Search results for ""author christopher l. kolakowski""

From December 1943 to August 1944, Allied and Japanese forces fought the decisive battles of World War II in Southeast Asia. Fighting centered around North Burma, Imphal, Kohima and the Arakan, involving troops from all over the world along a battlefront the combined size of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The campaigns brought nations into collision for the highest stakes: British and Indian troops fighting for Empire, the Indo-Japanese forces seeking a prestige victory with an invasion of India and the Americans and Chinese focused on helping China and reopening the Burma Road. Events turned on the decisions of the principal commanders - Admiral Louis Mountbatten and Generals Joseph Stilwell, William Slim, Orde Wingate, Mutaguchi Renya, among many others. The impact of the fighting was felt in London, Tokyo and Washington, among other places far away from the battlefront, with effects that presaged postwar political relationships. This was also the first U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, and Stilwell's operations in some ways foreshadowed battles in Vietnam two decades later.The Burma and India battles of 1944 offer dramatic and compelling stories of people fighting in difficult conditions against high odds, with far-reaching results. They also proved important to the postwar future of the participant nations and Asia as a whole, with effects that still reverberate decades after the war.

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Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. was a major figure of the Pacific War, both for his command in Alaska and in his key role heading Tenth Army during the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Buckner was the senior U.S. officer killed by enemy fire in World War II when Japanese artillery cut him down on June 18, 1945, one month shy of his 59th birthday. The shelling ended a remarkable life – son of a Confederate Lieutenant General and governor of Kentucky, the "Child of the Democracy" in the 1896 Presidential election campaign, educated at West Point, myriad service as a student and instructor at various Army posts and schools from 1917 to 1936, command in Alaska from 1940 to 1944, and ultimately of Tenth Army from 1944 to his death.General Buckner kept a diary covering the period from January 1, 1944 to June 17, 1945, which has never been fully published until now. Buckner made notes every day, often in great detail; his chief of staff thought Buckner wanted to write a memoir after the war, but the papers were scattered after his death. In addition to the Okinawa material, Buckner's diaries discuss his departure from Alaska and service in Hawaii as Tenth Army commander. Topics include his daily life in wartime Hawaii, troop training, comments on war events, gossip, notes on his travels to Guam and the Philippines, and his role in the Smith vs Smith controversy after the Battle of Saipan. The diary text is augmented by letters from General Buckner to his wife Adele during March to June 1945, and a letter from the Tenth Army Chief of Staff to Adele detailing Buckner's death. Tenth Army Commander is an important account from a too-long-silent voice among Pacific War leaders.

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