Customer Reviews

When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945

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Students of Sino-Japanese History will know that very few military histories of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 were ever written in English. This largely reflects the lack of interest in the West about this important theater of WW2 - which is usually passed over, with Western focus directed exclusively to Europe and the US war in the Pacific. This is a shame and a tragedy for the Sino-Japanese War was vast in scale - in terms of land areas, numbers of combatants, the numbers of civilians affected and the spill-over effects it had on other theaters of WW2. The Holocaust of European Jews is well-known, but how many in the West know about the Rape of Nanjing ? How many in the West understood the significance of China's contribution to victory in Asia ? How many in the West can say how far westward Japan's ambitions would have led if not checked in China ? Obviously, the West has much to learn about this colorful chapter in history. And Dick Wilson's book is THE place to look.

Students of Sino-Japanese history will also know Dick Wilson's book well. In 3 continents and over 10 countries, countless students, historians, doctors, scientists and casual readers I have spoken to seem to know this book well ... over 20 years after it was first published !! That's basically because Dick Wilson's book is still the ONLY popular military history of the war ever written in English. Oh sure, there are countless military histories in Chinese popular press (not Japanese because Japan officially has a 'different' view of history) and many academic texts exploring this war in English. But the latter are so scholarly and academic that they are beyond the attention span of the average reader. Dick Wilson's book is one you can pick up at anytime and have a good, satisfying read. The narrative is exciting, action-packed, full of amusing anecdotes and interesting events and yet sober and sympathetic in the right places. The author brings the charisma and quirks of the main characters in the war to vivid life. The brilliance, follies, and unique savagery of this ferociously fought war are presented with almost CNN-realism. Dick Wilson uses 1st hand witness accounts of the events of the war to captivating effect. It's as good to read as a good novel - yet you are assured through every page that the facts have been authoritatively researched. So much so that many students will find details and insights to the charcters that they probably never knew before. What a brilliant way to study this fascinating, epic war !

I first read this book in high school. It has remained on my list of 'desert island books' ever since. I was disappointed it has never been reprinted, or had a second edition. I was disappointed no other similar books have ever been written in English. In the end, I couldn't resist and book a used copy of this book. I arrived in 'well read' condition - I can understand why.

Dick Wilson's book on the land war in China during world war two is one of the exceedingly few comprehensive volumes on the subject in English, and as such is valuable to most students of the subject. That being said, this book tends to paint with a broad brush the titanic clash that occurred in China between the Japanese China Expeditionary Army and the Chinese Nationalist Army, and completely excludes the Chinese Communists's role in the struggle for China. Nevertheless, in combination with Barbara Tuchman's biography of Stillwell, as well as Ronald Spector's "Eagle Against the Sun," the casual enthusiast and the serious student of the Pacific War will be able to form a detailed chronology of the war, understand all major issues related to the Pacific theater, and gain a "ground-level" insight into the brutal reality of the China-Burma-India/Pacific Theater. As a necessary tonic against the tendency of most scholars to bury the CBI theater in an afterthought chapter at the back of voluminous chronicles of the European Theater of operations in WW2, this book is an invaluable resource.

Plenty of books out there on the Pacific War that give a glance at the events in Asia but relativly few that focus on the sino-jap war. This is unfortuanate because it is important to understand to get a true grasp of the importance of China in the great conflict. Book gives us a look into the leaders, troop movements, and phases of the war. I dont agree with other review that says its unbalanced at all. Also talks alot about the unconventional warfare used by the chinese and the negative effects of the jap atrocities as well as possible motives behind them.

Would have liked it better if it said more about events in Manchuria before 37 it stil is easy to understand for average reader.

Cloth over boards; 269 pp; b&w illustrations. Released with dustjacket.

Chronology, some maps, Note on Names, Index, Notes on Sources.

TABLE OF CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS

Marco Polo Bridge

Shanghai Falls

Down to the Yellow River

The Rape of Nanjing

Battle for Xuzhou

Wuhan Captured

The Partisans

China Wins at Changsha

The Hundred Regiments

No End in Sight

Allies at Last

The Flying Tigers

Defense of Changde

Second Try in Burma

The Ichi-go Offensive

Surrender

Here is some of the blurb...

