Customer Reviews

Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb

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Wow! This is a truly magnificent piece of historical scholarship as well as a fascinating example of how entertaining and riveting a well-written recounting of the events of the war in the Pacific can be. The author presents an absolutely gripping account of the Allied assault on Okinawa, the last necessary step in the island hopping strategy of the American drive toward final victory against the Japanese. All this is done in a carefully researched and quite well documented account of the day-to-day details of the siege of the island.

Okinawa absolutely had to be taken in order to have a point for both staging and launching an invasion of the home islands, and both sides recognized the value of this piece of real estate in strategic terms. Thus the struggle over it was the most ferocious and bloody of the entire 44 month-long war in the Pacific, with over 91,000 Japanese, 23,000 Americans, and 150,000 Okinawans killed in the three-month long battle. It was also significant in that it served as a key indicator to the Allied command structure of just how tenacious Japanese defense of their home islands was likely to be.

In this sense, it acted as an extremely persuasive supporting argument in the highest circles of the American government for the use of the atomic bomb to bring Imperial Japan to the negotiating table and thereby avoid hundreds of thousands or even millions of Allied casualties. Revisionist arguments to the contrary, the author offers compelling evidence that the cultural tenets of Japanese culture, including those of emphasizing national honor, avoiding the loss of face, and including "kamikaze" type ritual suicide, led not only to the horrors of what happened at Okinawa but were also leading to fervent and desperate preparations for a ferocious, "to the death" type defense of the home islands.

This book is important, then, not only for its contribution to helping us better understand the last and most hotly contested battle in the Pacific campaign, but also for providing a much clearer understanding of the cultural context in which the decision to use the atomic bomb was made. Disregarding this evidence leads one to underestimate just how savage that invasion would have been, and how many Allied and Japanese lives were saved by use of the bomb. This book is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the last several months of the war, and how those events influenced the decision to use the bomb.

Having read this book when it was first published in hardback some years ago I am still to find another book that can better the author's account of this terrible Pacific War battle. Gerald Astor's book 'Operation Iceberg' comes close but in a much different style. George Feifer's research was in-depth and exhaustive, his style of writing is excellent. This is a finely written combat narrative that utilises accounts of the participants on sides; soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians. It is a haunting account and some of the stories of the fighting are truly evocative. I found that I could not put this book down and the narrative just raced along carrying me into this terrible maelstrom of battle and carnage. This is a great book and I hope that every American appreciates what it's young men were asked to do doing the Second World War. No serious student of the Pacific War during WW2 should be without this book.

Tennozan recounts the terrible and merciless battle for Okinawa fought in the spring and summer of 1945. Like many of the new generation of popular American histories about the Second World War, Tennozan is big, slickly presented, and marvelously written - with nary a citation in sight. It's this last fact which makes some of Tennozan a truly frustrating read. When Feifer writes that MacArthur concluded that the invasion of Kyushu and Honshu would cost the United States a million casualties, the well informed reader will know that MacArthur's only official study predicted about about one fifth that number. Did MacArthur revise his estimates? Did he conduct another study? We do not know because Feifer does not provide us with a reference. This would be unacceptable in academic history - and it gives the casual reader a distorted impression of the facts.

Feifer has subtitled his book "The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb". It is his thesis that the horrific American casualties at Okinawa convinced the administration that the atomic bomb ought to be used. But this view is incorrect: the atomic bomb would have been used even if there had been no American casualties at Okinawa at all; furthermore, the Joint Chiefs apparently believed that the invasion would have to go forward even after the use of the atomic bomb, and preparation for Operation Olympic continued right up until Japan's surrender. There was never any real painstaking decision to use the bomb: no one in authority at the time seriously proposed not using it. America was at war, Japan could not retaliate in kind, and those war leaders who expressed misgivings about its use (Admiral Leahy and General Eisenhower, for instance) either did not express them at the time or forcefully enough to change anyone's mind.

What Feifer does do exceptionally well is recount this cruel battle from the viewpoint of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who fought it: their voices are often forgotten in academic history. Here the story is told through their eyes: they are at once heroic, inhumanly brave, tough, exhausted, terrified, and desperate to survive. Feifer is also to be commended for giving a human face to an enemy usually caricaturized as mindless automotons, suicidal drones with no greater wish than to die for their Emperor. Nor are the Okinawans who suffered terribly during those three months forgotten, according to Feifer, as many as 200,000 were casualties during the battle.

The Battle for Okinawa was not, as some of other reviewers have contended, the biggest battle of the war (the US suffered 23,000 dead at Okinawa; at Stalingrad, the Soviet Union lost about 800,000) nor was it, by many standards, the bloodiest land battle in which Americans have fought: at Gettysburg, roughly as many Americans were killed on the ground in three days eighty years earlier. But it was one of the truly great combined military operations in history, and those citizen soldiers who did service there can be proud of all they acheived in overthrowing an enemy as tenacious and ruthless as any in history. If Tennozan accomplishes anything, it is proving to us, despite the innumerable claims to the contrary, that the young men of a democracy, when called upon, were at least as tough, smart, and brave as the young men produced by the dictatorships.

