Pacific Fury
Pacific Fury

Author: Peter Thompson

Publisher: Random House Australia

Published: 2010-05-01

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1864715618

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How Australia and her allies defeated the Japanese. Pearl Harbor; The Fall of Singapore; Curtin's Fight With Churchill; The Bombing Of Darwin; POW Camps; The Battle of Midway; Kokoda; Buna; Kamikaze Pilots; Hiroshima... These words alone are enough to convey the terror, courage and drama of the Pacific War, when the balance of power stood on a knife-edge and when the future of Australia was on the brink - threatened by Japanese aggression on the one hand and British deception on the other. After a conflict that took an unimaginable number of lives and ended with the unleashing of the most powerful weapon the world had ever seen, the Allies emerged victorious. Australia, however, was criticised by Churchill and his generals for showing cowardice in the face of the enemy and for not caring about the fate of other nations. The endorsement of these claims by several military historians today shows that the smear has not gone away. Until now. Peter Thompson presents, for the first time, an account of the conflict that places Australian voices and action at the heart of the struggle. Based on exclusive interviews with eyewitnesses and written with all the pace and verve you would expect of a master storyteller, Pacific Fury brings the people and the battles to life in a sensational history not to be bettered in a generation.

Implacable Foes
Implacable Foes

Author: Waldo H. Heinrichs

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 744

ISBN-13: 019061675X

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Award-winning historians Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio offer a full account and a provocative re-examination of the last year of World War II in the Pacific.

Borneo 1945
Borneo 1945

Author: Angus Konstam

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-10-24

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13: 1472862228

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A fascinating account of the last major Allied operation in the South-West Pacific, and the largest Australian military operation of World War II. A week after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese troops landed near Brunei on the South-East Asian island of Borneo. Within eight weeks, the entire island had been overrun, and its Dutch and British Indian defenders had been ejected. By early April 1942, the entire Dutch East Indies were in Japanese hands, and remained under Japanese occupation for a further three years. The late-1944 US landings in the Philippines effectively cut oil- and resource-rich Borneo off from Japan. Now that it was considered a worthy strategic prize for the Allies, General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the South-West Pacific Theater, began planning for the recapture of the key island. This compelling work explores the planning and execution of Operation Oboe, which was spearheaded by Australian troops but involved naval and special forces from the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. Detailed maps explore the six separate stages, each of which involved amphibious landings. Battlescene artworks and photographs bring to life notable events such as the capture of Tarakan, Labuan, Brunei and Sarawak. Also covered are the Allied special forces guerrilla campaigns and Australian 7th Infantry Division's landing at Balikapan – which proved to be the turning point of this hard-fought campaign.