Word: toland
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...Rising Sun, Toland...
...land of the Rising Sun until lately has largely been terra incognita to Americans. Now historical revisionism, the astounding economic resurgence of the Japanese, and concern for the balance of power in the Far East are combining to change that. The most massive and popular new study is John Toland's The Rising Sun, a detailed, evenhanded chronicle of Japan's road to war and eventual defeat...
...journalist-historian, Toland has written often and voluminously about World War II (The Last 100 Days; But Not in Shame). Not only is he married to a Japanese, but he also brings to his book a special perspective, built on several painstaking years of interviews with scores of Japanese soldiers, civilians and former leaders. The war began, Toland writes, "because of mutual misunderstanding, language difficulties and mistranslations." To make matters worse, both Japan and the U.S. misapplied wildly different concepts of national honor. The charge of incomprehension and ineptitude has been made by each side against the other many times...
...insisted at a crucial juncture in the 1941 negotiations that Japan pull all of its troops out of China. The Japanese took "China" to include Manchuria-which they had occupied in 1931 and renamed Manchukuo. In fact, the U.S. meant to exclude Manchukuo. Had that point been clear, Toland asserts, war would have been postponed-or avoided entirely. It was only in 1967, he says, that the surviving Japanese leaders learned what the Americans intended. "If we had only known!" said General Kenryo Sato, a Tojo adviser. "If you had said you recognized Manchukuo, we'd have accepted...
...Toland's account of the internal politics and external maneuverings of prewar Japan is intricate and intriguing, though his discussion of the underlying cultural and social fabric seems sketchy and abrupt. His narrative of military action during the war covers familiar ground. But his talks with Japanese survivors produced chilling combat vignettes as seen from the other side...