The Pacific Campaign: World War II, the U.S.-Japanese naval war, 1941-1945 by Dan Van Der Vat

The Pacific Campaign: World War II, the U.S.-Japanese naval war, 1941-1945 by Dan Van Der Vat is an excellent history of this theater of operations in World War II. The book is quite long weighing in at nearly 180,000 words but often reads like a summary due to the amount of information crammed in. It is still quite readable.

Der Vat is quite opinionated when discussing the various operations. He doesn't think much of Douglas MacArthur for instance.

There is a quite long introduction that gives a superb summary of Imperial Japanese history prior to the war. This helps explain the often bizarre decisions that to place throughout the conflict. The war with China is covered in possibly the clearest way I've come across before. All of this in about 50 pages.

Unfortunately the conclusion is about two pages long. I wonder if he had a maximum length clause in his contract and was very close to it. This being sent an excellent book.

Highly recommended!

Is available through Abebooks.



For more WWII book reviews take a look at My World War II bookshelf.