Japan's post-war armed forces are a paradox, both embarrassing remnants of the past and valuable repositories of experience. This book charts the development of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) from 1954 as both unorthodox military institutions and servants of a civil society that decries militarism. Investigating JSDF contributions to Japanese and global security, the evolution of such contributions during and after the Cold War, and their possible reconfiguration for Japan's security needs ahead, Garren Mulloy offers insight into the Forces' past, present and future. He explores the characteristics and contradictions of Japanese policy, including novel approaches in response to an increasingly assertive China, the latent threat of North Korea and contributory pressure from the US. Though the American alliance remains the core of Japanese security, new partnerships and international overtures will also shape the Forces' place in Prime Minister Abe's new vision of 'proactive contributions to peace'. Defenders of Japan deconstructs how the JSDF have adapted and will continue to adapt within domestic norms, caught between unresolved legacies of Japan's imperial past and a dynamically shifting balance of future global power.

Two years before the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped bring a quick end to hostilities in the summer of 1945, U.S. planners began work on Operation Downfall, codename for the Allied invasions of Kyushu and Honshu, in the Japanese home islands. While other books have examined Operation Downfall, D. M. Giangreco offers the most complete and exhaustively researched consideration of the plans and their implications. He explores related issues of the first operational use of the atomic bomb and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, including the controversy surrounding estimates of potential U.S. casualties. Following years of intense research at numerous archives, Giangreco now paints a convincing and horrific picture of the veritable hell that awaited invader and defender. In the process, he demolishes the myths that Japan was trying to surrender during the summer of 1945 and that U.S. officials later wildly exaggerated casualty figures to justify using the atomic bombs to influence the Soviet Union. As Giangreco writes, “Both sides were rushing headlong toward a disastrous confrontation in the Home Islands in which poison gas and atomic weapons were to be employed as MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Charles Willoughby, succinctly put it, ‘a hard and bitter struggle with no quarter asked or given.’ Hell to Pay examines the invasion of Japan in light of the large body of Japanese and American operational and tactical planning documents the author unearthed in familiar and obscure archives. It includes postwar interrogations and reports that senior Japanese commanders and their staffs were ordered to produce for General MacArthur’s headquarters. This groundbreaking history counters the revisionist interpretations questioning the rationale for the use of the atomic bomb and shows that President Truman’s decision was based on real estimates of the enormous human cost of a conventional invasion. This revised edition of Hell to Pay expands on several areas covered in the previous book and deals with three new topics: U.S.-Soviet cooperation in the war against Imperial Japan; U.S., Soviet, and Japanese plans for the invasion and defense of the northernmost Home Island of Hokkaido; and Operation Blacklist, the three-phase insertion of American occupation forces into Japan. It also contains additional text, relevant archival material, supplemental photos, and new maps, making this the definitive edition of an important historical work.

Japan's post-war armed forces are a paradox, both embarrassing remnants of the past and valuable repositories of experience. This book charts the development of the Japan Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) from 1954 as both unorthodox military institutions and servants of a civil society that decries militarism. Investigating JSDF contributions to Japanese and global security, the evolution of such contributions during and after the Cold War, and their possible reconfiguration for Japan's security needs ahead, Garren Mulloy offers insight into the Forces' past, present and future. He explores the characteristics and contradictions of Japanese policy, including novel approaches in response to an increasingly assertive China, the latent threat of North Korea and contributory pressure from the US. Though the American alliance remains the core of Japanese security, new partnerships and international overtures will also shape the Forces' place in Prime Minister Abe's new vision of 'proactive contributions to peace'. Defenders of Japan deconstructs how the JSDF have adapted and will continue to adapt within domestic norms, caught between unresolved legacies of Japan's imperial past and a dynamically shifting balance of future global power.

Hold the Marianas is the first English language account of the World War II battle of the Marianas from the Japanese perspective. Employing diaries, messages, and oral histories in the English, Japanese, and Korean languages, the author demonstrates that the Japanese commanders were their own worst enemy. Despite the importance of the Marianas to the survival of the home islands, they were slowly reinforced and defended at the beach line, a terrible choice, in light of American naval and air bombardment capabilities. The book explains why the leadership held to this flawed defense. Hold the Marianas describes how the Japanese high command finally came to realize its errors. The result was better dug-in troops at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, prolonging the battles and inflicting higher American casualties. Had an in-depth defense been used in the Marianas, American casualties might have been four or five times greater.

The prolonged and bloody fighting for control of the Japanese occupied Pacific islands in World War II is a key point in 20th-century warfare. No two islands were alike in the systems and nature of their defensive emplacements, and local improvization and command preferences affected both materials used and defensive models. This title details the establishment, construction and effectiveness of Japanese temporary and semi-permanent crew-served weapons positions and individual and small-unit fighting positions. Integrated obstacles and minefields, camouflage and the changing defensive principles are also covered.

An illustrated account of one of the most important campaigns in the history of Japan and the origin of the kami kaze - a key part of Japanese national identity. From his seat in Xanadu, the great Mongol Emperor of China, Kubla Khan, had long plotted an invasion of Japan. However, it was only with the acquisition of Korea, that the Khan gained the maritime resources necessary for such a major amphibious operation. Written by expert Stephen Turnbull, this book tells the story of the two Mongol invasions of Japan against the noble Samurai. Using detailed maps, illustrations, and newly commissioned artwork, Turnbull charts the history of these great campaigns, which included numerous bloody raids on the Japanese islands, and ended with the famous kami kaze, the divine wind, that destroyed the Mongol fleet and would live in the Japanese consciousness and shape their military thinking for centuries to come.

Examines the U.S. plan to end the Second World War by invading Japan For more than a half century scholars and nonscholars alike have debated the ethics of dropping the atomic bomb, but rarely have they studied the American plan to invade Japan, the alternative to using the bomb to end the Second World War. Widely held beliefs about the strength of Japanese forces and the projected loss of American lives have been invoked to justify the decision to drop the bomb. John Ray Skates, however, argues that the invasion plan, code named Operation Downfall, until now has not been sufficiently studied to allow such a justification. In The Invasion of Japan he remedies that shortcoming and disputes many myths that have grown up around the plan.

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This study focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa Japan over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again—from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization, The Company and the Shogun presents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise.

What led two mortal enemies to become allies nine years after the end of World War II? When the Allies began their occupation of defeated Axis countries, many people favored a program of harsh reparation and demilitarization. For the United States, this was tempered with a desire not only to prevent such a war from happening again but to help the occupied countries rebuild their economic and political infrastructure. This aspiration, coupled with the rise of communist China and its perceived threat not only to Southeast Asia but the world, formed the catalyst for a U.S.-Japanese alliance. The alliance between the United States and Japan persists in spite of changing political world views. The changes which have affected world politics have often resulted in corresponding adjustments to the U.S.-Japan security agreement. From 1954 to the present day, this volume takes an in-depth look at the fundamental nature of the relationship. The book addresses the historical origins of security relations in both countries and the ways in which these formed the basis for their postwar security cooperation and examines the negotiated set of shared military, economic and political agreements and expectations which have shaped their relationship. The work's main focus, however, is the way in which this alliance has evolved. Four cases of significant policy change--in 1960, 1981, 1987 and 1997--are analyzed along with a discussion of the relevant strategic and tactical realities of the time. The reactions of the United States and Japan to recent events such as Iraq's Kuwait invasion and the 2001 terrorist attacks on America are also discussed. Numerous tables are included.