Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War, July 1937-May 1942

by Richard B. Frank

Overview

“A sweeping epic.… Promises to do for the war in the Pacific what Rick Atkinson did for Europe.” —James M. Scott, author of Rampage

In 1937, the swath of the globe east from India to the Pacific Ocean encompassed half the world’s population. Japan’s onslaught into China that year unleashed a tidal wave of events that fundamentally transformed this region and killed about twenty-five million people. This extraordinary World War II narrative vividly portrays the battles across this entire region and links those struggles on many levels with their profound twenty-first-century legacies. In this first volume of a trilogy, award-winning historian Richard B. Frank draws on rich archival research and recently discovered documentary evidence to tell an epic story that gave birth to the world we live in now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324002116
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	784
Sales rank:	290,882
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard B. Frank is an internationally acclaimed historian of the Asia-Pacific War. He was an aerorifle platoon leader with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam and is the author of Guadalcanal and Downfall. He is a member of the Board of Presidential Counselors of the National WWII Museum and lives in Annandale, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Prologue The Marco Polo Bridge 1

Chapter 1 "China Cannot Be Lost" 9

Chapter 2 "The Bombs and the Bullets and the Bayonets of the Japanese Are Ruthless" 37

Chapter 3 "Water as a Substitute for Soldiers" 59

Chapter 4 "The Greatest Migration of People in All History" 86

Chapter 5 "A Despicable Urge to Live!" 105

Chapter 6 "Japan's Prince of Self-Destruction" 128

Chapter 7 "One Hundred Evils and Not a Single Good" 163

Chapter 8 "Leaping off the Veranda" 175

Chapter 9 "Our Anxiety Is About China" 210

Chapter 10 "This Dispatch Is to Be Considered a War Warning" 228

Chapter 11 "Air Raid, Pearl Harbor, This Is No Drill" 266

Chapter 12 "Issue in Doubt" 301

Chapter 13 "It Was Like Being Lost in Fog" 332

Chapter 14 "We Are Depending for Our Lives on Kindly but Slow-Witted Infants in Arms" 348

Chapter 15 "Men Would Follow Them, Suffer, and Be Glad About It" 385

Chapter 16 "Only War Proves What Is Correct and What Is Wrong" 421

Chapter 17 "Abandoned My 100,000 Soldiers in Foreign Jungles" 454

Chapter 18 "We Are Not Barbarians" 487

Acknowledgments 523

Notes 529

Bibliography 687

Map and Illustration Credits 713

Index 717

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/06/2020

Military historian Frank (Downfall) taps a massive, multicontinent array of sources to deliver the definitive account of the first phase of WWII in the Pacific. Frank begins more than four years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with the July 1937 skirmish between Japanese and Chinese Nationalist forces that sparked full-scale combat in the region. He documents the Battle of Shanghai, where fierce Chinese resistance enraged Japanese attackers, leading to the Imperial Army’s “carnival of violation” at Nanking, and reveals that Chiang Kai-shek’s attempt to save the wartime capital of Wuhan by breaching dykes along the Yellow River cost roughly half a million civilian lives. Frank traces the intricacies of Japanese, British, and American war plans as the theater of combat expanded to Hong Kong, the Malaya Peninsula, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, and the Philippines, and details intelligence and communication failures that led the U.S. Pacific Fleet to be caught by surprise at Pearl Harbor. Interweaving high-level strategic analysis with vivid eyewitness reports, Frank documents the chaotic fall of Singapore, when Japanese soldiers “wreaked slaughter” on thousands fleeing the city-state in “every imaginable craft... with the faintest prospect of seaworthiness.” Concluding with a brief but gruesome account of the Bataan Death March and noting that the capture of Corregidor “marked the moment when the Imperial Japanese Empire reached its zenith,” Frank masterfully sets the stage for the next installment in a planned trilogy. With copious maps and 160 pages of endnotes, this epic yet accessible account sets a new gold standard for histories of the conflict. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Absolutely outstanding....brisk and compelling....a real game changer for the historiography of the Pacific Theater in World War II."

New York Journal of Books - Jerry D. Lenaburg

"Tower of Skulls is the opening volume of what promises to be the definitive history of the Asia-Pacific War; a gripping account of two wars, one on the Asian mainland, the other in the islands of the Pacific, that conjoined and became a history-changing struggle without mercy or precedent. The scope is epic and the story has the pulling power of fiction. It is that rare thing: a work of staggering scholarship bound to appeal to a wide reading audience."

Donald L. Miller

"Magisterial.… [Richard B.] Frank’s searing account of the horrors that took place in Shanghai, not to mention Nanking, doesn’t just come down to the numbers that were slaughtered, raped or made destitute by men crazed by war. It’s not about the statistics, though he’s good on them too. It was his account of the chaos of war that most gripped me.… Excellent though he is at most things, Frank is arguably at his best in his portrayal of both the leading and minor characters in this story.”"

