This absorbing study pits US Army National Guardsmen against Japanese soldiers in the uniquely hostile setting of the New Guinea campaign in World War II. When Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, New Guinea – the world's second-largest island – was administered partly by Australia and partly by the Dutch East Indies. The New Guinea campaign (January 1942–August 1945) saw Japanese forces invade the island, rapidly capturing the key port of Rabaul and threatening Port Moresby, while US forces joined the defenders in increasing numbers. The uniquely demanding environment, and the savage nature of the fighting, meant that the campaign was among the most arduous of World War II for both sides. In this study, the Japanese forces and their US Army opponents, many of whom were National Guard units, are assessed and compared, with particular attention paid to combat doctrine, weaponry, tactics, logistics, leadership, and communications in the challenging setting of New Guinea. The role of US Army National Guard units and their Japanese opponents in three important battles are examined, namely Buna–Gona (November 1942–January 1943), Biak Island (May–August 1944) and the Driniumor River (July–August 1944).

In July 1937, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident sparked a bloody conflict between Chinese and Japanese forces that would rage across China and beyond for more than eight years. The two sides' forces brought very different strengths and limitations to the conflict. In 1937 China was divided into factions, each controlled by warlords with independent forces, and there was no unified Chinese army. In order to fight the Japanese Chiang Kai-shek, the nominal leader of Nationalist China, was compelled to do deals with these regional powers. For their part, the Japanese employed ground forces broadly comparable to those fielded by Western powers, including modern artillery and tanks. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and drawing upon an array of sources, this study investigates the origins, training, doctrine and armament of the Chinese and Japanese forces who fought in the opening stages of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In the spring of 1974, Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese army made world headlines when he emerged from the Philippine jungle after a thirty-year ordeal. Hunted in turn by American troops, the Philippine police, hostile islanders, and successive Japanese search parties, Onoda had skillfully outmaneuvered all his pursuers, convinced that World War II was still being fought and that one day his fellow soldiers would return victorious. This account of those years is an epic tale of the will to survive that offers a rare glimpse of man's invincible spirit, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. A hero to his people, Onoda wrote down his experiences soon after his return to civilization. This book was translated into English the following year and has enjoyed an approving audience ever since.

Popular impressions of the imperial Japanese army still promote images of suicidal banzai charges and fanatical leaders blindly devoted to their emperor. Edward Drea looks well past those stereotypes to unfold the more complex story of how that army came to power and extended its influence at home and abroad to become one of the world's dominant fighting forces. This first comprehensive English-language history of the Japanese army traces its origins, evolution, and impact as an engine of the country's regional and global ambitions and as a catalyst for the militarization of the Japanese homeland from mid-nineteenth-century incursions through the end of World War II. Demonstrating his mastery of Japanese-language sources, Drea explains how the Japanese style of warfare, burnished by samurai legends, shaped the army, narrowed its options, influenced its decisions, and made it the institution that conquered most of Asia. He also tells how the army's intellectual foundations shifted as it reinvented itself to fulfill the changing imperatives of Japanese society-and how the army in turn decisively shaped the nation's political, social, cultural, and strategic course. Drea recounts how Japan devoted an inordinate amount of its treasury toward modernizing, professionalizing, and training its army-which grew larger, more powerful, and politically more influential with each passing decade. Along the way, it produced an efficient military schooling system, a well-organized active duty and reserve force, a professional officer corps that thought in terms of regional threat, and well-trained soldiers armed with appropriate weapons. Encompassing doctrine, strategy, weaponry, and civil-military relations, Drea's expert study also captures the dominant personalities who shaped the imperial army, from Yamagata Aritomo, an incisive geopolitical strategist, to Anami Korechika, who exhorted the troops to fight to the death during the final days of World War II. Summing up, Drea also suggests that an army that places itself above its nation's interests is doomed to failure.

"This book tells the story of an unusual group of American soldiers in World War II, second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who served as interpreters and translators in the Military Intelligence Service."--Preface.

