Empires on the Pacific: World War Ii and the Struggle for the Mastery of Asia

This revisionist history of the Second World War's Pacific theater announces that "the familiar story" we all know in which "the good guys beat the bad guys" isn't really true. In Empires on the Pacific, Robert Smith Thompson describes the "more complicated" version: "Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was not unprovoked," and the war wound up becoming a mere extension of American imperialist aims that had been in place before the shooting started. The United States had two goals in fighting the war. It wanted to crush Japan's military might (a success) and turn China into a post-war ally (a failure). Thompson also wades into more familiar debates, arguing, for instance, that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary because the Japanese would have surrendered anyway. It must be said that these views won't sway all readers, but they may appeal to many, especially those who admired Day of Deceit by Robert B. Stinnett. --John Miller