prone to attitudes ranging from fanaticism, to obedience, to indifference. And then there are also those who bully others, malinger, and others who just think that the whole enterprise was stupid.

The characters covered in this book range from junior officers (Onichi) to NCOs (Tsuchikane) right down to the private soldier (Miyake), each unsurprisingly, displaying an amount of fervour commensurating with their ranks. But wherever they were in the hierarchy, it was difficult for them to kill unarmed people at the first. Along the way however, they learned to justify their acts, for how does one know whether those running away in the dark were combatants or civilians? Yet when it came to Sook Ching there was universal agreement that it was on the insistence of Masanobu that it was carried out. This stain would forever stay with the Japanese army, and would not be erased by their victory over the British against huge odds. What is creditable is that they all admitted that the event took place, and even having taken part in it.

The late Prof Henry Frei was an academic and this book can be taken as a scholarly work but written in the style of a novel. It is short, easy to read and importantly, it succeeds in putting a face to the Japanese soldier, whether they are judged man or beast, machines they are not. They also experience the camaraderie that exists between men in war and this came out strongly in the final scene of the battle for a certain Hospital Hill (which I suspect is Alexandra Hospital where a massacre would take place after it was overrun). I shall not spoil it for readers who are interested in picking up the book.

The Japanese side of the story is probably written quite extensively but in Japanese. Historians and enthusiasts alike who cannot read Japanese miss out on an important dimension of this history. It is my wish that more of such works would appear and we will all benefit from a more holistic understanding of the war.

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百年家族-张学良 （李翠莲）

This is yet another book on the Young Marshal, Zhang Xueliang, this time written by a Chinese scholar (as compared to Taiwanese). Although most of the book is on the Young Marshal, the first quarter of it is on his father, Zhang Zhuolin. The inclusion of the elder Zhang is useful, for it gives the reader the background of the Young Marshals' life, his upbringing and in particular how his father has influenced the direction of his life.

Any book on Zhang Xueliang would not miss the Xi'an Incident, and to a lesser extent, the Manchurian Incident, this book is no exception. However, the author took a broader view of Zhang's life and so did not give a disproporationate amount of attention to just these two incidents. Instead, she focused on the various important events that took place throughout his life, including his more than half century of internment and more importantly, the different people that are important in his life: his father, his first wife Yu Fengzhi, his second wife Edith Zhao, his siblings and most all, Chiang.

Although there was no chapter dedicated to Chiang, he was mentioned throughout the book and invariably in a bad light. All decisions made cast him as a devious, selfish and crafty leader, unworthy of a loyal and somewhat naive Zhang. As a book published in China shortly after the Cultural Revolution, it is not surprising that the author took on such a position and tone. Unfortunately this makes the book come across as biased and may lead the reader to devalue it as a resource. Zhang made several decisions that could be interpreted in different ways, and he was vague about them in later life in various interviews. But while the author made him look patriotic and compassionate throughout, sometimes even naive against the indespicable Chiang, one must remember that Zhang is not incapable of duplicity. For example, how does one interpret his back-channel and eventually direct communications with the Communist while serving as the deputy to Chiang who had overall command of the KMT army? How does one look at Zhang's hedging of bets during the Central Plains War (中原大战) as he twiddled his thumbs and decalred that he would support Chiang if Chiang could take Jinan (济南) (pg 185)?

Having said that, this book is actually packed with good facts and information, especially with regards to the dates and events. This shows good research which unfortunately is weakened by an overly anti-Chiang interpretation on the author's part.

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