Pacific Fury
Peter Thompson

Published by Random House Australia in July 2008, Pacific Fury is the first one-volume study of the War against Japan in 20 years, combining vivid combat action with personal accounts, both military and civilian. Drawing on interviews with dozens of participants, their diaries, memoirs and photographs, as well as numerous official archives, Pacific Fury charts the origins and course of the conflict through four sections – 1. Rising Sun, 2. Darkest Days, 3. Afternoon Light, and 4. Atomic Sunset. Pacific Fury provides a new and controversial look at the conflict, with fresh sources of information in many key areas. The gripping narrative vividly portrays the role of Japanese militarists in provoking war with China; Japan’s expansion into Vichy-held Indochina after the fall of France in 1940; her sneak attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941; and the almost simultaneous attacks on Malaya, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand, Midway Island, Guam and Wake Island. It re-examines the Allies’ unpreparedness for a Pacific conflict which left the British Empire virtually defenceless behind the largely fictitious ramparts of Imperial Defence; it follows the rout in the jungles of Malaya, the fall of Singapore. Hong Kong and the Philippines, the Bataan Death March, the building of the Thai-Burma Railway and other horrors of the Japanese occupation that enslaved more than 100 million people.It covers on the destruction of Japan’s plan to isolate and perhaps invade the Australian mainland in two epic naval battles in the Coral Sea and at Midway Island in which Allied code-breakers gave the Allied Navy a huge advantage. It follows the fight-back in Papua-New Guinea and the Solomon Islands; the rivalry between Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur for control of the Allied war machine; the Battle of Leyte Gulf (the biggest sea battle in history) and the retaking of the Philippines; the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa with appalling loss of life, the Tokyo firestorms, and the war’s horrendous climax in the world’s first – and only - nuclear holocaust.