No comments about Shikitei Samba and the Comic Tradition in Edo Fiction (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series).

No comments about Wild Daisies in the Sand: Life in a Canadian Internment Camp.

1 comments about Fighting Tradition: A Marine's Jour to Justice (Intersections Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies) (Intersections Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies).

1. There was no tradition of discriminating against Asians in the USMC...I would refer you to Navy Cross recipient Maj Chew-Een Lee USMC - what do you think he underwent being a AA Marine officer in the 50s! I was at OCS the same time Bruce was there...no big deal - some racial remarks but nothing I would call institutionalized discrimination. I and a Vietnamese-American graduated the same summer he was there - why weren't we dropped? Maybe because we performed to acceptable standards while Bruce did not. OCS is meant to subject candidates to mental and physical stress - if you can't hack someone calling you names - how will you take combat?? Most of my Sgt Instructors were minorities themselves - if anything I think they were glad to see that a minority was becoming an officer. I've been a Marine officer for 15 years and can only say - I think he's made himself famous at the expense of other AA Marine officers who have graduated OCS without having to file a lawsuit.
   Semper Fidelis

No comments about If I Get Out Alive: The World War II Letters and Diaries of William H McDougall Jr.

1 comments about Hitler's Japanese Confidant: General Oshima Hiroshi and MAGIC Intelligence, 1941-1945.

1. Carl Boyd has produced an exceptionally lucid and revealing book that traces U.S. decoding attack on Berlin-Tokyo radio communications of Gen. Oshima Hiroshi, Japanese Ambassdor to the Third Reich, and its impact on the outcome of WWII. According to Boyd, these decoded diplomatic messages, known in the U.S. and Great Britain as MAGIC, were pivotal in Allied decision-making at critical junctures during the war. The author contends that, because the British were unable to read the secret communications of the top Nazi leadership, MAGIC filled a crucial gap in British ULTRA message decoding efforts. According to Boyd, Oshima was covertly converted into "an inadvertent informer of incalculable importance in leading the Allies to victory." Because Oshima had a very close personal relationship with Hitler and foreign minister von Ribbentropp, had their trust and respect, and had access to their higest level secrets, his MAGIC decoded radio messages were especially revealing and valuable for Allied planners. His military experience and analytical abilities also made his detailed characterizations of the disposition and condition of German forces in Europe and on the eastern front especially enlightening to the Allies and critical to planning for Operation OVERLORD. Boyd observes that "The margin of success on the Normandy beaches was narrow, but MAGIC and Anglo-American cooperation made the difference." Boyd's book is the first detailed account of Oshima's role as a primary source of Allied wartime intelligence through MAGIC. He draws heavily on declassified National Security Agency documents recently released to the National Archives. There is more, however, to this story of decoding covertly collected enemy radio intercepts that remains classified, especially in the British archives, which won't be declassified for more than twenty years. This is a thoroughly documented, superbly written, and rich account of the application of communications intelligence during WWII. It should be a stimulating read for all serious WWII historians and an entertaining read for all others.

No comments about Final Martyrs.

No comments about Lady Nijos Own Story: The Candid Diary of a 13th Century Japanese Imperial Court Concubine.

1 comments about What a Way to Spend a War: Navy Nurse Pows in the Philippines.

1. The Navy nurses who were imprisoned in the Philippines have a great story to tell, and this book recreates the strange and depressing life they had to share all those years. Never knowing what the next day would bring, or if they were ever going to be rescued, these brave young women survived terrible starvation,and malnutrition with great spirit and fortitude. I know some of these nurses, having written about them in No Time For Fear: Voices of American Military Nurses in World War II. Dorothy Danner's story is included, and I will never forget her voice, telling how they continued to be Navy Nurses to other prisoners, despite their own hardships.

1 comments about Travelers of a Hundred Ages.

1. This is a very scholarly book, but it was unclear to me whether it was an anthology of Japanese literature (some of the diaries are very short, so that was possible) or the professors explanations and commentaries regarding the different works mentioned. I will find use for it, but it is not what I expected when I ordered it.

2 comments about Nagasaki 1945.

1. I will start this review by establishing my background.
   
   *) I am a follower of history; I obtained a minor in history as an undergraduate and read a great deal of historical material.
   *) I am a firm believer in the thesis that the United States was correct in dropping the two atomic weapons on Japan to end the Second World War. There is no question in my mind that the unleashing of atomic energy against the people of Japan led to fewer casualties than if the Allies had invaded the home islands.
   
   Nevertheless, it is chilling to read this account of the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki. People argue that there were comparable or even greater casualties when the Allies used conventional bombs on Dresden and Tokyo. If you read eyewitness accounts of those attacks, the stories are superficially similar. However, there is something particularly frightening about the accounts of nuclear attacks. The slow, bloody deaths of people due to radiation poisoning, the horrific burns, where in an instant the flesh is flash cooked. The near-total destruction of everything in the blast area, leaving almost nothing for the survivors, which makes their condition hopeless without some form of massive outside aid.
   The author was a Nagasaki doctor who managed to survive the blast. This book is an account of his attempts to care for the survivors, using simple swabs to try to treat severe radiation and heat burns. He also includes short blurbs describing the political situation in Japan at the highest levels during July and the first part of August in 1945. He explains the attempted military coup led by a band of die-hard officers opposed to the surrender. Those officers still wanted to fight on, even against the prospect of additional atomic attacks and in direct opposition to the will of the Japanese Emperor. This is the most convincing evidence that the atomic attacks were the right thing to do.
   Some people believe that nuclear weapons are just more powerful instances of conventional forces. If you read accounts like this one, it is clear that that is not so. Nuclear weapons are enormously different in kind from conventional forces, destroying in ways that should convince everyone that they should never be used in warfare again.



2. There is no better way to understand the pain and suffering caused by the use of nuclear weapons than to read Tatsuichiro Akizuki's eyewitness account of the atomic bomb damage to Nagasaki. Dr. Akizuki not only describes the immediate devistation caused by the nuclear blast that hit Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945 but also chronicles his attempts as a physican to deal with the injuries of the people who survived the initial blast. It is a very compelling story.