Implacable Foes

The big war still yields big books, despite academic presses' preference for short ones. Here is another, by the veteran historians Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio. In its density, meticulous documentation, evenhanded judgment, and precise, sober prose, it resembles the many official United States histories of World War II (not a bad standard) on which it draws, along with abundant other secondary and primary sources. Its encyclopedic approach means that many readers will use it as a reference work, delving only into particulars of interest to them. That approach also makes it easy to miss the big arguments. Implacable Foes hugs the ground. Its focus is the Pacific war, especially the last year, as planned and waged by top-level naval and ground commanders such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz. In a book otherwise so comprehensive, the strategic air war against Japan, in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt invested much, barely gets covered (the devastating fire-bombing of Tokyo and other cities in the spring of 1945 gets dispatched in one page (p. 284), and the advent of atomic bombs in scarcely more). The omission is puzzling given the authors' insistence, for which they make a strong case, that the A-bombs' use was necessary to end the war expeditiously. The lens of race on the war applied by John Dower and others is only briefly noted and then set aside, as is the topic of the impending Cold War. The Japanese story is told only enough to make sense of the American story. The experiences of those in combat (“Beyond Human Endurance,” chapter 8 is titled) are briefly though pointedly sketched; women are virtually absent

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