★★★★★ 5
Groundbreaking Work!
Format: Hardcover
The first thing to note here is the author is trilingual. He's Polish by birth, writing very credibly in his second language (English), and using his Nihongo to translate Japanese source materials into English for the first time. Wow! As a historian myself, I only wish I had those kind of language skills.
The second thing I'll say is that I learned a lot from the book. I've never seen many of the details the author had dug up. He's doing the same sort of thing that Tony Tully and I did in Shattered Sword--using the Japanese air group records, and Senshi Sosho, as well as more modern sources from Japanese historians like Mori Shiro--to paint a much richer picture of the Japanese side of the battle. And in some ways he's doing it better, because his language skills are so formidable that he was able to look at more Japanese source material than we were. Bravo Zulu.
An example: for years American historians have portrayed the placement of Shoho in front of the Japanese invasion force as either 1) a bait force to lure the Americans away from Japan's main carrier force, or 2) at the very least an indication of extreme Japanese hubris, by sticking a lone light carrier's neck out waaaay too far. It turns out that there were a number of Japanese staff officers that were appalled at the dangers Shoho was being exposed to, and lobbied for her inclusion in the main carrier force instead (which would have made a lot more sense, frankly, and was a detail I hadn't known before.) But those officers were overridden in the name of keeping at least some air cover near the invasion force. What this demonstrates is that even here, at the very beginning of the war, the Japanese were already over their skis in terms of the fragility of their air power.
All in all, Piegzik's book is a very welcome contribution to the English literature on the Pacific War. He has also written what is (from all accounts) a fine series on the Indian Ocean raid that I need to pick up as well. I am really looking forward to his continued publications in the field.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2026
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