Long before its end, World War II became the focus of a vast number of books and articles, a body of literature that continues to grow at a rapid pace. This bibliography, which by necessity is highly selective, consists primarily of books, with journal articles and dissertations chosen to supplement certain topics. It is limited to items published in English, while including translated works whenever possible. Chronologically, it focuses on the period from Japan’s seizure of Manchuria in 1931 through the end of the Allied occupation of Japan in 1952. Among its subjects are the war’s military, diplomatic, political, social, economic, and scientific aspects, in addition to the lives of the people who participated in and directed the war. Important to the study of the war but largely omitted from this list are collections of documents published on microfilm and such vital sources as the U.S. Department of State’s multivolume Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS).
One impediment facing many Westerners studying the war is the large number of Japanese works that have not been translated. Although selected portions of the Japanese history of the approach to war have been published in English in works edited by James W. Morley, other significant records, such as the 102-volume Japanese official history, have not. An area needing more coverage in English-language works is Japan’s lengthy war with China, whose history has been further obscured by the Chinese civil war, limitations on access to Chinese archives, and the destruction of wartime documents. Among Japanese sources available in English are the extensive studies produced by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), which both relied heavily on Japanese records and postwar interviews. In the SCAP publication The Reports of General Mac Arthur, edited by Charles W. Willoughby, Japanese historians writing under American supervision during the Allied occupation described in detail Japan’s conduct of the war. Although the USSBS and SCAP reports are flawed, they contribute valuable information.
In contrast to the Sino-Japanese War, the conflict between the Western Allies and Japan has been explored in numerous and varied writings. Topics that have received particularly intense attention from writers and continue to generate strong discussion are the Japanese assaults on Western territories, especially Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, and the U.S. employment of atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945. Among the many analyses of the Pearl Harbor attack are two classic works: Gordon W. Prange’s At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (1981) and Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962). In the fierce debate regarding the decision to drop the atomic bomb, two of the leading revisionists are Gar Alperovitz and Barton J. Bernstein. Another subject of intense, longtime scrutiny is the wartime Grand Alliance of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which deteriorated into the cold war as communism spread across postwar Asia and Europe. One significant factor that is prompting reeval-uation and reconsideration of earlier World War II histories is the declassification of records relating to Allied signal intelligence, a process that began in the mid-1970s. Subsequent releases of records have made possible a number of works with fresh perceptions about the war with Japan. One final topic drawing special analysis is the wartime treatment of people of Japanese descent in the Americas.
Among the U.S. repositories housing important archives concerning the war are the National Archives, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, the Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Harry S. Truman presidential libraries, the U.S. Army Military History Institute, the George C. Marshall Research Library, and the MacArthur Memorial Archives. In the United Kingdom, major collections are located in the Public Record Office, the Liddell Hart Centre of King’s College, London, the University of Southampton, and the Churchill College Archives, Cambridge. The Australian War Memorial Research Centre holds the primary documents concerning Australia’s military participation in the war.
Many of these archives, in addition to those of other museums, organizations, and government agencies, have extended access to their holdings about the war through their on-line Web sites. Especially helpful sites regarding the military facets of the U.S. effort in the Pacific War, for example, are sponsored by the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the U.S. Naval Historical Center, and the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center.
This bibliography begins with a listing of specialized bibliographies that examine various aspects of the war against Japan. Two that provide excellent introductions are John J. Sbrega’s massive The War against Japan, 1941-1945: An Annotated Bibliography (1989) and Loyd Lee’s World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the War’s Aftermath, with General Themes: A Handbook of Literature and Research (1998).
A number of works provide good overviews of the war. One recent, major history of the war as a whole is Gerhard L. Weinberg’s A World at Arms: A Global History of World War 7/(1994). The standard work on the U.S. war against Japan is Ronald H. Spector’s Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (1985); British accounts include, among others, John Costello’s The Pacific War (1981) and Basil Collier’s The War in the Far East, 1942-1945: A Military History (1969). Two works focusing on Japan’s perspectives are Saburo Ienaga’s The Pacific War: World War IIand the Japanese, 1931-1945 (1978) and John Toland’s The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (1970). Other influential studies are John W. Dower’s War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific (1986) and Akira Iriye’s Power and Culture: The Japanese-American War, 1941-1945 (1981).
Among the most basic, reliable studies of the war are the official accounts of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. One British title of special interest is S. Woodburn Kirby’s five-volume The War against Japan (1957-1969). The U.S. Navy’s official history of the war is Samuel Eliot Morison’s 15-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War // (1947-1963). The volumes in the U.S. Army’s extensive series on the war are listed individually by author under different subject headings, as are many of the Australian, Indian, and U.S. Marine volumes. Extremely important for the U.S. strategic direction of the war is Grace P. Hayes’s The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War against Japan (1982), also an official history.
In the wealth of other books listed, two series are especially accessible to beginners and at the same time interesting to more advanced students of the war. Published by Time-Life Books (in the late 1970s and early 1980s) and Ballantine Books (1960s and early 1970s), these volumes are listed by individual authors under the appropriate subject categories. Also of general interest are a number of classic eye-witness accounts, including, among others, Clark Lee’s They Call It Pacific: An Eye-witness Story of Our War against Japan from Bataan to the Solomons (1943), Robert Sherrod’s Tarawa: The Story of a Battle (1954), Richard Tre-gaskis’s Guadalcanal Diary (1943), and Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya’s Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan (1955).
This bibliography is arranged by subject, as shown in the following outline. References following the headings in the actual bibliography indicate closely related divisions that the reader might wish also to check. No attempt has been made to cross-reference the biographies and memoirs, which span numerous categories. Abbreviations used in the bibliography include U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), His (or Her) Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO), New Zealand (N.Z.), the U.S. Army Office of the Chief of Military History (OCMH), the official series The U.S. Army in World War II (USAWWII), and abbreviations for states in the United States.