Old Shanghai - Gangsters In Paradise (Lynn Pan)

Shanghai at the beginning of last century was a city bubbling with energy and exuberance. It was a strangely workable cohabitation of British and French 'leased territories' and sovereign Chinese territory governed by an assortment of Chinese authorities. Authorities was usually not an elected or appointed one, it might be an authority that came as a result of military (or militia) prowess, but it was more likely that authority stemmed out of the control of the underworld. This book traces the lives of the interesting and important characters of the times to give the reader a full impression of the colourful city that was Shanghai.

Shanghai, like the rest of China, was in a tumultuous time in the first half of the century. Much wealth was in display co-existing with much poverty and deprivation. It was in the middle of the power struggles immediately after the fall of the Ching Dynasty with Sun Yat Sen's Kuomintang struggling to unite even the south of the country. After him, Chiang came to power and together with Big Ears Du, eradicated the Communists in what is known as the White Scare. And then the Japanese came and enticed Wang Jinwei to split with Chiang. All these are vividly captured in this book with much nuance and colour. This is a book detailing the power-plays, corruption, and ruthlessness of all involved. It brought to live different characters and how their lives were intertwined as each struggled for a piece of the city.

When I was reading the book, I wondered where to place it. It is not fiction per se, not historical fiction, yet not quite scholastic history. The author did not claim that it is a scholastic work; she provided no footnotes nor references. Yet I did not detect any fabrication anywhere (although I must admit that I am not an expert in the field), the people were real, their relationships true, and the events did take place. It therefore plays a role in informing readers of the history of Shanghai without being heavy. Also lending credibility to the book is the author's background. Not only was she born and grew up in Shanghai, she has enough academic and professional credentials to give one confidence in the thoroughness and honesty in her work.

This interesting book probably hard to find now which is unfortunate. People who are interested in knowing pre-Second World War Shanghai can find many useful materials in Chinese. Much less is available in English. This is therefore one of those rare books that fills the gap. Adding to that a higher readable style, readers will surely find this book one not to be missed.


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The Plague of War (Jennifer T. Roberts)

The subtitle of this book "Athens, Sparta, and the Struggle for Ancient Greece" gives one the impression that this book is another rehash of Thucydides' "The Peloponnesian War". This book is more than that, it doesn't just focus on the history, grand strategy or the tactics of the War, it also dedicates quite a bit of space to the social situation in the warring states, placing most emphasis on Athens. In other words, the author tried to tell a more complete story of the War and its consequences thereby supporting her thesis that in war, nobody wins.

I am always partial to books that try to present a complete picture of the history they are written for. In achieving this, I am not averse to the idea of authors including information from non-scholastic sources, even fiction, as long as the authors clarify them as such. To her credit Dr Roberts did exactly that, including materials from plays of Aristophanes, works of Plato and most gratifying for me, quoting lavishly from Xenophon, who is always considered an inferior writer compared to his contemporaries (particularly Plato).

However, this book somehow didn't work for me. The pattern adopted by the author is quite similar for all chapters. She would start with the War itself, spending much time on the strategies, tactics and the outcome. She would then close out the chapters by trying to help the readers to understand the socio-politico situations, quoting from the works referred to above. Unfortunately, in doing so, the momentum is inevitably broken. The Peloponnesian War is a long one and it should come as no surprise that all decisions and communication would be slow. But the action was constant throughout the 27 years and in between the actual fighting, we had the intrigue of one power trying to maneuver the smaller players to their advantage. The introduction of the socio-politico situations from the different sources not only disrupts the flow, they ended up becoming a distraction to the main story. Take for example, in one of the last chapters, the author dedicated much of the chapter to talking about education in Greece. Not only does this topic not fit nicely within the chapter, it is hard to understand how it enhances the book. An earlier work by the author's PhD supervisor, Prof Donald Kagan, known simply as The Peloponnesian War offers a much tighter narrative.

What I like about this book though, is the fairness with which the author treats both Athens and Sparta. Unlike the book cited above by Prof Kagan who clearly is partial to Athens, Dr Roberts is a more balanced in her approach. Athens was not without blame in perpetuating atrocities and Sparta was not always invulnerable on land. Similarly, in victory Sparta made some of the worst policies in governing whereas Athens appears to be a more robust society that can bounce back even in defeat.

Overall, I think this book is not a bad read. It is well-researched and has gone further chronologically than what Thucydides wrote in his book, extending the story using Xenophon's Hellenica and various other sources, telling the story of Sparta's eventual ruin. If you are only interested in the Peloponnesian War though, then you may find this book somewhat draggy and Prof Kagan's book would be better suited.

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Listen to the podcast where the author discussed the book.

Reference
Kagan, D. (2004). The Peloponnesian War. Penguin Books, NY.

A Gentleman's Word (Nilanjana Sengupta)

This book, written by an admirer of Subhas Chandra Bose, attempts to draw a link between what the man did before his untimely death and what eventually happened in Southeast Asia.

Bose was a nationalist who fought the British to gain independence for India. Based on strong nationalism and progressive outlook described in this book, it is not hard to understand why he is so respected and loved by Indians to this day. But the controversy that would always stay with him is his relationship with the Axis powers and in particular, his collaboration with the Japanese in the Second World War. In the end the Axis lost, and it became hard to place this man.

