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Forgotten Battles: Italy's War of Liberation, 1943-1945 (review)

2003; Society for Military History; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jmh.2003.0074

1543-7795

Brian R. Sullivan,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

harassing operations in Burma, India, and Okinawa, among other combat zones, and inflicted generally heavier casualties on the Allies than they themselves suffered.However, everywhere the Allies grew stronger and Nakano operatives found themselves training guerrilla units for the defense of Kyushu and Tokyo.A particularly informative chapter is titled "Ending the War, Finding New Allies" (pp.165-99).Here the author offers a rich description of how the chief of Japanese military intelligence, Lieutenant General Arisue Seizo, used his information about the Soviet Union as a bargaining chip with MacArthur's intelligence forces.The result was a special intelligence partnership that had considerable relevance during the early rounds of the Cold War.In all likelihood, this particular Japanese-American cooperation was much more admissible than the initial affair American authorities had with Japanese biological warfare specialists.Many were granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their biological warfare data and equipment removed from the death factories on the Asian continent to Japan in August 1945.This is an effectively written account.For instance, the author is adept at producing succinct biographical sketches of Nakano operatives before recounting their work in combat.The story of the postwar activities of Nakano veterans, particularly Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo, who did not emerge from the jungles of the Philippines to surrender until March 1974, is skillfully painted along a time line from the late 1940s when some of the veterans helped retrain the army of Chiang Kai-shek to when Onoda returned to the Philippines in the late 1990s as a most honored and welcomed guest.In sum, this is a fascinating and distinctive contribution to the literature on Japan and the Second World War.