Japan's Longest Day: A Graphic Novel About the End of WWII
Japan's Longest Day: A Graphic Novel About the End of WWII

Author: Kazutoshi Hando

Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Published: 2024-04-02

Total Pages: 485

ISBN-13: 146292462X

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The true story of Japan's surrender in World War II and how it nearly didn't happen! In the final days of World War II, Japan lay in ruins and the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been obliterated. A tense drama unfolds in Tokyo as Japan teeters on the edge of Armageddon. Japan's Longest Day tells the true story of the day immediately before the surrender, as a group of fanatical army officers attempt to prevent the Emperor from surrendering—an act of high treason which will inevitably result in Japan's total annihilation. This dramatic story recounts events that most people outside Japan are completely unaware of: The fierce disagreement between the army and the Japanese government as Emperor Hirohito prepares to announce the nation's unconditional surrender to the Allies Attempts by War Minister Korechika Anami to change the Emperor's mind Treasonous actions by a fanatical group of officers who vow to fight on, even if it means the death of every single Japanese citizen The shocking plot to overthrow the government as Anami faces a fateful choice between loyalty to the cause and loyalty to the Emperor Japan's Longest Day is beautifully told by award-winning manga artist Yukinobu Hoshino, who brings to life the story of Japan's most fateful day in elegant graphic novel form. This ebook edition is of a thick 480 page graphic novel.

Japan's Longest Day
Japan's Longest Day

Author: Bungei Shunjū Senshi Kenkyūkai

Publisher: Kodansha

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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'Few contemporary books give one such an insight into the traditions and values of prewar Japan, particularly regarding the position of the Emperor.' --- John M. Allison, Saturday Review

Compellence and the Strategic Culture of Imperial Japan
Compellence and the Strategic Culture of Imperial Japan

Author: Forrest Morgan

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2003-11-30

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0313057249

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Compellence is a fundamental tool of international security policy. This study explains how culture shapes the ways that decision-makers respond to the threat of force. First, Morgan builds a theoretical framework, next he analyzes three cases in which states attempted to compel Japan to change its behavior. The first is an in-depth analysis of the 1895 triple intervention in which Russia, Germany, and France forced Japanese leaders to return the Liaotung Peninsula to China following the first Sino-Japanese War. The second and third relate to World War II: the 1941 oil embargo intended to coerce Tokyo to withdraw its military from China and Washington's 1945 efforts to force Japan to end the war. These cases explain much of the seemingly irrational behavior previously attributed to Japanese leaders. Morgan demonstrates that culture clearly influenced outcomes in all three cases by conditioning Japanese perceptions, strategic preferences, and governmental processes. These findings are relevant today, and recent conflicts suggest that they will be increasingly important into the 21st century. This book offers policy makers a much-needed method for employing strategic culture analysis to develop more effective security strategies—strategies that will be of vital importance in an increasingly volatile world.

Bridging the Atomic Divide
Bridging the Atomic Divide

Author: Harry J. Wray

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2018-11-29

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1498593224

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Harry Wray and Seishiro Sugihara transcend the one-sided Tokyo Trial view of the war in an effort to conduct a balanced exchange on historical perception. This will be of interest equally to both those inside and outside Japan who are perplexed by Japan’s “victimization consciousness.” Through this impassioned and heartfelt dialogue, Wray challenges theories embraced by some Japanese who believe that the US simply “used the atomic bombings to make the Soviet Union manageable in the Cold War,” as alleged by the Hiroshima Peace Museum and in Japanese school history textbooks. They ask why it is the Japanese people don’t recognize how the atomic bombings not only spared the further sacrifice of American and Japanese lives by accelerating the end of the war, but also prevented a wide-scale Soviet invasion of the Japanese mainland, had the war continued into the latter half of 1945. While early censorship of writings about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both outright and self-imposed, continued through the Occupation, Sugihara proposes that, long after the Americans had packed up and gone home, the Foreign Ministry established and nurtured a postwar paradigm which rendered open and critical discussion of war-related issues, such as Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombings, impossible for the Japanese public. It is no wonder then that Japanese attitudes towards the atomic bombings remain mired in victimization myths. Uniquely, Wray and Sugihara attempt to persuade the Japanese to reexamine their attitudes to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to show that the atomic bombings, perversely, brought a swift end to the war and helped Japan escape the act of partition which afflicted postwar Germany and remains an intractable problem in a divided Korea.

Last to Die
Last to Die

Author: Stephen Harding

Publisher: Hachette+ORM

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 030682339X

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On August 18, 1945 -- three days after Japan announced it would cease hostilities and surrender -- U.S. Army Air Forces Sergeant Anthony J. Marchione bled to death in the clear, bright sky above Tokyo. Just six days after his twentieth birthday, Tony Marchione died like so many before him in World War II -- quietly, cradled in the arms of a buddy who was powerless to prevent his death. Though heartbreaking for his family, Marchione's death would have been no more notable than any other had he not had the dubious distinction of being the last American killed in World War II combat. An aerial gunner who had already survived several combat missions, Marchione's death was the tragic culmination of an intertwined series of events. The plane that carried him that day was a trouble-plagued American heavy bomber known as the B-32 Dominator, which would prove a failed competitor to the famed B-29 Superfortress. And on the ground below, a palace revolt was brewing and a small number of die-hard Japanese fighter pilots decided to fight on, refusing to accept defeat. Based on official American and Japanese histories, personal memoirs, and the author's exclusive interviews with many of the story's key participants, Last to Die is a rousing tale of air combat, bravery, cowardice, hubris, and determination, all set during the turbulent and confusing final days of World War II.

