The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Keep Moving, Nothing To See Here

Right. So I guess it's about time for another update. Rather unfortunately for you, I have almost nothing to talk about. Maybe when the new U2 album comes out tomorrow, but since we all know I hate U2, maybe not.

Really about the only thing worth talking about for the moment is books. I've been doing a fair amount of reading lately. Considering the amount of BG42 that's gotten played lately, it ought to be rather appropriate that most of it is WWII reading. Since I exhausted about every WWII book imaginable back when I was, say, 8, I've been trying to take a little bit of a different approach this time. See, most of what's on the shelves is written from the Allied perspective. Winners write the history and all that. But not ALL the history. So I read a few things, starting with...

1. I Was A Kamikaze, by Ryuji Nagatsuka. About what you'd expect, given the title. It's an interesting little book for a few reasons: The author, who's not your typical Japanese militarist stereotype, and in fact was a university student and an intellectual with a love of French of all things; the look inside the kamikazes, of course; and a look at Japanese life in the last days of the war. Interesting stuff.

2. Nazi Prisoners of War in America, by Arnold Krammer. One of those things that doesn't get talked about much is the few hundred thousand Axis POWs that got kept in American camps _in America_ during the war. Very interesting stuff, from re-education efforts by the Americans to internal camp terror networks run by hardcore Nazis, from a relative lack of escapes by the prisoners to one of said escapees, who lived a normal life in the US until 1985 when he voluntarily gave himself up. The last, apparently, is the subject of another book by the same author which I should make the effort to hunt down and read.

3. God's Samurai, by Gordon Prange. Or, rather, two of his students, but whatever. This is a biography of Mitsuo Fuchida, who was the aerial attack leader at Pearl Harbor, was at Midway, and did a few other things after. After the war, he became, of all things, a Christian evangelist.

4. The Wild Blue, by Stephen Ambrose. Breaking the mold a bit, this one's about American B-24 crews over Germany. Or that's what it says it is, but mostly it's about George McGovern of all people, who you may remember as one of those guys that wasn't elected president 30 years ago. It turns out that he piloted one of the forementioned B-24s, and talked to Ambrose a whole bunch about it. It's not like you didn't know most of this stuff from, say, watching Memphis Belle, but still.

5. Singapore - the Japanese Version, by Masanobu Tsuji. This is my current reading material, written by the guy who developed the Japanese plans for the Malaya/Singapore campaign. Considering that the author apparently deeply believed in what Japan was doing, this is making for interesting reading not so much because of what he says as the way he's saying it.

Still waiting to be read:

1. Strong Men Armed: The United States Marines vs. Japan by Robert Leckie. Title ought to be self-explanatory. Somewhere in all this reading, I realized it had been quite a while (since I was 10 or 12) since I had read a comprehensive account of the Pacific theater. Hopefully this book will help me out some.

2. Decisive Battles of World War II: The German View by many many people, including ye olde German generals, apparently. Ought to be fairly self explanatory.

Assuming I don't get tired of the topic by the end of all this stuff, there's always this, this, this, this, and if I don't get tired of the subject by the end of that, this, this, this, this, this, this, and maybe this. Also, just because I've always wanted to read it, either this or this.

Posted by Dwip at November 22, 2004 4:59 PM