The author probably knew the challenge she faced. On one hand she obviously, like many other Indians, have tremendous admiration for Bose and would love to write glowingly about him. But on the other hand she has to square the fact that he was indeed on the side of the Axis. The atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese during the war are well documented and Bose risked being guilty by association. The author tried feebly and unconvincingly to tell her readers that Bose was not like Japanese, in fact, he was sympathetic to the fate of the China (pg. 70, 131). All to no avail. Bose himself was clear as to who his enemies were - the British, and anyone against the British was his friend (pg. 131). In addition, Bose was invited to attend the Greater East Asian Conference, as were other nationalists who sought support front he Japanese, including Wang Jingwei (汪精卫), considered by the Chinese as a traitor. Redeeming Bose in the eyes of those against he Japanese would not be easy.

It might have been better for the author to dispense with this effort altogether and portray Bose for who he was - a nationalist whose preoccupation was to free India from Great Britain, gain independence for India and let the people determine their own fate, a very noble cause. While it may be hard to conceive now, what was happening then in China was not India’s or Bose's problem. His priority was his country and people. That, at least to me, is a very acceptable position. To try to forcibly put him in a different light was vain and in the end, unsuccessful.

What about his legacy in Southeast Asia? The author made a somewhat tenuous link between Bose and what happened in Southeast Asia after the war, namely, the rise of nationalism, the increase in activism, and the fight for independence from their colonisers. To what extent one can attribute this to Bose is arguable. Many surely looked up to him, but his role in sparking or sustaining their fight is hard to gauge. In fact, Indians' political roles in the countries of Southeast Asia would be small, perhaps with the exception of Singapore.

There is one other aspect of his legacy that the author did not explore - the race relations in Southeast Asia after the war. Unfortunately Bose died an untimely death and we can only guess the impact he had made. Much was made of Bose's speech at Cathay and Padang in Singapore in 1943. His appearance in Padang was accompanied by a review of the INA. With Sook Ching barely a year prior to it, I cannot help wondering how the Chinese perceive such a parade of Indian forces under the auspice of the Japanese, especially when many amongst the INA were originally with the British Indian Army.

Subhas Chandra Bose led a colourful albeit short life. He lived for a cause which gave him the opportunity to meet many important people and to travel to many places. He was revered by the Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia and it is here that the book is situated. I have argued that the author's depiction of Bose is incomplete yet she wrote an engaging and interesting book. It was an honest effort and much credit must go to the hard-work that she put into the research. This is only the first book on Bose that I have read but it has already piqued my interest in the man and I will certainly try to learn more about him. This book is recommended for those who are interested to learn about Bose’s days in Southeast Asia.

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Operation Chowhound (Stephen Dando-Collins)

In early 1945, occupied Holland was in a bad shape. The occupiers stopped providing food for the civilians in the occupied territories and cut off electricity to them as well. The people were pretty much left on their own. Many of the most vulnerable, the old and the very young, would die of starvation. Prince Bernhard, the consort of Princess Juliana desperately lobbied the Allies to do something about it. Three important generals, Eisenhower, Bedell Smith, and Geddes would eventually be responsible for launching Operation Chowhound, perhaps the first humanitarian airlift to provide relief for the suffering Dutch civilians. This book is about this operation carried out by the American 8th Air Force. (The British had started the operation a few days earlier under Operation Manna.)

This operation is full of risks. The war was not over, there was no reason to believe that the Germans would not fire on the bombers carrying food in their bomb bays instead of food. Since they had to fly as long as 500 feet, if the Germans decided to shoot, the bombers were almost sitting ducks. But an agreement was hastily agreed with the Reichskommissar of Holland, Arthur Seyss-Inquart and a group of German officers. An air corridor would be open through which the bombers would fly to the designated drop zones. The operation lasted two weeks through Germany's surrender and is a success, probably saving the lives of many Dutch civilians then almost on the edge.

This book is a short one at 220 pages written in a fairly readable style. For a book of this size, the reader cannot expect a deep coverage on any issue and can only treat it as an introduction to the operation. This operation is definitely complex but little was said about the planning. Even less was said about what was happening on the German side. It was quite incredulous for me to imagine that the Germans would appear suddenly (pg. 114) to even consider allow the Allies to carry out such an operation when they were under instructions to blow the dykes in Holland to destroy the country. Clearly the author did not research enough into the other side. Yet precious chapters were spent on the exploits of Major Ken Cottam and Captain Farley Mowat that though were in the same theatre had no relation to the operation. The author purposely kept that thread alive and appear to forget about it in the second half of the book.

Given the little that was written about this important operation, this book is an important addition to the literature. It is not a defining book though. Too little detail was provided to any aspect of the operation and some of the distractions like Farley Mowat and Ian Flemming were just unnecessary. Read this book to learn about the operation, but go somewhere else if you want to have a better discussion on the operation.


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张学良口述历史 (唐德刚)

This book carries great promise, if not responsibilities. Alas, it did not deliver on either. It was not that the author did a bad job, it was a project that failed because the object of the book, Young Marshal Zhang Xueliang (张学良) did not understand the nature of oral history and was therefore uncooperative. In the end, the author published the verbatim interview scripts, responsibly allowing future scholars access to the raw data for their own analysis and hopefully be able to come to an informed conclusion about Zhang, his life and times.

Zhang was an important person. His life was a colourful one, not only was he intimately involved in the many important events in the modern history of China (for example the Manchurian Incident), he was the co-mastermind of the Xi'an Incident (the other was Yang Hucheng 杨虎城). Much controversy still surrounds the event, with China (mainland) and Taiwan having different narratives about the incident and interpretations of the man's motivation and therefore his attitudes.What better way then to hear from the man himself?

