Review by Choice Review
With the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a plethora of sources has become available recalling the tragedy of December 7, 1941. Toll, a respected historian and author of Six Frigates (CH, Sep'07, 45-0469), has focused his latest efforts on the titanic struggle between the US and the Empire of Japan. Relying on memoirs and a vast array of secondary sources, Toll takes readers back to the White House when FDR was notified of the Japanese attack, and to the oil-filled waters of Pearl Harbor where many sailors lost their lives. Readers will be captivated by Toll's account of the sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, the pride of Winston Churchill and the Royal Navy. Even more fascinating is Toll's description of the unsung intelligence officers who managed to exploit Japanese naval codes and turn the tide of the war at Midway. Few authors have that rare ability to offer a snapshot of a period as fully as Toll does of the crucial six months following Pearl Harbor. If librarians could only purchase one volume on WW II, Pacific Crucible should be on the top of their lists. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. C. C. Lovett Emporia State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
AT times during the months after the Japanese attack of Dec. 7, 1941, a tall, patrician-looking Japanese-speaking American could be seen wearing a red smoking jacket and bedroom slippers, puffing on his pipe and pacing the concrete floor behind an unmarked basement door at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard in Hawaii: Joseph Rochefort was the leader, of "Station Hypo" - the rapidly expanding group of green-eyeshade-wearing analysts who were working 22-hour days, among candy-bar wrappers and pictures of pinup girls, in the race to crack JN-25-B, Japan's all-important wartime code. Deciphering 50,000 five-digit numeral groups and feeding punch cards into a hulking, primitive I.B.M. machine, they fueled themselves on patriotism, coffee and Benzedrine pills, these last dispensed from a bucket lying next to a cache of highly classified intercepts. One of Rochefort's most trusted colleagues, Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Dyer, joked that Secretary of War Henry Stimson had not erred in saying that gentlemen don't read each other's mail, because "no one could accuse us of being gentlemen." Dyer also observed that the sensation of breaking a Japanese code was "pretty much the same" as a sexual orgasm. As for Rochefort, he professed to disdain cryptanalysis on grounds that it restricted his personal life and caused him ulcers, but which of his colleagues would have believed him? The little-known Rocheforts and Dyers arguably did as much to win World War II in the Pacific as many far more recognizable admirals and generals. "Pacific Crucible," Ian W. Toll's useful and diligently constructed history of the first seven months of the Pacific War, calls our attention to many such pivotal figures, who, as we move further and further away from the period, have shrunk almost to a pinpoint in our rearview mirrors. As he demonstrated in his fine first book, "Six Frigates," about the early stages of the United States Navy, Toll has an affinity for the detailed narrative of military conflict and for capsule portraiture of key personalities both high-ranking and low. Here, his effort to provide historical recognition where it is due extends to the subject of the Pacific War itself, which - even as it was unfolding, and certainly now - has too often been eclipsed by the struggle against Hitler and Mussolini in Europe and North Africa. Toll is especially skilled at setting his story in context, taking the reader on valuable excursions into subjects like the impact of Alfred Thayer Mahan's views on naval strategy and the history of Japanese expansionism. He effectively conveys the gloom of the Allies over Japan's dominance in Asia and the Pacific in the spring of 1942: "The Japanese offensive had made a mockery of their predictions, deranged their plans, sapped their morale, undercut their leaders' reputations and torn at the seams of their global coalition." It is hard to quarrel with his conclusion that the Battle of Midway, which "had blunted the tip of the Japanese spear, . . . made certain that the Pacific War would be a prolonged war of attrition. ... Midway eliminated the risk of a Japanese attack on Hawaii or the west coast of North America. As important, it relieved political pressure on F.D.R. to transfer a greater share of forces to the Pacific, freeing him to emphasize his greatest priority, which was to keep the Soviet Union in the war against Germany." As Toll rightly asserts in his book's final pages, Midway exposed a central tension that would govern the remaining three years of the Pacific conflict: "Japan's transcendent 'fighting spirit' was to be pitted against America's overwhelming industrial-military might." But here is the book's limitation. Since V-J Day in 1945, hundreds of books have been published that review the Pacific War. The best justification for a new history - especially one demanding that the reader navigate almost 500 pages dealing with a period of less than a year - would be for the book to offer at least one of three things: a set of judgments so fresh and plausible that we view the subject in a way we never have before; stylistic excellence (for example, Shelby Foote's narrative skills alone are enough to justify his three-volume effort to narrate the Civil War anew); or deep, relentless primary research that brings us important new facts and other groundbreaking information. Alas, Toll's book does not score high in any of these three dimensions. Few of his insights, although sensible and intelligent, stray much outside existing mainstream interpretation. And the author's style is burdened with hackneyed phrases - references to Theodore Roosevelt's "whirlwind career," traffic that "slowed to a crawl," drivers who "crane their necks," how Pearl Harbor "galvanized the American people," the fact that the "ears of the Japanese people were ringing" and that Admiral Halsey had not "tasted fame." Adding to this is the problem that some of Toll's imagery doesn't quite work. For instance, the first sentence of his first chapter shows us the people of Oahu being "jerked out of sleep by guns and bombs and low-flying aircraft." What is more, one wishes that Toll had been more resistant to retelling shopworn tales. For example, he devotes eight pages to Churchill's first trip to the White House in late 1941 and early 1942. This story is more than familiar, and Toll's treatment adds little that we don't already know. He even includes the overtold anecdote of a naked Churchill climbing out of his bath and supposedly telling Roosevelt that he had "nothing to conceal" - though Toll concedes the story must be at least partly apocryphal. THE book's most regrettable deficiency, however, is in its use of primary sources. Although 66 years have passed since the defeated Japanese surrendered aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, new collections are stili being opened. These could change our understanding of the Pacific