War In The Far East

Asian Armageddon, 1944–1945

Reviewed by Ivan A. Zasimczuk

Article published on: April 1, 2024 in the Army History Spring 2024 issue

Read Time: < 8 mins

In War in The Far East, Volume III: Asian Armageddon, 1944–1945, Peter Harmsen completes his trilogy of the Asian and Pacific war with a rare combination of succinct and excellently researched history of the last twenty months of World War II. This final volume picks up where he left off in Volume II: Japan Runs Wild, 1942–1943. The impressive range of his analysis covers key personalities, major battles and campaigns, tactics, operations and strategies, and both sustainment issues and other lesser-known aspects of this history. Overall, he balances the right amount of detail on each subject with a brevity of writing that easily keeps readers engaged. Although his focus is narrow at times and broadly sweeping at others, the diversity of themes and topics covered is a testament to the complexity of the Asia-Pacific Theater of World War II. With effortless transitions across time, space, and themes, he has produced a tightly woven and concise contribution to the field. This engaging, dense work of 186 pages, divided into nine chapters, will spark readers’ interest in this topic.

Typically, works about the conf lict between the Allies and the Japanese focus mainly on the fighting and politics of the war and short-shrift the non-Japanese Asian perspective of the conflict. Asian Armageddon clearly demonstrates the national and ethnic complexities of the Asia-Pacific Theater in a meaningful manner. Because they were Allies supported by the United States, most works include the contribution of General Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalist Army against the Japanese. However, fewer works give details about the other two Chinese forces; Mao Zedong and the Communists; and Wang Jingwei, the head of the Chinese collaborationist regime in Nanjing. In this volume, readers learn that American envoys serving in “rebel territory” in Yanan, in the “Dixie Mission” to the communists, were impressed by Mao and his organization (152). Harmsen describes how hopelessly knotted and complex the Chinese Civil War became as it resumed so terribly by November 1945 (180).

Harmsen demonstrates that some Asians welcomed the Japanese claim and message of liberation from European colonizers. The British were susceptible to this claim in India. The Japanese exploited the bitter resentment of Subhas Chandra Bose, head of the Nationalist Indian government-inexile, and the Indian National Army, which fought the British in Burma, hoping to liberate India from the British. Harmsen discusses the anxieties of various Asian peoples who, sensing the end of the war, feared that the British, French, and Dutch would return in their colonial capacity to reclaim the lands taken from them by the Japanese. For some, this fear was realized in worse ways than they could have imagined. The war’s end did not necessarily result in peace. As a result of the lawlessness and chaos of the war, in some cases, the British allowed areas they previously had ruled to be patrolled ruthlessly by the Japanese after the war ended until the British properly reestablished prewar colonial control (169). Readers learn of two war-induced famines, one in Indochina, where the Vietnamese resorted to cannibalism (128), and the other in Indonesia, which claimed 2.5 million lives (130). Harmsen’s inclusion of these significant events is fleeting, but they leave readers with indelible impressions.

Harmsen’s coverage of Operation Ichi-Go and other Japanese land offenses in China is especially welcome. China was a bright spot for the Japanese, as it was the only place on

the map where their forces were advancing and winning. The Japanese operational objective in June 1944 was to subdue Hunan Province and then neutralize the threat of China-based American bombers. The tactical objective was to seize Changsha, Hunan’s capital. Learning from three previous failures to capture Changsha, the Japanese deployed three massive columns across a 100-mile front from Wuhan toward Changsha. The Japanese earned a victory in three weeks through their improved tactics, as well as miscalculation and poor judgment from the Chinese. Chinese Nationalist General Zhang Deneng decided to preserve his force and forfeited Changsha after a sharp fight with the Japanese (46–47). Chaing Kai-shek was furious with Zhang for losing Changsha and its massive cache of artillery. Zhang was executed a few days later.

A revelation to this reader was the shockingly bad relationship between the Nationalist Army and the Chinese people, whom those forces were bound to protect and defend. This problem was rooted in the corrupt practices of undisciplined soldiers, who were inveterate thieves more interested in transporting smuggled and stolen goods rather than the accoutrements of war. Embedded American observers later testified that locals surrounded the retreating Nationalist Army and seized their weapons (50). It is no wonder that Nationalist commanders often reported the emergence of a fifth column, the mobilization of Chinese civilians against their own army (49). Harmsen captures these episodes often left out of many surveys of the Asian- Pacific war.

Besides a chronological development of the many Allied campaigns on land, at sea, and in the air, there are the individual struggles of those who fought and lived through these harrowing events. Harmsen’s battle narratives are from an extensive list of principal campaigns, which include Roi Namur, Kwajalein, Los Negros, Hollandia, Biak, Saipan, the Philippine Sea, Guam, Peleliu, Leyte Gulf, the various landings on the Philippine Islands, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the firebombing campaigns against Japan, and finally the Soviet drive into Manchukuo. Rather than a litany of battles, this sequence helps readers feel the war’s magnitude and mounting cost as each struggle had enormous human tolls. The ferocity of each fight was driven by the urgency to win each conflict to accelerate the war’s conclusion.

The work is enhanced by twenty-four pages of high-quality photographs that depict and graphically support the text. Another worthy inclusion is the thirteen operational-level maps that help clarify the major troop and ship movements. The maps establish a tyranny of distance and make clear the magnitude and true scale of these tasks.

The author’s tendency to deliver such critical information in small servings is an intended feature rather than a fault. However, the question remains for this reader: what is the main course? One may wonder what Harmsen thinks is most important. While readers are broadly exposed to all the events and issues, the overall effect is that it all has equal value and importance. For example, people less familiar with this era and area of World War II history may need clarification on Harmsen’s style. They potentially may fail to understand the genuine significance of the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He treats both critical events like any other campaign. Yet both represent a break in time and a new age.

In Asian Armageddon, Peter Harmsen has made a segment of complex history accessible. This volume is perfect for those with neither the time nor the need for in-depth coverage. It is best suited for executive defense officials and policymakers who are unfamiliar with this history. It will get them up to speed quickly. Additionally, this volume will serve well for entry-level students of this subject who may want broad exposure to these events. For readers who want deeper coverage, this volume could be supplemented with Ian Toll’s Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944–1945 (W.W. Norton, 2020).