It was with this expectation that I started the book. But what I read in the preface dampened my enthusiasm considerably. This book that was supposed to answer questions would not. If you watch the video of the interview, you would understand why. Zhang, in his old age, was no unlike many others; he has the tendency to boast about his achievements and his extra-marital affairs, he suffers from lapses in memory, and at times kept repeating the same thing over and over again. What I find most amusing are the occasions when he would say "I can't tell you who this person is", and almost as sure as the sun will rise, he would follow his next sentence with the name of the person whom he could not tell.

Yet despite its failure to live up to its expectations, the book is not without value. He did help to clarify a few things if only through one's own analysis. For example, when he told the author that there were people who asked him why he bothered to come to Wang's help after a failed attempt at Wang's life (pg. 236), the reader could immediately tell that many preferred Wang dead. He was also the best person to give insights into the workings of the Northeastern Army (奉军) and also some of the personalities (pg. 362). But personally, I think the most valuable part of the book is the epilogue provided by the author. This is a good piece of analytical work that is persuasively argued and engagingly written. This book would have been worth the read just for that part.

Like the author, my impression of the Young Marshal was deeply discounted after reading the book and watching the video mentioned above. He had a colourful life that is only available to people who were born in his times. He was involved in some of the most defining events of modern Chinese history. Yet as an old man, he was like many others, and his failure to maintain respectability during these interviews washes off the mystic that has accompanied him throughout his life, even and especially in detention. Perhaps like what the author said, if not for the  Xi'an Incident, Zhang Xueliang is nothing.

PS. The book came with a few pictures of Zhang and also his calligraphy. I wonder why he wrote his own name in simplified Chinese. I cannot explain that.

The Forgotten Highlander (Alistair Urquhart)

This is the first time I read a first-hand account of a POW involved in the Malayan Campaign. I am greatly affected by it, despite being brought up on a diet of Japanese atrocities in Asia in World War 2. Much is said about the killing, maiming, raping and torture, but a reader is usually left to imagine the magnitude of these atrocities through the statistics; this book describes in graphic details the actual behaviours of the Japanese and their equally brutal Korean subjects and the horrible conditions the POWs were subjected to.

The author escaped the fighting in Malaya and Singapore as he was assigned to administrative work in the Battle Box in Fort Canning but was taken prisoner after the surrender and hence went on to suffer more than three years in various ordeals including building the notorious Death Railway in Thailand and Burma, being torpedoed in 'hellships' and then almost being close enough when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. He survived to tell the story and the story was all the more stirring precisely because it was not told with heroics in mind. He told an honest story of how he survived and how he tried to go on, he also told a story of how he eventually became almost immune to the death and suffering that was happening around him. But while this book can be read as a superficial description of one man's experience, there are hints of bigger issues that worth exploring. One of these is the author's attitudes towards the Japanese.

It is no surprise that the author loathed his enemies, especially the camp guards who tortured them no end, yet there was one interesting episode that he mentioned briefly near the end of the book that could have given the readers much to think about - he and Dr Mathieson attended to a sick Japanese girl towards whom he felt no animosity. How does a POW, having gone through such systematic inhumane treatment, feel towards another of 'the other'? This complex attitude of the POWs, even if just that of the author, would have added much to the richness of the book.

Another one is the Koreans who were conscripted to serve in South-East Asia. The Koreans today generally still harbour great dislike of the Japanese owing to the bad legacy Japan left as their colonial master. Yet, in the treatment of the POWs and the populace of South-East Asia, Koreans are known to be no less harsh than the Japanese. In fact, the author even alluded to the Japanese being more measured when it came to beating the POWs (pg. 219). The Koreans today paint themselves as the victims of the Japanese imperialism and in the current K-pop wave, most Asians other than the Japanese, are eager to agree. But were they? This is one subject that is worth exploring (together with the attitudes of the Taiwanese who were also conscripted and served in South-East Asia).

The final one is the parallel that I could not help drawing between the author's experience in signing the agreement with the Japanese in the Selarang Incident and with the British government when he returned to Britain. He described himself signing a name that would not identify him, only in this case if he were to be like his comrades who signed 'Mickey Mouse' in Selarang, he would surely blow his own cover. That bitterness in how he was treated upon his return would stay with him. This is not the first time I came across this theme, it was how General Percival was treated upon his release.

This book resonates a lot with me, mainly because it describes the experience of a soldier who was in Singapore in the days before I was born. His description of the sights and sounds of Singapore then gives me much to imagine. The bumpy road he rode along from 'Singapore' (known as 'town' today) to Changi has long since been replaced by an expressway (our term for 'highway') but it was still there when I was young, so is Selarang camp, which I drive past on occasions just to see the white buildings since its so near home. Now I know it was once home to the Gordon Highlanders as well.


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Singapore And After: a study of the Pacific Campaign (Joseph Montague Kenworthy and Lord Strabolgi)

This book was published in 1942, immediately after South-East Asia fell to the Japanese and when India and Australia were threatened. What it means is that much was still not known when it was written. Not only was the final outcome of the Second World War a few years away, most of the documents related to the Campaign were still not released. The reader therefore cannot expect a book that is filled with facts substantiated with data nor one that critically analyses the Campaign. The author did not claim this book to be one, and from the length as well as the tone of the book, I get the impression that this book was written to inform the people in the United Kingdom of what had just happened to the colonies in the Far East, not just Malaya and Singapore, for the book includes a survey of Burma, the Philippines and the Dutch Indies.

