Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, Ron Powers

dismissed as only a threat. But after the “day of infamy,” newspaper maps of the Pacific and Asia were scrutinized at the kitchen tables of America.
    Now America was in a World War, a “two-ocean war.” Across the Atlantic, in Europe, the U.S. would be fighting in support of and with an allied force. But for years, Russian, English, and French troops would do most of the fighting and take the brunt of the beating. And it would be Stalin’s troops who would really beat Hitler: seventy-five percent of the German troops who died fighting in World War II were killed by Russian troops.
    Against Japan, however, America would stand virtually alone in the Pacific. Japan had violated American soil, and the first and last American battles of World War II would be fought there. The Pacific War would be “America’s War.”
     
    America went to war in 1941. The Europeans had been fighting since 1939. But for millions of Asians, World War II had begun a decade before, in 1931.
    Earlier in the century, Japanese civilians had lost control of the government to the military. Intent on making Japan into a world power, the military became preoccupied with Japan’s one glaring weakness: Japan had almost no natural resources, and its industrial base was at the mercy of imports whose supply lines could be cut. Japan, they argued, had to acquire a secure resource base to guarantee its industrial security.
    To the military, this goal was important enough to alter the very structure of Japanese society. The entire nation had to be militarized for the goal, and military thinking and training were imposed on each citizen.
    The military squeezed the Japanese populace in an iron vise. On one side was a militarized educational system that prohibited free thought. Schools became boot camps complete with military language and physical discipline. Youth magazines carried jingoistic articles such as “The Future War between Japan and America.” The final examination at the Maebashi middle school in March of 1941 required the students to discuss the necessity for overseas expansion. “It was commonplace for teachers to behave like sadistic drill sergeants, slapping children across the cheeks, hitting them with their fists, or bludgeoning them with bamboo or wooden swords. Students were forced to hold heavy objects, sit on their knees, stand barefoot in the snow, or run around the playground until they collapsed from exhaustion.”
    The other side of the vise was a regimen of draconian “thought control” laws that constrained all civilians. Imprisonment and torture were the fates of anyone who questioned authority.
    Using the deceptively neutral term “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” Japanese propaganda claimed that Japan’s aim was to free its neighbors from white colonial rule. Instead, Japan, like Nazi Germany, used a master-race mentality and a highly mechanized war machine to subjugate those it claimed to be freeing.
    Tokyo enslaved “those peoples who lacked the capacity for independence,” and stole their national resources. The Japanese attitude of superiority is evident in a document from the Imperial Rule Assistance Association entitled “Basic Concepts of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”: “Although we use the expression ‘Asian Cooperation,’ this by no means ignores the fact that Japan was created by the Gods or posits an automatic racial equality.”

    The nation “created by the Gods” initiated “co-prosperity” by raining terror down on Manchuria and China. With official approval and chilly detachment the Japanese army bombed Chinese cities and slaughtered everyone in its way, including unarmed men, women, and children.
    Japan’s first conquest was Manchuria in 1931. Then, to consolidate control of Manchuria, Japan attacked China in 1937.
    The Japanese army employed ruthless tactics in China. Japanese airplanes bombed defenseless civilians. Rats infected with deadly bacteria were