Atomic Salvation
Atomic Salvation

Author: Tom Lewis

Publisher: Casemate

Published: 2020-07-20

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 161200945X

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A thought-provoking analysis of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and what might have happened if conventional weapons were used instead. It has always been a difficult concept to stomach—that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, causing such horrific suffering and destruction, also brought about peace. Attitudes toward the event have changed through the years, from grateful relief that World War II was ended to widespread condemnation of the United States. Atomic Salvation investigates the full situation—examining documents from both Japanese and Allied sources, but also using in-depth analysis to extend beyond the mere recounting of statistics. It charts the full extent of the possible casualties on both sides had a conventional assault akin to D-Day gone ahead against Japan. The work is not concerned solely with the military necessity to use the bombs; it also investigates why that necessity has been increasingly challenged over the successive decades. Controversially, the book demonstrates that Japan would have suffered far greater casualties—likely around 28 million—if the nation had been attacked in the manner by which Germany was defeated: by amphibious assault, artillery and air attacks preceding infantry insertion, and finally by subduing the last of the defenders of the enemy capital. It also investigates the enormous political pressure placed on America as a result of their military situation. The Truman administration had little choice but to use the new weapon given the more than a million deaths that Allied forces would undoubtedly have suffered through conventional assault. By chartingreaction to the bombings over time, Atomic Salvation shows that there has been relentless pressure on the world to condemn what at the time was seen as the best, and only, military solution to end the conflict. Never has such an exhaustive analysis been made of the necessity behind bringing World War II to a halt.

The Last Mission
The Last Mission

Author: Jim Smith

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0307419479

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A gripping account of the final American bombing mission of World War II and how it prevented a military coup that would have kept Japan in the war. How close did the Japanese come to not surrendering to Allied forces on August 15, 1945? The Last Mission explores this question through two previously neglected strands of late—World War II history, whose very interconnections could have caused a harrowing shift in the course of the postwar world. On the final night of the war, as Emperor Hirohito recorded a message of surrender for the Japanese people, a band of Japanese rebels, commanded by War Minister Anami's elite staff, burst into the palace. They had plotted a massive coup that aimed to destroy the recordings of the Imperial Rescript of surrender and issue false orders forged with the Emperor’s seal commanding the widely dispersed Japanese military to continue the war. If this rebellion had succeeded, the military would have proceeded with large-scale kamikaze attacks on Allied forces, costing huge casualties and just possibly provoking the Americans to drop a third atomic bomb on Japan over Tokyo–and continue to drop more bombs as Japanese resistance stiffened. Meanwhile, in the midst of an “end-of-war” celebration on Guam, Air Force radio operator Jim Smith and his fellow crewmen received urgent orders for a bombing mission over Japan’s sole remaining oil refinery north of Tokyo. As a stream of American B-29B bombers approached Tokyo, Japanese air defenses, fearing the approaching planes signaled the threat of a third atomic bomb, ordered a total blackout in Tokyo and the Imperial Palace, completely disrupting the rebels’ plans. Smith and his fellow crewmembers completed the mission, and a few hours later, the Emperor announced the surrender over Japan’s airwaves, dictating the end of the war. The Last Mission is an insightful piece of speculative investigation that combines narrative storytelling with historical contingency and explores how two seemingly unrelated events could have profoundly changed the course of modern history.

Japan's Longest Day
Japan's Longest Day

Author: Bungei Shunjū Senshi Kenkyūkai

Publisher:

Published: 1968

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13:

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Orginally published in Japanese as Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi, 1965 ...

Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War
Chinese and Japanese Films on the Second World War

Author: King-fai Tam

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-10-24

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1317650468

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This book examines representations of the Second World War in postwar Chinese and Japanese cinema. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly disciplines, and analysing a wide range of films, it demonstrates the potential of war movies for understanding contemporary China and Japan. It shows how the war is remembered in both countries, including the demonisation of Japanese soldiers in postwar socialist-era Chinese movies, and the pervasive sense of victimhood in Japanese memories of the war. However, it also shows how some Chinese directors were experimenting with alternatives interpretations of the war from as early as the 1950s, and how, despite the "resurgence of nationalism" in japan since the 1980s, the production of Japanese movies critical of the war has continued.

The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific
The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific

Author:

Publisher: Square One Publishers, Inc.

Published: 2014-03-28

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0757051626

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​*** OVER 210,000 WEST POINT MILITARY HISTORY SERIES SETS IN PRINT ​*** Beginning with a look at the readiness of the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy and the United States armed forces, this book gives a detailed account of the Allies’ brutal five-year struggle with Japan. It examines the interrelationship of land, sea, and air forces as they battled over the vast reaches of the Pacific Theater of War.