This book was written in a hurry because on my copy, inside the front cover, an earlier owner had dedicated the book to her son/daughter with the date 2nd April 1942 written on it. The rush to get the book published resulted in inaccuracies in many places. Some of these are error of facts, for example the number of artillery batteries in Singapore (definitely more than two) (pg. 88) and Chiang Tso-lin dying in 1918 (it was in 1928). There are others relating to names of places; many of these I reserve my judgement because they could be spelt differently from how they are now due to the Romanization of the names for example Tjilatjap instead of Chilachap as spelt today. But there is one I find unacceptable - Tengate (Tengah) Aerodrome in Singapore (pg. 93). It took me a while to conclude that he was referring to Tengah.

Other faults include the rather random pictures that appear in random places throughout the book, for instance, why would a picture of Georgetown, Penang appear in the chapter on the Philippines and a Japanese submarine in the middle of the Appendix? Even more perplexing is Appendix I - A short chronology of Chinese History. Yet there is something that I must commend about the editing - mis-spelt names of places may be a result of ignorance of the Far East (it was 1942 after all), but beyond these, I did not come across any other editorial mistakes such as a spelling error. Why do I think this is amazing? Some of the printing is of such quality that reminds me of a facsimile typed on an old typewriter that did not have a clean set of strike bars. That reminded me that those were the days without spell-checkers. In 1942 under such dire conditions, someone (not the author, I think) has done a really good job.

The author's position was quite consistent in this book: no matter which theatre he was referring to, he would lament the lack of conscription in the years before the war to prepare the locals to fight the enemies. He did not blame the lack of foresight, he felt it was a misguided policy that deliberately excluded the locals. Another area where he was consistent was in his scathing attack of the British politicians' handling of the war and conversely his praise of both the Dutch and the Americans.

If the book suffers from the faults mentioned above, there are a few things that make me think well of the author. First of all, some of his reading of the Japanese's intentions were quite accurate. His conclusion that the Japanese did not intervene in Russia despite Operation Barbarossa was due to their experience in Nomonhan (which he got the year wrong, it was 1939, not 1938) bore out in a well-argued book on the subject written decades later. Secondly, I like his sense of optimism and courage that never falter throughout the book. Remember, this author was not talking with hindsight, he wrote the book immediately after the Far East fell like dominoes, yet he totally believed that Japan would lose. He wrongly predicted  that the loss would result from a combination of the pincer on the Japanese coming from Australia in the south and China in the north but he never wavered in his belief that Japan would lose. He was a courageous man, I have never come across another soul who would take Churchill's famous exhortation of his countrymen to fight the enemies 'in the streets, on the beaches and in the hills' to be a reflection of defeatism. He asked instead why they should not fight in the enemy's streets, beaches and hills.

I am going to keep this book. Not because it is a resource that I think I would return to but for the historic value of the copy I own and as a source of optimism and courage whenever I need them. We don't just read for knowledge do we?


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Did Singapore Have to Fall?: Churchill and the Impregnable Fortress (Karl Hack and Kevin Blackburn)

How does one answer the question - Did Singapore have to fall? Was the final outcome a result of a breakdown in discipline in the Commonwealth troops in the final days of the campaign? Was it because of poorer generalship? Was it because geopolitical events overtook the original considerations despite there being political will? Or was materiel committed yet wrongly deployed? Or perhaps Singapore was doomed from the start, going back to when it was wrongly conceived as a naval base and then wrongly perceived as an impregnable fortress? This book written by a pair of academics then teaching in the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore looks at the outcome from these angles and came up with a highly readable and persuasively argued book that took recently-available documents and literature into consideration.

The book spends a chapter looking at each of the questions asked above but in the reversed order. That the world was hit hard by the Great Depression in the 1920s was well-known. That delayed the construction and eventually down-sized the Singapore naval base. It also paved the way for the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Some have argued that Britain's financial situation and ratification of the treaty prevented her from building a large enough navy to counter the Japanese when it mattered and so one can say that Malaya was doomed from that moment. The authors studied this in depth and concluded that this might not be so. In addition they also addressed other issues such as the diversion of a few hundred fighter planes from the thousands going to Russia to Malaya and the commitment of tanks to the defence of Malaya and Singapore. In each case, they concluded that not only was it hard for Whitehall to justify their moving materiel to Malaya, particularly when the Russians were fighting and losing in Europe, the earlier neglect of Malaya would make these too little too late.

Much was also made of Operation Matador, the plan to move troops into Songkhla and Pattani in Thailand to counter a Japanese landing. Whether it would have made a difference, we would not know but Map 4.1 on page 59 of the book shows the options that the Japanese had which would have rendered Matador ineffective even if it had been put into action. If all these were not able to make a crucial difference, it would be down to the defence preparations, the handling of the campaign and the quality of the troops to win the battle.

Even when I was in school, we were told that the guns that were deployed along the southern coast of Singapore were 'pointing the wrong way', implying first of all that the British were not expecting the Japanese to invade from the north, and that the guns were not able to traverse. This, through meticulous research, the authors were able to debunk (right down to the number of degrees the guns were able to traverse and which ones actually fired at the enemy). I wonder how this 'pointing the wrong way' myth can still stand after this book. Unfortunately these guns were actually built for the purpose of coastal defence and were given the wrong type of rounds (armour piercing rather than high explosives). Their contributions were therefore limited.

If the static defences were ineffective, it would be down to the troops to win the war. Alas, it is known that many of the troops were not properly trained nor equipped. Yet there exist plenty of examples of those who performed admirably well. Still that was not enough to make the fortress, if Singapore ever was one, impregnable. However, as a Singaporean reader, my sympathy is with the soldiers who fought, suffered and even died, whatever the objective judgement of them. Even if there exist plenty of evidence of untrained, indiscipline and incompetent soldiers, they died trying to defend this island. Those who did not would suffer years in the POW camps or worse, building the Death Railway.

