Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
World War II enthusiasts probably already know about the controversies surrounding the American mission to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the man who orchestrated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What the uninitiated will find interesting is Davis?s account of the lives of the soldiers who participated in the attack. Through a series of vignettes, the reader sees both American and Japanese perspectives. Good and bad guys can be found on either side, and Davis appears to be a fair judge of character as he considers different perspectives of these historic events. Davis also does an excellent job supplementing a bird?s eye view of the war with minute detail, i.e. ?honor ribbons blossomed on the chest of the green uniform, and the right hand rested upon a long sword.? Davis portrays Yamamoto not as a villain, but as a man who ?captured the imagination of his crew and pilots? and was an inspiration to his people. (The real villain appears in the form of a glory-seeking American who uses his connections to rewrite history.) Yet, in this account, individuals are minor players compared to the war itself, which takes us from Japan and Pearl Harbor to the Philippines, Australia and Guadalcanal, where the bulk of the action takes place. Increasingly, readers are shown the more subtle but no less vicious war regarding the truth of what happened during the Yamamoto mission, and herein lies the thrust of Davis?s book: to shatter the air of conspiracy that surrounds the mysterious mission and reveal the truth. Despite a thrown-together feel in the first 70 or so pages, Davis both informs and entertains, and shows the ease with which history may be rewritten. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Review by Library Journal Review
Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was for many Americans the personification of Japanese perfidy. Educated and cosmopolitan, he had no illusions about the eventual course of the war after his initial successes. Davis (The Jeffrey Dahmer Story) writes that Yamamoto had opposed the war but executed it to the best of his ability once the decision to fight was made. After American code breakers learned of the admiral's visit to Bougainville, P-38 fighters were dispatched to shoot down his plane. Davis's retelling of the well-known course of the Pacific war is neither new nor well rendered and alone would be of little interest, although Davis cleverly uses the device of following five pilots through the campaign. The official version differed in critical details from the accounts of the surviving pilots, and it was many years before the conflicting accounts could be reconciled. The mission itself was a small part of a very big story and here takes only a chapter to tell. Primarily for in-depth subject collections.-Edwin B. Burgess, Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A well-paced, action-packed narrative of a minor episode in WWII that had major results. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, writes journalist/historian Davis, initially opposed going to war against the US; he had attended Harvard, spoke English, and had traveled here widely enough to know that "when the threat was great enough, common Americans would fight, and die, for their country." Yet, obedient to the emperor and the high command, Yamamoto threw himself into preparations for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was meant to follow immediately the Japanese ambassador's delivery in Washington of a declaration of war. The ambassador fell behind schedule, however, to Yamamoto's enduring shame; he had not wanted a sneak attack, in which there was no honor. American military intelligence took a different view, rightly pegging Yamamoto as the architect of not only Pearl Harbor but also the Imperial Navy's formidable campaign in the Pacific. Davis's account turns on five Army Air Corps pilots who were recruited into a group that came to be called the "Cactus Air Force," whose members performed countless deeds of bravery and even heroism in combat, in one instance turning the tide of battle at Guadalcanal even as they flew against technically superior Japanese aircraft. ("About the only way a P-400 could shoot down a Zero," the author comments, "was with the help of a Japanese pilot." Davis sometimes lets anecdotes do the work of analysis, but his central narrative moves swiftly and surely as the American flyers, armed with broken Japanese codes, mount a daring effort to find Yamamoto's command plane and bring it down. The outcome is well known to students of WWII history, but--as always seems the case in matters military--the official account of what happened differs in critical details from the accounts of the pilots, which lends immediacy to Davis's arguments concerning evidence and confirmation. Of most interest to military history buffs and students of the air war in the Pacific. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
