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By Root 1126 0

variations of climate and topography. In 1944 only around 12 percent of its surface was cultivated, because the remainder was too high, dry or steep—around half the country lies more than a mile above sea level. Hundreds of millions of Chinese eked out primitive lives in conditions of chronic misery. Zhu De, for instance, commander of Mao Zedong’s Communist armies, was born fourth among thirteen children of his parents. He was the last one to survive, for his younger siblings were drowned at birth in the absence of means to feed them. Although there were frequent outbreaks of plague—some deliberately propagated by the Japanese through their biological warfare Unit 731—there were no medicines. It became a commonplace prophylactic against infection to tie a live cockerel to the chest of a convenient corpse, to ward off spirits. Most of the population lived in huts built of mud and rubble. The average farm was less than four acres. Foreigners who visited China were enchanted by places of extraordinary beauty, “of lacquerware and porcelain381, embroidered silk and bridges over still pools, courtyards pierced by moon gates.” The dominant images, however, were of tragedy and destitution.

Photo Insert One

The president as U.S. commander-in-chief: in July 1944, in the midst of his re-election campaign, Roosevelt summoned MacArthur and Nimitz to meet him on Hawaii, allegedly to expound their plans for victory over Japan.

Admiral William “Bull” Halsey on the flag bridge of the battleship New Jersey as he led his Third Fleet towards the Philippines in September 1944.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN BURMA

Sikhs charge a foxhole.

Elephant transport played a significant role in enabling the Fourteenth Army to build bridges and move supplies amid some of the most intractable terrain on earth.

One of thousands of river crossings during the 1944–45 campaign.

The indomitable Bill Slim, probably the ablest and certainly the most sympathetic British field commander of the Second World War.

War in China, where at least fifteen million died. Scenes during the Japanese invasion, which inflicted untold suffering and destruction without giving Tokyo a decisive victory.

CHINESE LEADERS

Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai.

The puppet emperor Pu-Yi.

Chiang Kai-shek.

AT SEA

A snatched glimpse of the Japanese Combined Fleet on its passage towards destruction in September 1944.

USS Gambier Bay bracketed by Japanese fire during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

The cruiser Birmingham aids the stricken Princeton after a crippling air attack.

Commanders Nimitz, King and Spruance photographed aboard the cruiser Indianapolis.

COMMANDERS

Krueger and Kinkaid.

Kurita.

Ugaki.

ISLAND ASSAULTS

Men crouch, tensed aboard a landing craft.

Marine amphibious vehicles approach Peleliu.

“FLYBOYS”

A task group led by some of almost one hundred U.S. carriers at sea in late 1944.

A pilot in the “ready room.”

Launching a Hellcat.

One of the U.S. Navy’s foremost Pacific aces, Commander David McCampbell.

ASHORE IN THE PHILIPPINES

U.S. soldiers taking cover on Leyte in November 1944.

U.S. soldiers fighting through the wreckage of Manila in February 1945.

The Marines land on Iwo Jima.

Only a handful of Japanese, such as these men, chose surrender rather than death in the last stages of the bloody struggle for the island.

SOME AMERICANS IN THE PACIFIC

MacArthur.

Bill Bradlee.

Lieutenant Philip True.

Emory Jernigan.

Rear-Admiral Clifton Sprague.

THE PLIGHT OF NIPPON’S PRISONERS

A British survivor at Nakhon Pathom, Siam, in 1945.

Four Australians drag themselves to the U.S. submarine Pampanito, which had sunk the transport taking them to Japan. Most of their companions perished.

Japanese policy in China was determined overwhelmingly by the army, often against the strong wishes of Tokyo’s civilian politicians. By 1941, at a cost equivalent to 40 percent of Japan’s annual national budget, the invaders had gained most of the territory they wanted. For the Chinese people, the miseries