I live very near Changi, no more than 3 miles away from the Johor Battery and the Changi and Selarang POW camps featured prominently in this book. Most of all, my son is now doing his national service in Changi Airbase, right where much happened. The Singapore Armed Forces has helped to preserve much of 'old' Singapore and I can still ask him about the places in his camp that were referred to in the book. This makes the experience of reading this book a lot more real. Plenty of Australians still visit the Changi Museum and the surroundings when they are in Singapore, I believe many of them have relatives who served in Singapore during the campaign. I cannot bring myself to criticise the men whatever other sources claim, I do not claim to be objective.

This book is well worth reading, particularly for those who are interested in understanding the campaign and the issues related to it more broadly. It is well-researched, logically argued, and clearly presented. This book does not focus on the tactical aspects of the campaign, for that, readers can refer to Colin Smith's Singapore Burning or Masanobu Tsuji's Japan's Greatest Victory/Britain's Greatest Defeat, books that are no less enjoyable.


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李宗仁回忆录（上） / （李宗仁/唐德刚）

Li Zongren (李宗仁) is an important person in the history of modern China. A member of the Kuomintang (KMT) government, he rose to the position of Vice-President of Taiwan, next only to Chiang Kai-shek. What made him even more interesting was his eventual return to mainland China in 1965 breaking ties with the KMT.

This is the first of his two-volume autobiography and covered events all the way from his childhood years (which he considerately limited to the first two chapters) to the end of the Northern Expedition, rounding off with a brief mention of his role in Zhang Xueliang's (张学良) submission to the central government in what is known as the 'Northeast changing of flags' (东北易帜).

This book is invaluable for the details that he provided about the various important events that he was involved in such as the unification of Guangxi and Guangdong and the string of battles in the Northern Expedition. I regret not having anticipate this level of details otherwise I would have brought a map with me to follow the advances.I would also prepare myself to take notes for future reference. Beyond the historical facts that he wrote about, the book was also decorated with plenty of insider information and his opinion of the people that are known to us. The most scathing of his criticism was reserved for Chiang who came across as petty, suspicious, and devious, but highly savvy politically. There are other events which I hope he had given more coverage, for example the Shanghai Massacre in which many Communists were tortured and murdered in the name of cleaning up the Kuomintang and 东北易帜 mentioned above. Li being one of the insiders would have been able to throw much light on these events instead of the superficial treatment which he gave to them.

The reader would not fail to notice and surely lament on the condition that China was in at that time. Warlords, big and small, ran amok throughout the land. Some provided some semblance of governance, others were just exploiting the common men for what they were worth, every one of had to maintain a huge army, all of them hoping to exploit the weaknesses of the other to consolidate and expand their territories. The various regional armies were constantly going through 新编 (formation or constitution), 收编 (absorption by another army), or 重编 (re-consitution); that tells the reader how volatile and unreliable the warlord governments were. And almost exactly like how it was like in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, alliances of convenience were easily formed and just as easily betrayed. Former enemies could one day sit down and reminiscent about the 'good old times' when they fought battles on opposite sides while seemingly paying no attention to the thousands who had died in those years, Han Chinese against Han Chinese. It is no wonder modern Chinese governments are most paranoid about not letting China descend into factions again. One wonder how the Sino-Japanese War would pan out had it not been for the wasteful civil wars fought in the decades prior to 1937.

The writing style is not easy for the modern reader. Although the style is not classified as traditional Chinese (文原文), it is by no means the modern Chinese that is used today. This makes reading difficult at first until I started getting used to it, and in fact started to appreciate the beauty of it.Readers must also be ready for the image that Li has portrayed himself in this book. He has made himself looked like an idealistic follower of Sun Yat San's revolution and had no interest in politics and power. Too many times, he also gave himself the roles of the wise seer who was able to counselled the right moves at critical junctures. Although I do not know enough to dispute these, I find too many of such incidents mentioned to make this book somewhat self-serving. But if you look beyond these, this hugely rewarding book is a must-read for all students of the modern history of China.

The Garden of Evening Mists (Tan Twan Eng)

This is an award winning book which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2013. Written by Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng, the story is set in the Cameroon Highlands in Malaysia and is about the main protagonist, Teoh Yun Ling's effort to discover the truth behind the people she met and her own experience as a prisoner in a Japanese camp during the Second World War.

Many good reviews are available on Goodreads and I encourage you to read those. I intend to write my own reflection after reading the book, not a review.

The last time I went to the Cameroon Highlands must have been 40 years ago, I haven't been back since. But reading this book certainly brings back a lot of memories and for once, I was able to visualise the place described by the author, fictitious maybe, but real enough for me. I must confess that I am not an avid reader of local Singaporean literature and this is the first time I venture into Malaysian literature. The experience of trying to imagine the place as described is an interesting one, familiar, yet not being able to call my own. It is not only the places, the language also has that same effect on me. The author made liberal use of Bahasa Malaysia, a language which I cannot claim to be fluent at but still knowing enough to make out what was being said. Others, like Cold Storage is also comfortingly familiar though could pose a problem to readers unfamiliar with the supermarket chain that has been around for more than a hundred years.