Literary Review (UK) - Malcolm Murfett

"In Tower of Skulls historian Richard B. Frank has crafted a sweeping epic of the first five years of World War II in Asia, from the horrors of the Rape of Nanking through the catastrophic attack on Pearl Harbor and the tragic fall of the Philippines. In Frank’s expert hands readers will be transported from the battered Chinese capital of Chongqing to the roaring cockpits of torpedo bombers swarming the skies over Oahu down to the bloody emergency room where a little girl still clung to a jump rope. In this gripping first volume, Frank promises to do for the war in the Pacific what Rick Atkinson did for Europe."

James M. Scott

"Vivid, engrossing, and indispensable to an understanding of today’s world."

Richard Snow

"The first of what promises to be a magisterial trilogy.... Serious scholars and professionals in and out of uniform should read this book, which thoroughly fills a gap many have in the history of World War II."

ARMY Magazine - Lt. Col. Robert Bateman

"Absolutely outstanding.… Brisk and compelling.… A real game changer for the historiography of the Pacific Theater in World War II."

New York Journal of Books - Jerry Lenaburg

"Frank offers readers a wealth of material that provides a more nuanced perspective of the events that preceded [the United States’] entry into the war.… There will be two more volumes to come in this set, and I cannot wait to read them."

Dayton Daily News - Vick Mickunas

"Outstanding, wide-ranging.... Frank has a humane, sure eye for detail."

BBC History Magazine - Rana Mitter

"In this impressive reassessment of the early phases of the Pacific War, Richard B. Frank offers a rare combination of deep scholarship, thoughtful analysis, and compelling prose to illuminate aspects of the war too-often overlooked in Western accounts: China, Malaya, Burma, and Bataan. This is an essential and rewarding work for anyone who wants to understand World War II."

Craig L. Symonds

"Richard Frank’s Asia-Pacific War trilogy is destined to become as much a ‘go-to’ scholar’s source as his definitive Guadalcanal book has long been invaluable for researchers of America’s first Pacific offensive of 1942. Tower of Skulls is deeply researched, providing fresh evaluation of the political, economic, and military scenes of the early years of World War II. And yet this book remains highly readable, thanks to an artful blend of personal perspectives and colorful battle summaries."

Stephen L. Moore

★ 03/01/2020

In this first of a projected three-volume set, historian Frank (Guadalcanal) focuses solely on the totality of the Asia-Pacific Region during World War II. To those familiar with Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast, Frank wastes little time jumping right into the military and political action, beginning in 1937. His descriptions of battles and strategy are skillful, putting readers in the front row to historical scenes such as Japan's invasion of China, the United States' reluctant Russian alliance and, ultimately, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Frank also discusses nations often forgotten during World War II: China, the Philippines, and Burma. He conveys that World War II was a defining moment for the Asia-Pacific region, and its effects drastically altered the fates of countries who went from colonialism to basic sovereignty in a matter of a decade. Notes and a bibliography are included, along with maps and photographs. VERDICT Frank succeeds in his goal to alter our view of World War II as mostly a European clash in this informative book meant for all serious world history readers, even those who presume to know all there is to know about World War II. [See Prepub Alert, 10/7/19.]—Keith Klang, Port Washington P.L., NY

Library Journal

★ 2019-11-26
The first of a three-volume definitive history of the Asia-Pacific War.

As distinguished World War II scholar Frank (MacArthur, 2007, etc.), who served as a platoon leader in the Vietnam War, writes, after Japan conquered nearby Manchuria in 1931, local Japanese forces invaded China proper in 1937. "This volume," writes the author, "attempts to restore the notion of a ‘Heroic China' carrying on in the face of Japanese aggression, with horrific levels of death and destruction and with very sparse international support….The possibility that China could hold out in a conflict with Japan for more than weeks, or at most months, was wholly discounted throughout the world in 1937." In the first half of this monumentally researched narrative, Frank recounts the war in China, where more fighting and deaths occurred than on all other fronts combined. Readers may be startled to learn that historical opinion of China's leader Chiang Kai-shek has vastly improved. Frank agrees, maintaining that Chiang's stubbornness and acumen converted the Japanese invasion into a quagmire, "a struggle that would prove ultimately fatal to Imperial Japan." In 1941, galvanized by Hitler's invasion of Russia and embargoed by America, Japan's army leaders yearned to invade Siberia, and the navy leadership sought to conquer resource-rich Southeast Asia, which risked war with the U.S. The morass in China probably tipped the balance. After an absorbing account of the planning and maddening negotiation that preceded the attack on Pearl Harbor, Frank enters familiar territory with gripping descriptions of the attack followed by Japan's dazzling conquests from the South Pacific through the Philippines, East Indies, Singapore, and Burma. Readers may be surprised by the fact that Japanese troops were usually outnumbered (more than 2-to-1 in the Philippines) but better led. Frank's sharp portraits of the Allied generals include the usual incompetent suspects (e.g., Arthur Percival in Singapore) but also two who emerged as heroes (Douglas MacArthur and Joseph Stilwell).

A painful yet riveting history, especially valuable for historians and military buffs.

Kirkus Reviews