In 1941 the Japanese invaded the Philippines with overwhelming force and forced the surrender of American troops at Bataan and Corregidor. Prisoners of war were subjected to brutal captivity and thousands did not survive. This is the story of an American soldier who survived and became a hero. When American troops liberated the Niigata POW camp after the Japanese surrender, Corporal Joseph O. Quintero greeted them with a homemade American flag that had been sewn together in secrecy. The son of Mexican immigrants, Joseph Quintero grew up in a converted railroad caboose in Fort Worth, Texas, and joined the Army to get $21 a month and three meals a day. He manned a machine gun in the defense of Corregidor before his unit was captured by the Japanese. When prisoners of war were transported to Japan, Joseph survived a razor-blade appendectomy on the "hell ship" voyage. In the prison camp he cared for his fellow prisoners as a medic and came to be known as Don Jose. Joseph's narrative is an enlisted man's view of the war with first-hand descriptions of conditions in the POW camps and personal glimpses of what he and his buddies did, endured and talked about. The authors have drawn on other histories and official documents to put his story into perspective and focus on a little-known chapter of World War II.

"During World War II, the US Army and its allies faced a formidable challenge: the need to assault Hitler's "Fortress Empire" from the sea. In order to win and hold a contested beachhead in the face of bitter enemy resistance, the US Army's amphibious-warfare specialists, notably combat engineers, played a variety of essential battlefield roles; if the US troops could not establish and consolidate a beachhead quickly, they risked being thrown back into the sea. For their part, the Germans had to design practical defensive tactics that made the most of their limited resources, the troops available, and the nature of the terrain. The German infantry defenders immediately around the landing areas had to be able to call upon support from nearby artillery, mechanized troops, and armored forces to have a chance of containing the enemy beachhead. This illustrated study analyzes the essential roles played by combat engineers involved in three key battles - the Allied amphibious landings at Salerno and Anzio in Italy, and Omaha Beach in Normandy - and their German opponents, whose combat experience and effectiveness varied considerably."--

During the 19th century, US forces confronted the Seminole people in a series of bitter wars over the fate of Florida. After the refusal of the Seminoles to move west to the Creek Reservation in Mississippi, the US government sent troops to bring Florida under federal control, marking the beginning of the Second Seminole War. On December 28, 1835, troops led by Major Francis Langhorne Dade were ambushed and massacred en route to Fort King. Two years of guerrilla warfare ensued, as the Seminoles evaded the US forces sent to defeat them. Ordered to hunt down the Seminoles, a US force led by Colonel Zachary Taylor incurred heavy losses at the battle of Lake Okeechobee (December 25, 1837), but the Seminoles were forced to withdraw. At the battle of the Loxahatchee River (January 24, 1838), forces led by Major General Thomas S. Jesup encountered a large group of Seminoles and met them with overwhelming numbers and greater firepower. Despite their stubborn efforts to resist the US military, the Seminoles were defeated and Florida became a state of the Union in 1845. This fully illustrated study assesses the forces fighting on both sides, casting light on the tactics, weaponry, and combat record of the Seminole warriors and their US opponents during the Second Seminole War.

Soldiers of the Sun traces the origins of the Imperial Japanese Army back to its samurai roots in the nineteenth century to tell the story of the rise and fall of this extraordinary military force. Meirion and Susie Harries have written the first full Western account of the Imperial Japanese Army. Drawing on Japanese, English, French, and American sources, the authors penetrate the lingering wartime enmity and propaganda to lay bare the true character of the Imperial Army.

During his time as a POW, Frank "Foo" Fujita kept a diary of daily happenings, embellished with drawings of life in the camp. He secreted the diary in the walls of his barracks, as the practice was forbidden. That diary forms the basis of these memoirs. Fujita's memoirs are also unique in that he was one of the fewer than nine hundred Americans taken prisoner on the island of Java. The bulk of American POWs in Japanese hands surrendered in the Philippines, and most of the published POW memoirs reflect their experience. Fujita's account of the defense of Java and of the fate of the "Lost Battalion" of Texas artillerymen serves to distinguish this memoir from others. At one point while a POW in Japan, Fujita was forced to be part of the Japanese radio group broadcasting propaganda. After the war, he testified at some of the war crime trials in San Francisco, and the diary on which this book is based was used as evidence in those trials.