I came to know of this book after sitting through two back-to-back paper presentations in a conference that focused on this book. I read it because one of them referred to this book as 'fiction augmenting history', in particular WW2 history. A huge part of the book focuses on the time a few years after the war, when Yun Ling took up an apprenticeship with Aritomo. This was augmented with significant parts of contemporary times, and completing it were small sections on Yun Ling's experience in the internment camp. Among the few thread that ran through the book, the evolution of Yun Ling's attitude towards her captors struck me most. How she must have first hated the Japanese because of their treatment of her and her sister, to slowly embracing the culture (gardening and archery amongst them) and finally as she reached her own retirement age, being more interested in finding the truth than settling scores.

This is how people in Southeast Asia have changed over the 7 decades after the war, except that, most of us have moved on to another phase - consigning the whole national experience to history whether we know the truth or not. Just like the two goddesses mentioned in the book, Mnemosyne, the goddess of Memory and her twin sister, the goddess of Forgetting, whose name we cannot remember anymore, some things we choose to remember, others we choose to forget.

Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919–1941 (Michael A. Barnhart)

This is a book that explores why Japan went to war in China in the 1930s and got herself entangled in a war with the British, Dutch, and most of all, the Americans, guaranteeing their own eventual destruction. The story takes the reader back to the end of the First World War when the the military learned two lessons from Germany's defeat:

1. The army should avoid politics so that politics would not interfere with the army.
2. Japan needs to find a way to keep herself economically self-sufficient or risk an inevitably decline given the rapid grow in her population.

Ironically, the former, instead of keeping politics out of the army, the army came to dominate politics so much so that the political system in Japan almost ceased to exist by the late 1930s. And in the case of the latter, the quest to avoid decline would eventually lead to her near-annihilation.

Japan's story in the 1920s and 30s is quite an amazing one. Today, depending on how they see that period of their history, people are still arguing whether Japan waged a war or aggression or self-preservation. Japan was facing a population explosion at that time, they needed land to emigrate their people to and they needed resources which Japan scarcely had. Couple this with her recent victory over both China (1894/5) and Russia (1905), not only did the opportunity presented itself in the shape of Manchuria, it also gave the army the confidence to pursue what they deemed the politicians were not capable of. When the early policies of bribery and working with the regional warlord (in this case Zhang Zhuolin) did not work out, the Japanese murdered him, driving his son to eventually align the Northeastern provinces with the central government of Chiang Kaishek. That developed into the Manchurian Incident giving the Japanese the opportunity to occupy the provinces which later unexpectedly led to the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. One thing led to another, and in no time the Americans were openly showing displeasure with the Japanese.

This book looks at the events from both the Japanese and American perspectives. It was like a movie jumping from scene to scene, alternating between what the Japanese were contemplating and how the Americans were responding. If one wants to know how politicians in the US engage in discussions, arguments and decision-making, this book has it all. Many people are familiar with the doctrine of "graduated escalation" McNamara introduced in the lead up to the Vietnam War. It is not that different in the Second World War; the Americans would respond to a Japanese escalation, who in turn would take some measures in the belief that the Americans were go to suffocate them. The Americans, on seeing the Japanese not backing down, would consider them belligerent and take more severe measures, in the end, Pearl Habor was quite inevitable, and so would the Japanese's surrender.

This very detailed book is full of important information and would be of immense interest to the enthusiast who wants to know the longer story of Japan's step-by-step journey to war with the Americans. In a sense this is more complete than an earlier book that I read, Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy by Eri Hotta. However, this one is much harder to reader compared to Hotta's book which was written in a more story-telling style. Still, a reader who makes it through the book will be rewarded with a good understanding of the unfortunate circumstances that drew both the Japanese and Americans into the final showdown.


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Empires in the Balance (H.P. Willmott)

This is a book that tries to address the problem with the frequent singular emphasis on individual theatres in the Pacific War. The British perspective of the war at the end of 1941 in the Far East is invariably on the Malayan Campaign and the subsequent fall of Singapore. The American view starts with the attack on Pearl Habor and in terms of land campaign, is centred on the Philippines. There are two other theatres that are given less attention, the Burma Campaign and the war in the Dutch East Indies. To the author, these are not individual campaigns but are linked particularly in the eyes of the Japanese as one big operation. And in order to get a better idea of the tremendous success of the Japanese, one has to look at their multiple engagements together. With this book the author tries to give the reader a broader and more complete view of the war in the Far East once Japan unleashed its military might in the region.

In the early chapters the author explored the question of why Japan went to war in the Far East. Not much was spent on Japan's involvement in China and Manchuria despite these being the major factors which first induced Japan's imperialism and then necessitated her to move south to the South East Asia, and finally condemning her to a war with the United States of America which she had no hope of winning. The author's detailed investigation of the situations of the allies in detail (Great Britain, the US and the Dutch; the French having the dubious honour of being more of a collaborator of the Axis). I, being Singaporean, naturally paid most attention to the situation in Malaya and Singapore and here, the author gave a most damning appraisal of the British in the inter-war years. Not only was there much complacency, the reality of a cash-strapped Treasury ensured that the naval base would not be fully operational by the time the war started. And when the war did start, the constraints on all sides ensured that when the chiefs of staff realised the impossibility of sending the fleet to defend Malaya, "they turned to air power in order to economize on troops, and in the end they sent troops to economize on aircraft" (pg. 105). To the author, Singapore was lost before the war even started.