Wow! This is a truly magnificent piece of historical scholarship as well as a fascinating example of how entertaining and riveting a well-written recounting of the events of the war in the Pacific can be. The author presents an absolutely gripping account of the Allied assault on Okinawa, the last necessary step in the island hopping strategy of the American drive toward final victory against the Japanese. All this is done in a carefully researched and quite well documented account of the day-to-day details of the siege of the island.

Okinawa absolutely had to be taken in order to have a point for both staging and launching an invasion of the home islands, and both sides recognized the value of this piece of real estate in strategic terms. Thus the struggle over it was the most ferocious and bloody of the entire 44 month-long war in the Pacific, with over 91,000 Japanese, 23,000 Americans, and 150,000 Okinawans killed in the three-month long battle. It was also significant in that it served as a key indicator to the Allied command structure of just how tenacious Japanese defense of their home islands was likely to be.

In this sense, it acted as an extremely persuasive supporting argument in the highest circles of the American government for the use of the atomic bomb to bring Imperial Japan to the negotiating table and thereby avoid hundreds of thousands or even millions of Allied casualties. Revisionist arguments to the contrary, the author offers compelling evidence that the cultural tenets of Japanese culture, including those of emphasizing national honor, avoiding the loss of face, and including "kamikaze" type ritual suicide, led not only to the horrors of what happened at Okinawa but were also leading to fervent and desperate preparations for a ferocious, "to the death" type defense of the home islands.

This book is important, then, not only for its contribution to helping us better understand the last and most hotly contested battle in the Pacific campaign, but also for providing a much clearer understanding of the cultural context in which the decision to use the atomic bomb was made. Disregarding this evidence leads one to underestimate just how savage that invasion would have been, and how many Allied and Japanese lives were saved by use of the bomb. This book is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the last several months of the war, and how those events influenced the decision to use the bomb.

This is the book ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings should have read before he belittled World War II veterans for believing -- the word is his, oozing with condescension -- BELIEVING their lives were spared by the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan. It is the book Smithsonian Institution officials should have read before they presented their skewed, politically correct version of the advent of the atomic age. It is the book to be read by anyone who harbors illusions that Japan in 1945 was a tottering, vanquished foe that did not deserve the destruction it suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For all these, "Tennozan" will serve as a frightening and disturbing trip into reality.

Yet this major historical work, which is both enclycopedic in scope and engrossing in presentation, does not propagandize to justify America's decisive attack on Japan. Rather, author George Feifer allows the stark and irrefutable evidence of World War II's biggest, most gruesome battle to stand on its own. And it does, illustrating with gut-wrenching effect the murderous, suicidal mindset of the Japanese Empire as the Second World War drew to a close.

But Feifer's landmark work is more than just a chronicle of the gory three-month battle, and the two bombs that mercifully ended the war. It is an explanation of why the Japanese fought the way they did, why such expenditures of blood and materiel were needed to subdue them, and why nothing less than complete and total destruction of the nation itself was going to be necessary in order for Americans to win the war.

"Tennozan" shows how the Japanese, despite enormous losses in their 3 1/2-year tangle with the United States, had 10,000 kamikaze planes hidden in reserve for defending the mainland, and how every man, woman and child -- 100 million of them -- was a combat suicide mission waiting to happen.

Brilliantly written and exhaustively researched, "Tennozan" is a must-read that will enrich any private, public or school library.

One must, or should, visit Okinawa to get a true appreciation for the story of this epic battle. The author does a masterful job of putting you right in the thick of the fight. You can almost smell the gore and hear the sounds of battle. Of particular interest to me were the accounts of how the Japanese trained their troops. One can better understand their dedication to their Emporer when one sees the brutal "indoctrination" these Japanese troops received. As a U. S. Marine for 21+ years I have been fortunate enough to have been stationed on the island of Okinawa several times. I have toured the battlefields where so many fought and died. This book put me right there in 1945 with the Marines of that time. The book is a must read for all who have an interest in military history in general and in the Pacific campaigns of WWII specifically. I would recommend it enthusiastically and without reservation. Outstanding work Mr. Feifer!!!

In Tennozan, Governor Ota tells of the morning he first felt hope after the Battle of Okinawa was over. Still a boy, but now, with grizzly experience that left very little child in him, he dipped a bamboo stick in his coffee and wrote these words over and over: SHINSEI SAISEI SHINSEI SAISEI-- Rebirth, Resurrection, Rebirth, Resurrection.

