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Books

Hirohito, MacArthur and other villains

Francis Pike’s magnificent Hirohito’s War argues that misguided American policy in 1941 continues to reshape the Pacific theatre today

4 July 2015

9:00 AM

4 July 2015

9:00 AM

Hirohito’s War: The Pacific War, 1941–1945 Francis Pike

Bloomsbury, pp.1110, £30, ISBN: 9781472596703

The history of ‘great events’, Voltaire wrote, is ‘hardly more than the history of crimes’. Physically, the war in Asia was the second world war’s greatest event. The Asian theatre, much of it water, was seven times larger than the European theatre. America’s mobilisation was the most complex in history, Japan’s crimes among the most sadistic.

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