I finally finished it today

None. The author mentions Nanking exactly once, calls it "exaggerated" without bothering the elaborate, and then moves on, never returning to the subject. The focus of the book is a battles that the author personally took part in, although sometimes he will comment in passing on other occurrences. For example, he briefly talks about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, although he wasn't present for that engagement.

Is this a joke?

The invasion of Alaska is never mentioned in the book, but it can be safely assumed that Japan never had a navy or army large enough to actually fight in North America.

>Because the Pacific Ocean is really fucking big and it takes a long time to move things around.
It doesn't take that long. For instance, the forces that departed earliest to hit Tarawa did so on November 13th, 1943. codenames.info/operation/galvanic/, and the islands were secured 10 days later. That's a hell of a lot less than about a year and half between Midway and things like this or the Marhsalls invasions.

Then I guess the question shifts to "Why go after the Solomons and not the direct route", I mean, you want to get to Japan, or at least be able to threaten the China Sea, and dicking around in the Solomons like that seems to be taking the long way around. And given how long and heavy the Solomons fighting was, you don't seem to be circumventing their best defenses either.

The entire book is written from the Japanese POV so it is hard to know what is influencing that actions of American forces, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "Germany First" policy probably had something to do with it.

I could see Germany first having an impact on things like allocations of overall material between Europe and the Pacific. Not how to allocate forces already assigned to the Pacific

I wouldn't say it was too safe.

Invasion of Alaska was a real thing and was in part a plan to launch attacks on North America.

Had They fought harder for the land, the Japs could have actually taken some serious land and did heavy Damage via air raids and other means of war.

Germany stepping in to help is all very possible. Hitler had actual plans to invade the United States. Some very specific targets were New London Connecticut and Maine as well, both very close places to the Canadian Border where attacks could be launched on Washington, NYC, And some key main land areas.

>Japan can't hold islands in the Pacific
>Somehow Japan is going to hold land in North America

Alaska is a long fucking way from anything important in the US, and they had neither the men nor the ships to get people to the west coast directly, much less force or expand a beachhead. Landing in Alaska in force and then traveling through thousands of miles of trackless Canadian wilderness was obviously not a viable option either. Use your head.

Was it possible for the USSR to invade Hokkaido at the end of the war?

>Germany stepping in to help is all very possible. Hitler had actual plans to invade the United States
Getting underpowered river barges piloted by crews who only know how to navigate canals to cross the English Channel is infeasible enough, now you want them to cross an entire ocean?

They invaded the Aleutians and garrisoned them with a few hundred men, not the fucking mainland, and who gives a shit what Hitlers plan was when he wanted to invade Britain with fucking river barges because lol no ships?

What do you think of this cute girl?

how many downed american pilots did he behead?

The book ends with the destruction of Yamato. Nothing after that is covered. For instance, there is absolutely no mention of the atomic bombs in the book.

What about Shigure and Yahagi?

There was a major Japanese Naval base in Rabaul and those ornery bastards held out till 1945 and were a threat until the Allies literally starved and killed every single last one of them. Also to be fair, the US handed off the Solomon Island Campaign to the Aussies and NZ in '44. Strategically speaking, knocking out or at least significantly reducing the Solomon Islands was a major step towards the Philippines, which was deemed vital by Allied commanders and rightfully so.

Think of it as an upper cut like in boxing, shoot up from the Solomon Islands, take out the Central Pacific Islands so that you can bomb targets in the next island over, the Philippines or Japan itself. Once the Philippines was taken out, Japan had completely lost all its control in the Pacific and the US had command of the seas between losing the Philippines and key islands in the Central Pacific (Solomons, Marshall, Gilberts, Marianas etc)

You can see how things quickly started to fall apart for Japan in late 1944/early 1945, they were getting firebombed, losing key Naval assets, soldiers and equipment as well as their infrastructure back home. It was only a matter of time, the only reason it took so long was because they shifted their strategy from suicidal banzai attacks (e.g Guadalcanal, Aleutian Islands, Saipan, Rabaul) to defense in depth (e.g Tarawa, Peleliu, The Philippines, Iwo Jima)

Again, I could be wrong, feel free to correct me if I got somethign wrong

No, and I'm not planning to. I've already started working my way through "A World Undone" which is about WW1. I'll make a thread about that when I'm finished with it.

What was a greater bane to their existence, subs or aircraft?

This is the first enemy book on WW2 I read.
As a Highschool Sophmore. In 1970.

Aircraft by a huge margin. "And then a B-17 swooped down and tried to drop bombs on us" is practically a running joke in the book. Near the beginning of the war, Amatsukaze locates and destroys 2 American submarines, and then after that American submarines are never encountered again. The first submarine was practically a free kill because it was having some sort of engine probably and it couldn't really fight at all. The 2nd submarine very nearly succeeded in killing Amatsukaze, with torpedoes missing by only a few feet, but it failed because a crew member stupidly lit a cigarette during the approach, which the captain of Japanese destroyer saw and immediately ordered evasive maneuvers. After that, American submarines are never encountered again, but aircraft are constantly encountered. Throughout the entire book, the author is continually attacked by B-17's, often escaping by the narrowest of margins.

Congratulations?

I was about to say "Wasn't Amatsukaze torpedoed by USS Redfin"? before remembering he wasn't her captain at the time.

Given how many Japanese ships were sunk by sub, I'm honestly shocked he never encountered them later in the war.

Also, a shame the book ends with Yamato. As I understand, he was around to see the Nagisaki bomb.

Now that you said that, he does mention late in the book that Amatsukaze was ultimately torpedoed and sunk by a submarine, which he comments "is like a cat being taken by a mouse."

I'm more of a Tenryuu guy myself.

I was actually pretty disappointed that he doesn't talk about the bombs. Maybe that was just too emotional of a topic for him to discuss "objectively" which he says over and over again that he's tried to be as "objective" as possible in writing about his experiences during the war. He sometimes mentions that certain battles were so confusing that, even having access to both the post-war documents of Japan AND the US navy, the details of certain engagements are still sketchy. Sometimes the Japanese documents and American documents blatantly contradict each other in ways that can't be reconciled. For example, in one engagement, both Japanese ships and American ships reported that there was friendly fire among enemy vessels. This is to say that American ships reported that they saw Japanese ships firing on other Japanese ships, and Japanese ships reported that they had seen American ships firing on each other. However, neither side reported any friendly fire incidents among their own ships during the engagement. So who do you believed?

>had a navy or army large enough to actually fight in North America.
they did, but most of it was occupied in mainland china.

Americans were basically fighting the rearguard in ww2.

Look at a map. Specifically, the distance between Japan and China. Okay? Now compare with the distance to the USA.

sure, but the point is that they did have the numbers to do it, just not the opportunity to actually get them there.

Logistics is like 90% of warfare.

None of the navy and the dregs of the army were in China. The combined invasions of late 1941 and early 1942 were about as big as what was holding on in China; the Phillipines, Solomons, DEI, and Malayan/Burman campaigns were not chump change.

What kind of resistance did Japan see while invading China, Korea, and SEA?

I was under the impression it was a cake walk, and some areas even welcomed it as if Japan was liberating them from the Dutch and other euro influence and control

the amphibians came to conquer is the ultimate guide

China hated the Japanese and was filled with Guerillas and Militias. Not organized in any meaningful way to overthrown the Japanese, but if the Japanese ever let down their guard, they'd be out.