|
|
The British Empire and Commonwealth was involved in the war against Japan for exactly the same period as the Americans, with attacks on British possessions coming at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Royal Navy taking part in the final US Navy attacks on the Japanese Home Islands in 1945. This book covers the entire range of British and Commonwealth involvement in the war, from those early defeats through the slow build-up of strength and on to the victorious final year of the conflict.
Most of the topics covered here will be familiar to many readers. The value of this book is that it gathers all of the varied strands of the British and Commonwealth struggle into a single volume. You will thus find accounts of the large scale land battles in Burma alongside the exploits of the British Pacific Fleet in 1945 or the Australian battles in New Guinea and Bougainville. Inevitably given the scale of the subject we don’t get a great deal of analysis of the complexities of the individual topics, but we do get good clear narratives of each of them. The final chapter provides much of the analysis and provides a very good end to the book.
The amount of ground to be covered means that some topics perhaps don’t get the space they deserve. I would have liked to have seen more on the composition of the British led forces that fought in Burma – the Africa, Indian and other contributions are acknowledged, but not in enough detail. The Indian Army contribution is well known, but 90,000 Africans also fought in Burma, making a major contribution to the final victory.
The conclusion makes some valid points about the scale of the British contribution to the victory over Japan. In the air and at sea the Americans were the dominant Allied power, massively outnumbering any British contribution, even in 1945 when the British were free to move more forces east. However on land the British contribution was surprisingly sizable, with the same number of British and Commonwealth divisions as American seeing combat against the Japanese. Neither equalled the scale of the Chinese contribution on land, which pinned down the bulk of the Japanese Army at great cost to the Chinese, but 27 British and Commonwealth divisions saw combat against the Japanese. Post-war Japanese figures even show that they suffered more casualties against British and Commonwealth Forces than against the Americans! The nature of the fighting was also different, with many (although not all) of the American battles being fairly short if often costly island battles while the British tended to fight more traditional land battles, especially on the Burma front, and the Australians took over some of the longer containment battles on New Guinea and Bougainville.
Overall this is a very good overview of the British Empire and Commonwealth contributions to the war against Japan, showing how wide ranging and varied those were, and how the British slowly recovered from some of the most devastating defeats in their military history in 1941-42 to become a potent threat to the Japanese and in Burma inflict one of the heaviest defeats every suffered by the Imperial Japanese Army
Chapters
1 – The Long Road to War
2 – The Storm in Europe
3 – On the Brink in Asia
4 – Japan Unleashed
5 – Turning the Tide
6 – Commonwealth Contributions in the South Pacific
7 – Return to the Indian Ocean
8 – The Battle for India and the Opening of the Burma Offensive
9 – Tightening the Noose
10 – Victory over Japan
11 – Reflections on the Asia/ Pacific War
Author: Brian E. Walter
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 336
Publisher: Casemate
Year: 2023