Review: Allies against the Rising Sun The United States, the British Nations, and the Defeat of Imperial Japan

Abstract

ALLIES AGAINSTTHE RISING SUN The United States, British Nations, and Defeat of Imperial Japan Nicholas Evan Sarantakes Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2009. 458 pp. US $39.95 cloth ISBN 978-0700616695There is no shortage of books dealing with Anglo-American relations in Second World War. Two first-rate overviews, by William Roger Louis and Christopher Thorne, are particularly well known. The between American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and British prime minister, Winston Churchill, has been analyzed to point of exhaustion, but still lacks consensus - as does perennial issue of how AngloAmerican special relationship either did or did not develop during war. In addition, there are many studies looking at specialized matters. To mention only a few and to illustrate diversity of topic, there are valuable works on such matters as British propaganda in United States (Nicholas Cull), diplomacy of maritime logistics (Kevin Smith), and postwar fate of Hong Kong (Andrew Whitfield).Nicholas Sarantakes, an associate professor at Naval War College, is quite aware of these studies but contends that war in Pacific has been written disproportionately from an American perspective and wishes to provide a corrective. He does so by emphasizing contribution of what he terms the British Nations (British empire - or Commonwealth - would, in reviewer's opinion, be a better term, since it reflects both contemporary and subsequent scholarly usage) to planning for and actual defeat of Japan.Following in wake of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, Sarantakes takes an approach that straddles academic and popular. His stylistic introduction and epilogue could both have been easily deleted for an academic authence. However, such an approach does fit nicely with great emphasis that author puts on personalities involved. For professional historian, potted biographical sketches ofthe dramatis personae offer little that is novel. Indeed, for most part they are not based on any archival research but are merely condensations (in some cases, rather drastic condensations) of existing biographical studies, with little attempt to indicate how past experience might affect various individuals' views of Pacific War. What is new is wider range of subjects that author considers. In addition to usual suspects - Churchill, Roosevelt, British chiefs of staff and their American counterparts - Sarantakes looks at leading political figures in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, along with their closest advisers.What emerges is a larger picture ofthe war in Pacific, with British nations receiving much more attention than in previous studies. …