The Americans fared better in the Philippines, putting up a spirited fight that lasted months after Singapore was lost. The main criticism was on MacArthur who boasted much but did not have the results to show for it. The Dutch, with what was left of their home, were most under-manned but stout-hearted in the defence of what they had left. Throughout the book, the author, a British, reserved the most scathing criticism for the British; less for those who did the fighting but more for the decision makers in Whitehall and also Wavell. There were many occasions when I felt the author overdid the sarcasm (for example on pg. 221, 229, 322, 404) but he probably felt strongly enough about it.

That aside, the writing throughout the book is thoroughly enjoyable. This is not a short book, standing close to 500 pages, yet at no point was I bored. The battles were described with an equal dose of energy and frustration, the author's own analyses throughout the book were engaging and well considered. This is not a book that skims the surface and tries to pass off as a go-to book for the war in the Pacific; the details provided in the book at the various fronts attest to the breadth of knowledge the author possesses.

The title made it clear the book ends its coverage at April 1942, now generally regarded as the point beyond which the Japanese started tasting defeat. It was by no means clear then, and at the end of the book, the author tried to assess the various options open to both the Japanese and the Allies. This final chapter is well-worth reading, for the scenarios considered by the author might actually have happened. This book is highly recommended especially if one is looking for a book that gives a good survey of the months immediately after Japan made it 'southward advance'. It may just be the best book I read for the year.

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The Order of the Death's Head (Heinz Hohne / Richard Barry)

This monumental book on the SS is one I believe many will not want to miss. For the uninitiated like me who thinks that the SS is but a single organisation of uniform people, this book will almost confuse you with the divisions and sub-divisions within the collective SS outfit. Riding along the history of the SS is the inescapable history of the Third Reich, this book therefore does more than one job.

The Introduction to the book was written like a literature review in a thesis with a good survey of the then available literature. The research questions were given at the start:

1. What is this organisation and how do they go about the tasks that defined their existence? ("But the outer world was never allowed to know anything of what went on inside the SS...) (pg 2).


2. What turned the SS into this machinery that turned the ethnic cleansing doctrine into reality? ("...it did not explain the source of power which enabled the SS to turn the racial fantasies of the National-Socialist regime into dreadful fact.) (pg 4).

The author then spent the rest of the book trying to answer these two questions, which he did admirably. It is obvious that the author researched the materials very well and was meticulous about the smallest details. Unfortunately, I became quickly lost in the many names that appeared in the book, some making but a fleeting appearance. At first I tried to follow the names and developments as closely as possible, but found it tough-going and sometimes lost sight of the larger story. I then resorted to only paying attention to names associated with major events or incidents.

A book on the Third Reich will always evoke questions about how it came to be. How did a bunch of people who started off on the fringe, identified more with a group of hooligans than stately politicians came to gain total control over Germany and almost dominated Europe? The author did not explicitly answer these questions but gave clues for the readers to make their own conclusions. It was not that nobody was able to see the sinister side of the Hitler, but the law, which might have stopped him, failed to be exercised. The generals had their chances but would never take the fateful step when the time came (pg. 250) and eventually would have to relent to the Einsatzgruppen’s lawlessness, and then be themselves implicated after the war (pg. 298).

There are a few chapters that are particularly worth reading. Examples of these are the one on Heydrich (Chapter 8) and especially the one on the Final Solution (Chapter 14). The latter gives a raw depiction at the heart of the Nazi regime, one that is defined by violence. Many readers would have known about the camps and the number of people who died. But this chapter presents the torture in graphic details and most important of all, it tried to capture the warped and 'schizophrenic' nature of the SS. They are shown as 'ordinary' people who could go back to their families after killing hundreds in the camp - it's all in a day's work. What to me is the scariest is not that they didn't know what they did was morally wrong, not even that they tried to justify it based on their need to obey commands from the top, but their romance about the sacrifice they were making by doing something evil for the greater good, so that others would not have to do it. And I always believe that the interest in understanding the Nazis is precisely because we know that we might be like them.

More interestingly is how people deal with the issue of the SS after the war. The author hinted that the Germans were very quick to recognise the existence of the SS, not to glorify them, but rather to paint them in as bad a light as possible, thereby shifting their collective guilt to the SS, absolving themselves of blame (pg. 7).

What of the surviving members of the SS then? The reader is invited to find out for himself/herself in this book, one that is not easy to read, but is nevertheless an important source of almost all aspects of the SS.


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昭和史第二部（下）(半藤一利/林錚顗)

In this very last instalment of Showa Shi, the author focused on the 'after post-war' period of Japan. The forty years between 1950 and 1990 in Japan was characterised in different decades by different political climates, these are all narrated by the author from his personal perspective and experience.

1950s in Japan was constantly caught in political turmoil with different cabinets trying to achieve different ends. Add on to this, Japan, then under American occupation also had to have its political development swayed and sometimes imparted by the geopolitical developments, particularly the US's position in the Cold War vis-a-vis the USSR and China. As a result, the 'clean up' of militarism was incomplete and confusion in the interpretation of Article 9 in the new constitution became a permanent feature of Japan's politics. But once the people started getting tired of all the political upheavals and protests, they decided that they should "find a job" (示威结束，找份工作吧) (pg. 131). This is the author's very interesting way of describing how the Japanese decided that they should start to put emphasis on the economy, turning away from politics. The results are stupendous, at least until the bubble burst in 1990.

From this point, the author's description of the improvement in the standard of living among the Japanese takes an interesting turn. Instead of adopting an academic tone, he started to use many anecdotal examples to give readers an idea of the actual situation among ordinary Japanese. This included the amount of electrical equipment that a household owned (pg. 148), the popular movie (pg. 156), and my personal favourite, the popularity of Ultraman (pg. 185). As I have mentioned in an earlier review, this author did not claim to be an academic and so did not aspire to write a scholarly book. He was therefore not bound by the academic writing style to only cite other academic work. Besides using anecdotal examples, there were even occasions when he speculated outright (the section on the conversation between General MacArthur and the Emperor). The reader is cautioned about interpretation of events and facts.

