To the End of the Earth: The U.S. Army and the Downfall of Japan, 1945

Historian McManus (Island Infernos) concludes his trilogy on the U.S. Army in the Pacific theater of WWII with a dramatic account of the period from the recapture of the Philippines through the invasion of Okinawa and Japan’s surrender. As McManus makes clear throughout, the Army faced fierce resistance in the war’s final months: nearly 300,000 Japanese troops took to the hills and mountains of the Philippines island of Luzon to “fight to the death” in hopes of slowing the American advance. In Burma, U.S. military engineers, with the help of Chinese, Burmese, and Indian laborers, opened a supply route between India and China to provide a lifeline to American troops and their Nationalist allies fighting in western China. According to one Army historian, the amount of soil moved to construct the road was enough “to build a continuous six-foot-high wall from New York to San Francisco.” The campaign across the Pacific culminated in the bitter, monthslong fight for Okinawa, where an entire field hospital was devoted to caring for combat fatigue cases. Throughout, McManus seesaws between command-level decision-making and the frontline experiences of American and Japanese soldiers, and shines a light on the suffering, fortitude, and resilience of those whose homelands were invaded. Wide-ranging yet granular, it’s a fitting capstone to the series. Agent: Michael Congdon, Don Congdon Assoc. (May)