Author: D. M. Giangreco
Year: 2020
Topics: Pacific War, Operation DOWNFALL
Description: This new Updated and Expanded Edition of Hell to Pay elaborates on several areas examined in the previous version and includes new chapters on US-Soviet cooperation in the war against Imperial Japan:
• Projects Milepost and Hula, the secret Lend Lease expansion to prepare Soviet Far East forces for the planned invasion of Manchuria (chapter 11, "To break Japan's Spine").
• US, Soviet, and Japanese plans for the invasion – and defense – of the northernmost Japanese home island of Hokkaido (chapter 17, The Hokkaido Myth).
The Updated and Expanded Edition of Hell to Pay provides a fuller understanding of the depth of US-Soviet cooperation and effectively undercuts the ungrounded opinions of President Truman’s atom bomb decision and endgame in the Pacific put forth by Cold War pundits and more recently by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa in his Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan.
Both the evidence, and the analysis, presented by Giangreco effectively refutes any notion of a so called “race” by Truman to drop atomic bombs on Japan before Stalin could enter the Pacific war. “In reality, though,” says Giangreco, “there really was a race of sorts involving the United States and Soviet Union in the Far East. It was a race by both allies to get Red armies into the war against Japan as quickly as possible.”
Also new in the Updated and Expanded Edition of Hell to Pay is a detailed account of Operation Blacklist, the three-phase insertion of American occupation forces into Japan (appendix D).
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