War. Toll's acknowledgments refer to archives he visited in Japan and to several American depositories, but for reasons unstated, he has clearly decided against what should have been the irresistible opportunity to make serious use of original Japanese manuscripts, or to zealously explore Western treasure houses like the British Public Record Office. Toll's 47 pages of endnotes cite no more than a small number of unpublished materials. As a result, his book lacks the energy and excitement of ambitious original research. Despite these problems, "Pacific Crucible" will certainly inform the reader unfamiliar with the often frightening early months of America's Pacific ordeal. And if we keep one eye on those days and another on our own, Toll's book should make us nostalgic for a time when a president could muffle anxieties during a national emergency by simply declaring, "So we are going to win the war" - meanwhile persuading other American leaders to suspend selfish aims and playground quarrels for the sake of their country. Who among the trembling Americans of late 1941 and 1942 could have imagined that our political system would break down so badly by the year 2011 that we could find ourselves yearning for any aspect of their terrible experience? Michael Beschloss is writing a book on war and the presidency. Most recently, he provided the introduction and historical annotations for "Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 27, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* No volume really covering the first six months of WWII in the Pacific can be other than hefty. However, this latest from the author of Six Frigates (2006), is also excellent. The research is thorough, the writing clear, and the narrative flow exemplary, even when the author is trying to explain Allied command arrangements for defending Java in early 1942. The run-up to war is in itself notable, as it makes clear that the Japanese genuinely saw themselves as having few options and did not trust the Allies to give them even those. After the shooting started, Japanese tactics, training, and weaponry receive high marks what emerges is a set of Allies not really prepared for a war that had been looming since at least 1937. The author makes vast quantities of technological and tactical concepts intelligible to all but the rankest beginner for whom this book is not remotely suitable. A particular gift of the author is intelligent character portraits: Yamamoto, MacArthur, Halsey, and Nimitz (clearly one of the author's favorites). Add to all these other attributes a thorough scholarly apparatus, and it is difficult to think of a recent book on this subject that is of such consistently outstanding value.--Green, Roland Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Prize-winning freelance naval historian Toll (Six Frigates) chronicles one of the U.S. Navy's finest performances of WWII in this page-turning narrative of the months following the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor. Eyewitness accounts and extensive research in American and Japanese print and archival sources combined with Toll's storytelling abilities make this an approachable and compelling read in a genre typically reserved for military historians. More than mere battle plans and fighter plane model numbers, Toll's take on the fight in the Pacific is imbued with a sensitivity to detail and individuals, as evidenced by his moving account of the disembarkation of Admiral Fitch and his crew from the sinking USS Lexington at the Battle of the Coral Sea, which saw ice cream being served as the boat burned and men awaiting rescue swam in the warm waters below. But Toll does not pander to sensationalism: his incisive scholastic efforts also shed light on Japanese motives for entering a war that many in the high command considered unwinnable. Revealing and poignant, Toll's latest deftly navigates the rough waters of the Pacific struggle with flying colors. Illus. and maps. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Award-winning author Toll (Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy) writes here about the trial by fire faced by the Allies in the first six months of World War II, when the Imperial Japanese Navy swept the U.S. and British Commonwealth forces from the western Pacific. Focusing on the U.S. Navy, the author tells the well-known story of the hasty reorganization after the shock of Pearl Harbor and of desperate battles fought with inferior numbers. He successfully incorporates personal accounts to provide a courageous human dimension to the tale of everyday duties punctuated by occasional terror. The book ends with the miraculous American victory at Midway in June 1942 when the Japanese advance was finally halted for good. Verdict Well documented-albeit from previously published materials-and well written. Experienced World War II history buffs may bypass if they feel no need to read another retelling of this phase of the Pacific War, but nonspecialists and general readers will want to consider it. (Photos and index not seen.) [See roundups of new titles in military history in the October 1 and October 15 issues of LJ.-Ed.]-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL (c) Copyright 2011. 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
An entertaining, impressively researched chronicle of the tense period between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and American victory at the battle of Midway.In between these two signal events of World War II, uncertainty shook America. In the Pacific, the United States was caught off-guard by Japan's sneak attack, her Navy crippled and her fighters outmatched by the agile and deadly Japanese Zeros. Rumors of Japanese invasion of the West Coast seemed more likely with each defeat suffered by the combined forces in the Philippines. Toll (Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy, 2008, etc.) examines the forces moving behind the scenesthe trends in naval combat, complicated allegiances of American and Japanese politics, the military hierarchies and infighting that occurred between the combined forcesto create a full picture of the complex dynamics involved. The author's attempts to be comprehensive occasionally lead to dry passages and unnecessary digressions, especially regarding the more esoteric areas of politics. But when illuminating the remarkable men behind the headlines, Toll truly excels. From the horror of Pearl Harbor to the triumphant battle of Midway, the author carefully balances the narrative to tell the story from both sides of the conflict. His account begins with the American and Japanese officials involved in the burgeoning field of aircraft-carrier combat, and continues down to the pilots and crewmen who acted as the guinea pigs. What he finds is not a group of fearless soldiers, but real, conflicted men nearly torn apart by their doubts and fears, men who found the real courage necessary to act all the same.Toll gives everyone involved in the conflict a chance to speak, bringing readers into the command centers and cockpits to reveal the humanity of combatants on both sides of the Pacific.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
