Implacable Foes

May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day—shortened to "V.E. Day"—brought with it the demise of Nazi Germany. But for the Allies, the war was only half-won. Exhausted but exuberant American soldiers, ready to return home, were sent to join the fighting in the Pacific, which by the spring and summer of 1945 had turned into a grueling campaign of bloody attrition against an enemy determined to fight to the last man. Germany had surrendered unconditionally. The Japanesewould clearly make the conditions of victory extraordinarily high. Following V-E Day, American citizens understandably clamored for their young men to be shipped back from Europe and longed for a return to a peacetime economy. Politics intruded upon military policy while a new and untested president struggled to control policy. The challenge of defeating the Japanese had come to seem nearly insurmountable. American casualty rates during the previous eighteen months led Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall to warn of the toll that "the agony ofenduring battle" would likely take. General Douglas MacArthur clashed with Marshall and Admiral Chester Nimitz over strategy. Meanwhile, under pressure, the Army began a program of partial demobilization of troops in Europe, which depleted units at a time when combat-tested soldiers were most needed. Inthis context of military emergency, the fearsome projections of the human cost of invading the Japanese homeland, and weakening social and political will in the American homeland, seemed to make victory, unconditional or otherwise, an increasingly distant prospect.In Implacable Foes, award-winning historians Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio bring to life the final year and a half of World War II in the Pacific, combining grand strategy and ground-level account, taking readers from the island-hopping campaigns in the spring of 1944—New Guinea to the Philippines to Okinawa and Iwo Jima—right up to the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Heinrichs and Gallicchio reveal more fully than ever before not onlythe Japanese policies of desperate defense, but also the sometimes rancorous debates on the home front, and in the process deliver a gripping battle narrative integrated with a provocative and revisionist discussion of American decision-making. The result is a masterful work of military history, one thatilluminates both the calculus of global war and the incalculable part played by individual sacrifice.

Two great historians have produced this stellar and extremely important book, adding critical new layers to the decision-making process of American leaders approaching the controversial end of the Asia-Pacific War. This is a thoroughly researched, judicious, and very sobering reminder of the complexity and uncertainty of events surrounding the final acts of World War II." - Richard Frank, author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire and Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle, A masterful history destined to be the definitive account of the final two years of America's war with Japan. The authors' comprehensive, original, and highly readable narrative sets new standards for understanding the political, military, and social pressures on U.S. leaders as they simultaneously fought a determined foe, demobilized American armed forces, and prepared for the complex transition to America's postwar domestic economy." - Edward Drea, author of Japan's Imperial Army, Implacable Foes is a superbly researched work of both original scholarship and synthesis on the last two years of the Pacific War by two eminent and award-winning historians. Their detailed analysis and conclusions will challenge some long-held beliefs about U.S. strategic planning and operations in this conflict while reinforcing others." - Mark A. Stoler, Editor, George C. Marshall Papers, Professor Emeritus of History University of Vermont, In their detailed and insightful analysis of the last year of the Pacific War, Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio tie military operations closely with the political, strategic, logistical, and even cultural context to provide a thorough assessment of the war, and they do so without losing any of the inherent drama of events." - Craig Symonds, author of Midway and Operation Neptune: The D-Day Landings and the Allied Invasion of Europe, A valuable and revealing study...For readers familiar with the military campaigns, the book is essential reading for its lucid treatment of the pressures that imperiled critical operations in a truly global war...the contribution of this vital book is its portrait of history as lived desperately in the moment; of the varied troubles that beset planners and commanders in the war's horrific last year; and of the mettle and vision of an American president whom history should underrate no longer. "Implacable Foes" shows war operations as a human ordeal even at the highest level, fueled by the exhaustible human spirit." - Wall Street Journal

Waldo Heinrichs is Dwight E. Stanford Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University. He is the author of American Ambassador: Joseph C. Grew and the Development of the United States Diplomatic Tradition, which won the Allan Nevins Prize. Heinrichs served as an infantryman in the U.S. Army's 86th Division, one of the last two divisions to be deployed to Europe in World War II and the first to be redeployed to the Pacific in preparation forthe invasion of Japan. He and his wife live in South Hadley, Massachusetts.Marc Gallicchio is a Professor of History at Villanova University and was a Fulbright Visiting Lecturer in Japan, 1998 - 1999 and 2004 - 2005. He is the author of The African American Encounter with Japan and China: Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895 - 1945, which won the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations Robert H. Ferrell book prize.