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.

The Chinese Nationalist Army was at war almost continuously from 1931 until 1949 fighting first against the invading Japanese Imperial Army until 1945. This was followed by a four year civil war in which the Nationalist Army fought the Chinese Communists until its final defeat in 1949. Millions of Chinese soldiers fought and died during this eighteen years of conflict and their sacrifice has been largely overshadowed by the events of the Second World War. This new book presents in a large number of period images the history of the Chinese Nationalist Army and its campaigns.

Traces the origins of the Imperial Army back to its samurai roots in nineteenth century Japan to tell its rise and fall.

Volume 1 of the Sun King's wars and armies goes from his early and turbulent years, from the resounding victory over Spain at Rocroi in 1643, the unstable years of the Fronde civil wars, his seizure of absolute power in 1661, his immediate control of national finances and armed forces, his measures to create the most effective army in Europe, the i

One of the last, great untold stories of World War II—kept hidden for decades—even after most of the World War II records were declassified in 1972, many of the files remained untouched in various archives—a gripping true tale of courage and adventure from Bruce Henderson, master storyteller, historian, and New York Times best-selling author of Sons and Soldiers—the saga of the Japanese American U.S. Army soldiers who fought in the Pacific theater, in Burma, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, with their families back home in America, under U.S. Executive Order 9066, held behind barbed wire in government internment camps. After Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military was desperate to find Americans who spoke Japanese to serve in the Pacific war. They soon turned to the Nisei—first-generation U.S. citizens whose parents were immigrants from Japan. Eager to prove their loyalty to America, several thousand Nisei—many of them volunteering from the internment camps where they were being held behind barbed wire—were selected by the Army for top-secret training, then were rushed to the Pacific theater. Highly valued as expert translators and interrogators, these Japanese American soldiers operated in elite intelligence teams alongside Army infantrymen and Marines on the front lines of the Pacific war, from Iwo Jima to Burma, from the Solomons to Okinawa. Henderson reveals, in riveting detail, the harrowing untold story of the Nisei and their major contributions in the war of the Pacific, through six Japanese American soldiers. After the war, these soldiers became translators and interrogators for war crime trials, and later helped to rebuild Japan as a modern democracy and a pivotal U.S. ally.

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.

It’s 1897. Gold has been discovered in the Yukon. New York is under the sway of Hearst and Pulitzer. And in a few months, an American battleship will explode in a Cuban harbor, plunging the U.S. into war. Spanning five years and half a dozen countries, this is the unforgettable story of that extraordinary moment: the turn of the twentieth century, as seen by one of the greatest storytellers of our time. Shot through with a lyrical intensity and stunning detail that recall Doctorow and Deadwood both, A Moment in the Sun takes the whole era in its sights—from the white-racist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina to the bloody dawn of U.S. interventionism in the Philippines. Beginning with Hod Brackenridge searching for his fortune in the North, and hurtling forward on the voices of a breathtaking range of men and women—Royal Scott, an African American infantryman whose life outside the military has been destroyed; Diosdado Concepcíon, a Filipino insurgent fighting against his country’s new colonizers; and more than a dozen others, Mark Twain and President McKinley’s assassin among them—this is a story as big as its subject: history rediscovered through the lives of the people who made it happen.

The author clarifies the Sun Tzu text without compromising the subtlety of thought needed to master it. He taps into Sun Tzu's own source material and examines contemporary battle fields within context of his philosophies to help you profit from his wisdom.

Imperial Japanese soldiers were notorious for blindly following orders, and their enemies in the Pacific War derided them as "cattle to the slaughter." But, in fact, the Japanese Army had a long history as one of the most disobedient armies in the world. Officers repeatedly staged coups d'états, violent insurrections, and political assassinations; their associates defied orders given by both the government and the general staff, launched independent military operations against other countries, and in two notorious cases conspired to assassinate foreign leaders despite direct orders to the contrary.In Curse on This Country, Danny Orbach explains the culture of rebellion in the Japanese armed forces. It was a culture created by a series of seemingly innocent decisions, each reasonable in its own right, which led to a gradual weakening of Japanese government control over its army and navy. The consequences were dire, as the armed forces dragged the government into more and more of China across the 1930s—a culture of rebellion that made the Pacific War possible. Orbach argues that brazen defiance, rather than blind obedience, was the motive force of modern Japanese history.Curse on This Country follows a series of dramatic events: assassinations in the dark corners of Tokyo, the famous rebellion of Saigō Takamori, the "accidental" invasion of Taiwan, the Japanese ambassador’s plot to murder the queen of Korea, and the military-political crisis in which the Japanese prime minister "changed colors." Finally, through the sinister plots of the clandestine Cherry Blossom Society, we follow the deterioration of Japan into chaos, fascism, and world war.