I grew up in Okinawa, so leftover signs from the Battle of Okinawa were common and thus, sometimes not thought about. My school was built on a ridge that WWII's 'bloodiest battle of the Pacific'was fought on; elderly women would occasionaly leave offerings at a deigo tree on campus. Friends' parents and grandparents had lived through it. Memorials were tourist attractions also good for fieldtrips. So the battle was all around and yet after reading Tennozan, I realised how much I never knew.

Although Feifer is American, he obviously has a very deep understanding of Okinawan culture and thinking. While he gives plenty of attention to the American perspective and experience, he does his best to give the Okinawan perspective just as much.

The highlight of the book is his following of Governor Ota's childhood story as a thread throughout the book. I had never heard his story, although I knew he'd been a young teen during the war. I never had considered that the same gracious, well-respected governor that my dad met with on occasion was once in the middle of a living hell and yet had managed to come out as a phoenix.

Tennozan reveals the extent of the horror that Okinawans were trapped within of this part of the war in a way that gripped me as it never had before. Equally, its portrait of the extent of the Okinawans' amazing courage, forgiveness, and will to live also gripped me as never before.

I have read just about every book on the Okinawa Campaign in or out of print. I spent three years there as an adolecent walking the fields and exploring the caves and collecting the detritus of the battle. Mr. Fiefer has done a tremendous job in melding the viewpoints of both sides into a riveting account of the battle. The accounts of Eugene Sledge (With the Old Breed) and William Manchester (Good Bye Darkness) convey the personal impact of the struggle, but Mr. Fiefer conveys the larger impact and the shear scope of the carnage. In so doing he makes a compelling argument as to why our politicians decided to use atomic weapons to end the war.

He makes it clear this was not the quick landing at Tarawa, the mobile war in Europe, the hell in a small pace of Iwo Jima. This was the worlds largest single battle encompassing warfare in the sky on the ground and on the ocean. I was 3 months of the frontal assault warfare of WWI, along a static 10 mile front involving 300,000 combatants and 500,000 civilians, thousands of ocean vessels, thousands of aircraft and human guided missles, all resulting in approximately 370,000 combatant and civilian casualties and 300,000 deaths (pilots reported smelling the stink of bodies as they flew over the battlefield).

This is not a history of every combat and non-combat unit. The Army's Green Books and the Marine's Red Books do that. Mr. Fiefer wanted to paint it's grisly scope on a broader canvas to include the civilians and combatants of both sides. He has done a superb job. This book helps people understand the reasoning behind our country's decision to use the Bomb at a time when America's decision to use the Bomb is being second guessed and undergoeing attempts at revisionism.

I do not come from the background of many of those reading WWII books. I read this book looking for general information on the Battle of Okinawa and more specifically corraboration of information left by my father who fought there. This book is extensively researched and incredibly documented with the voices of those who lived and died there. Other reviewers of this and later additions have complained that it is not a Military History---one could argue convincingly that it is more a military history than the overly sanitized versions one is usually offered. Yes, it does not have the usual maps, diagrams and extensive strategies but in its place is the brutally bloody and human side of War.

At the outset my father claimed that the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives. Honestly I had trouble swallowing this argument. However, after reading Tennozan, George Feifer has brought me around to my Father's line of thinking. My father was stationed on Nagasaki after Okinawa so he was in a position to compare the two.

After researching on the internet and in other books about Okinawa I could not find corroboration of my father's claim that attrocities had been committed on Okinawa by American's just as horrible as that of the My Lai massacres in Viet Nam. This book includes a chapter "American Atrocities." Although not comforting to the American psyche it is none the less important to have a full picture of the brutality of War from all sides.

An unexpected surprise was to glean the day to day life of a Marine and to understand what being a Marine meant to my father and to all those who wear the globe and anchor. Reading this book was a very personal journey. One I feel is worth taking. In honor of my father HQ Co. 1st Battalion, Eighth Marines, 2nd Division.

Tennozan is a masterpiece. It exposes the barbarity of war and shines the spotlight on the conflict that took place on Okinawa and the toll it took on the combatants. Overshadowed by the end of the war in Europe, Okinawa has been long forgotten except by these that fought there. The largest battle of the Pacific war, it dwarfed Iwo Jima and Tarawa in scope and casualties. In the short space of 3 months over a quarter of a million people died, combatant and civilian alike. Veterans compared the fighting there to something out of WWI, barbaric, cruel, dehumanizing. The primary fight was not one of survival but sanity. Okinawa saw the largest number of "combat fatigue" cases the U.S. forces had experienced. The author does a brilliant job taking the reader to the muddy corpse strewn killing fields of Okinawa. He shows how the terrible casualties influenced American decision making on employment of the a-bomb. Lastly, he shows how the Okinawans, were victims of a struggle not of their making. Then as today, they are victims of a struggle between two superpowers. A mesmerizing and non-stop read.