A towering work of research resurrects a pivotal moment in history.
An authoritative account of the post–World War II Tokyo war-crimes trial, which was both inadequate in resolution and crucial to building the future of Asia.
The global leaders who convened the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials sought to bring to justice the perpetrators of the war and achieve a reckoning for the victims. Yet unlike the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, which attained a “near-universal national repentance and grief that are at the core of German politics and society,” the Tokyo trial was marred by politics and the haunting specter of the end-of-war American firebombing of Japanese cities and atomic bomb devastation. As Bass, the author of The Blood Telegram, amply demonstrates in this monumental history, the trial allowed “patriotic quarrels” to fester for decades across the Asia Pacific region. The prosecutors and judges, drawn from 11 Allied nations and three Asian countries (yet glaringly none from Korea or Taiwan), attempted to enshrine international law to combat atrocities against prisoners of war and civilians. The guilt of Emperor Hirohito was hotly debated, though the Americans excused him in order to ease the postwar occupation. While the Americans were gunning for justice for Pearl Harbor, there was vivid witness testimony about the war crimes committed against the Chinese in Manchuria and Nanjing, as well as the “use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.” Bass argues convincingly that the failure to prosecute Shirō Ishii, the chief of Unit 731, “Japan’s secret biological weapons operation,” remains “one of the gravest stains of the Tokyo trial.” The author painstakingly delineates the daily toll on the judges and defendants, laying out the strategies of Tojo Hideki, general of the Imperial Japanese Army; Radhabinod Pal, the Indian jurist who vociferously denounced European imperialism in his dissent; and numerous others. Bass consistently demonstrates how the trial reflected the tenor of the postwar geopolitical theater, from the imminent victory of communists in China, to the entrenchment of Cold War thinking.
A towering work of research resurrects a pivotal moment in history.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781101947104
Page Count: 912
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
HISTORY | MODERN | MILITARY | WORLD | GENERAL HISTORY
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.
A story of ordinary people, both victims and survivors, thrown into extraordinary history.
Pellegrino says his book is “simply the story of what happened to people and objects under the atomic bombs, and it is dedicated to the hope that no one will ever witness this, or die this way, again.” Images of Aug. 6, 1945, as reported by survivors, include the sight of a cart falling from the sky with the hindquarters of the horse pulling it still attached; a young boy who put his hands over his eyes as the bomb hit—and “saw the bones of his fingers shining through shut eyelids, just like an X-ray photograph”; “statue people” flash-fossilized and fixed in place, covered in a light snowfall of ashes; and, of course, the ghosts—people severely flash-burned on one side of their bodies, leaving shadows on a wall, the side of a building, or whatever stood nearby. The carnage continued for days, weeks, and years as victims of burns and those who developed various forms of cancer succumbed to their injuries: “People would continue to die in ways that people never imagined people could die.” Scattered in these survivor stories is another set of stories from those involved in the development and deployment of the only two atomic weapons ever used in warfare. The author also tells of the letter from Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard to Franklin D. Roosevelt that started the ball rolling toward the formation of the Manhattan Project and the crew conversations on the Enola Gay and the Bockscar, the planes that dropped the Little Boy on Hiroshima and the Fat Man on Nagasaki. We have to find a way to get along, one crew member said, “because we now have the wherewithal to destroy everything.”
This is not an easy account to read, but it is important enough not to be forgotten.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798228309890
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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