"When shots rang out on China's famous Marco Polo Bridge in 1937, one of the bloodiest and cruellest wars ever to be fought between two nations began. Before its eight years of carnage were over, over ten million people, mostly Chinese, had died and the world's largest nation lost nor merely the cream of its youth but also a decade of progress and development."

"In this first-ever account of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, Dick Wilson traces the ebb and flow of the battle lines as the Japanese invadeers vainly sought a decisive victory over their old enemy."

"This was the war that saw the Rape of Nanjing...as well as countless cases of heroism and valour...."

The long conflict between China and Japan is a very difficult subject for any history writer, so Dick Wilson deserves credit for at least giving it a try. I had a basic understanding of the war from 1937-1945, but there was much I did not know. "Tigers" does fill in some gaps, but I was still left wanting in the end. The impression I got on reading the book was that it is not comprehensive enough to encompass a conflict comparable in scale to the enormous confrontation between the USSR and Germany from 1941-1945. Nevertheless the book does provide information about the major battles during this period, and gives some flavor of the points of view of Chiang-Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang (KMT) and Mao and the Communist Chinese Party (CCP).

In Wilson's defense, some of the difficulties in writing a comprehensive history of the Sino-Japanese War must be pointed out. There are multiple sides from which any writer would have to gain source material in order to create a truly objective history: The People's Republic of China (PRC, the Mainland), the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan), Japan, the United States, Britain, the USSR, and Germany. The real problem with source material from the first three nations present the biggest obstacles. The PRC, ROC, and Japan all have axes to grind and points of view that conflict with the others. The KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after their defeat by Mao and the Communists in the aftermath of the civil war that followed Japan's surrender to the Allies in 1945. Even though the PRC has become more open since Wilson wrote "Tigers" in the 1980s, it is still controlled by the Communists, who fought an ongoing war with the KMT both before and at the same time as the conflict with Japan. It is still a repressive dictatorship and any source material obtained from the PRC must be used with that in mind. On the other hand, Taiwan has mostly been run by KMT exiles since 1949, and information gained from them must also be taken with a grain of salt. Japan has been criticized in recent years for minimizing or omitting altogether the atrocities they committed during the war. The bottom line is that Wilson did not have a full slate to work with. Any new effort at creating a narrative of this long and complex conflict would have to balance the many nations, parties, and interests involved.

The rise of the PRC as a major world power in the last few decades makes such a history essential in understanding how China, Taiwan, and Japan fit into the world order as we see it today. What is needed from the Western point of view is someone with a similar approach to David Glantz, who has made the WWII Russo-German conflict his specialty. Glantz had the good fortune of beginning his series of books soon after the fall of the USSR, which resulted in an opening up of former Soviet archives. Glantz's books have gone far to provide new insights into what happened in that war, such as "Zhukov's Greatest Defeat," his detailed tome on Operation Mars, a major defeat of Soviet forces in 1942 unknown to the West until the book was published in 2005. Any attempt at a comprehensive history of the Sino-Japanese War will require years of research, a great deal of patience, and some real diplomatic skills. Perhaps the best approach would be to follow the model Rick Atkinson used in his "Liberation Trilogy," dividing it up into three volumes. This would enable the writer to include a detailed examination of the Japanese takeover of Manchuria in 1931, which some consider the real beginning of the Sino-Japanese conflict.

This book gives a superficial and unbalanced overview of the grossly neglected subject of the Sino-Japanese war. Though it gives an operational level description of the war 1937-1945 it lacks depth in too many areas. Mr. Wilson uses mostly secondary sources, primarily Chinese, western eyewitnesses and journalists reports of the conflict. The author shows no attempt to critically analyze or assess the veracity of his sources or of claims made by some participants. Some of the episodes have clearly anecdotal character and some seem to be based on contemporary newspaper headlines. We are not given even
a cursory overview of the diplomatic, economic and political background or the causes of the war. The comparison of the opposing forces, their strengths and weakness is minimal and inadequate. The coverage of the relationship of the Kuomintang and communist forces is incomplete. The author also uses the new orthography for the names and places in China (like Jiang Jieshe for Chang Kai Shek or Nanjing for Nanking) which makes reading only more inconvenient for anyone not fluent in Chinese.