Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable?
[Wood's] carefully constructed arguments stem from a wide reading and understanding of the war's historic literature, and his suggested alternative courses of Japanese actions are entirely credible . . . [his] careful examination of alternative possibilities in the Pacific War is an impressive example of good counterfactual history.(Col. Stanley L. FalkThe Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists)Wood has raised many provocative points worthy of debate. Recommended. (CHOICE)This impressive counterfactual analysis demonstrates that the course of the Pacific War was not set in stone. Wood demonstrates, through careful analysis of alternatives actually discussed by Japan’s leaders, that the decision to go to war was not an exercise in national suicide. Instead, specific choices closed a window of opportunity for Japan to have bought more time and might well have altered fundamentally the war’s conclusion. (Dennis E. Showalter, Colorado College; author of Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century)