Besides his obvious love and respect for Emperor Hirohito, the author was unbiased towards all other parties, be they right-wing or Communists, the US, Class A war criminals, or politicians from any party. He reserved his criticism only for the media industry, despite (or because) he himself having worked all his life as an journalist and editor. To him, the industry lacked spine and so was easily swayed, frequently changing their position, and always intimidated. This criticism is not uncommon, also described in another book, and depicted in a movie.

Of the four books in this series, I enjoyed the first one most. This is a personal preference because of my own area of interest. This fourth one is to me the least enjoyable, particularly in the middle when the author talked about the political in-fighting. It was not the writing, just personal interest (or lack of). But all things considered, this series is a very good one for those of us who want to understand the Showa period in Japan, that sixty fateful years.


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永远的零 (百田尚樹/王蘊潔)

I had earlier introduced readers to the movie based on this book. I finally got down to reading the Chinese translation of the book and it did not disappoint. Unsurprisingly, the book surpasses the movie in terms sensitivity and nuance. Readers, unlike movie audience, have the opportunity to pause and reflect. And reflect they must for not only is this book balanced and thought-provoking, it also challenges the common image of the Kamikaze pilots, one of youths brain-washed and while absolutely courageous, were never able to consider the futility of their mission.

The story is simple. A pair of siblings found out from their mother that she was the step daughter of their grandfather and the real grandfather died in the Second World War as a Kamikaze pilot. She wanted to learn more about him and asked her children to see if they could find any about him. They tried and in the process managed to interview a few of their grandfather's old comrades who encountered him at different theatres and had diverse views of him. While they all agreed that he was an exceptionally skillful pilot, they were less consistent when talking about his courage.

The story is written following a rough chronological order with the siblings coincidentally first meeting people who came across their grandfather in the early stage of the Pacific War and then progressively finding people who knew him in the later stage of the war. Parallel to this is the narrative which started with accusations of him being a coward ending up with him looking more like a good husband and father who refused to die, only because he wanted to go back to his family. Yet he volunteered himself as a Kamikaze pilot, a vocation without hope of survival, and died just days before Japan surrendered. Why did he do this? His reason would be used by the author to try and draw the readers into the wider motivations of the people who became Kamikaze pilots.

While it is easy for people to fall under the spell of some 'isms', the Kamikaze concept takes things into the extreme. You are given a mission that guarantees death with or without success. It is impossible for any sensible person to imagine agreeing to such a mission, yet they did, so for a long time after the war, when historians consider the state of mind of these pilots, they could only conclude that they have been brain-washed and therefore volunteered for such a fanatical vocation. This book did not try to dispute that, but takes the reader through the experience of those who volunteered and the mental and emotional struggle they had to go through especially if their names appeared on the charts in the morning.

Almost everyone in the book, whether relating their own experiences or the experiences of others said that they would not volunteer for such a stupid vocation. But in many instances, they had to make the choice openly at the parade square when everyone else was there. Few would dare to say no for fear of immediate reprisals. Intriguingly, many of those who were given the chance to indicate their choices in a close ballot said yes. There appears to be a climate of fear that nothing was secret, their superiors would know their choice and the reprisals would be unendurable. However, it is certain death we are talking about, what could be worse?

This is where we gain some insights into the psyche of the pilots - volunteering does not imply certain call-up. Volunteering puts you in the 'eligible' list, if you were lucky, you might not be called up. Not-volunteering volunteers you for certain transfer to the most hopeless theatres as an infantry soldier where conditions were the worst, which was equivalent to certain death plus a period of suffering before the end comes. And so they took their chances. Those who did not find their names in the list in the morning heaved a sigh of relief and lived for one more day. Those who did tried to psyche themselves up by convincing themselves that their sacrifice would not be in vain, mostly without success. The pilots interviewed talked about to the letters written by the pilots before their missions (now kept in the Chiran Peace Museum) which convey a sense of loss, helplessness, frustration, and love for their families. This helps to humanise the Kamikaze pilots who would then go on to the most inhuman missions. There is always a contradiction in considering the plight of these pilots. In this book they appeared to understand the hopelessness of their cause and the uselessness of their death, yet many would have been documented to fanatically throw their lives away for their emperor. How should one reconcile the two contradictory sides of the Kamikazes?

I always think that the Japanese culture is a very nuanced and multi-layered one. It is easy to misinterpret them (although sometimes I suspect misrepresenting them serves some political purpose) and so as a nation they look really unrepentant, with the constant visits to pay their respects to Class A war criminals in the Yasukune Shrine and their irresponsible textbooks. Perhaps in trying to read their history, one should suspend our judgement for a while and then try and see if there are more shades than we know before we pass an overly simplistic judgement. The author himself displays some of this nuance in this book. As a one being called a right-winger, I was surprised that in the book he wrote (through one of the characters) that "A country that sends good people to their death like this might as well be destroyed."

This book serves the reader at different levels. One can take it as a simple historical fiction book, or a book that induces some reflection and contemplation, or even a book on the Pacific War from the Japanese perspective. Personally, I think the value of the latter should not be under-rated just because it is fiction. I believe that the author did his work in researching and interviewing when writing this book. I wish that it would be translated into English soon so that more readers can read it and make their own judgement.

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