Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War - Research Paper Example

Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War The book “Pearl Harbour and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays” is written by Professor Akira Iriye. This Bedford Series volume was published in 1999. As the title clearly indicates, the book focuses upon the incident of Pacific War and different documents and essays are included to support the information and main argument. Professor Akira is among the leading scholars in the US – Asian relation field and his work in widely viewed as significant source of acquiring authentic and analytical information about certain important historical events. This book is also among his noteworthy accomplishments that allow the readers having insight over the reasons behind the outbreak of the Pacific War. The book has been divided in to two parts. In the first part, Akira has included some important documents associated with the Pacific war, whereas, the second part of the book contains different essays written by prominent scholars and political experts. These essays present the perspective of different countries regarding the situation prevailed during that era. The book opens with an introductory essay. In this essay, the author have presented an analytical summary of the events took place before and during the Pacific war and attempted to uncover the leading factors that functioned to wreck the relations between Asian and European countries and ultimately became the base for the attack on Pearl Harbour (Akira, p13) The introductory essay explains the convoluted issues behind the incident of Pearl Harbour in international context. The author elucidates the importance of the incident and its impacts upon the world history. He also identify the countries that played major role during that time and explains that the war engaged US, Europe, Japan and China fighting with each others for many years. The essay provides sufficient information as well as analysis regarding the issue that is well summarized and well presented by Akira in the beginning essay. It become clear that how two different conflicts enduring in Europe and Pacific were merged together and took the shape of a solitary global conflict. The introductory essay is followed by the first major part of the book that contains some relevant and important documents. There are more than 30 primary documents compiled by Akira in this part of the book. These documents were taken from the negotiation process that held between US and Japan during that era. These documents demonstrate how these powers attempted to avoid the outbreak of war. Akira has included some very important and primitive records of the political negotiations in form of proposals, memoranda, the transcripts of the Japanese imperial conferences and different other diplomatic conferences (Akira, p167). This part of the book also contains some drafts showing that there were some possibilities of different compromises between the involved parties however, due to some reasons these draft failed to become the formal agreements. There is an important document included in the book that is the declaration of the war that was supposed to be officially sent by Japan to authorities of United States, however, Japan didn’t transmitted this draft to US. All of these documents are significant attempt of Akira to invite the readers to review the important official documents and interpret them gain understanding of the situation prevailing at that time. These documents also illustrate several possibilities that hindered the compromise between US and Japan and eventually lead towards the Pacific War. The second part of the book consists of ten different essays and research papers that were developed by some of the prominent scholars and world affairs experts. These articles demonstrate the perceptions and opinions of these experts and scholars regarding the background causes of Pacific war. This part also contains an essay written by Akira himself in which he attempted to examine the role of different countries in the context of Pacific war. Akira explains how different powers like UK, Commonwealth, Germany and USSR etc foster the political negotiation process and made their historical contributions towards the development of Pacific war background by applying pressure or facilitating the negotiation process. Furthermore, the author describes the perspective of US and Japan regarding the outbreak of Pacific War. The other essays focus upon different countries and explain their standpoint regarding the war. For instance, Minoru Nomura and Katsumi Usui discussed the entire situation from the Japanese perspective. The article of David Kahn, a US historian on the other hand discusses some of the failures of the American military during the Pacific war. Other essays present the Chinese, Soviet and German views. The second part of the book contains such articles and essays that have discussed the issue of Pacific war from varied perspective and as a result there are much conflicting viewpoints combined in the book. Akira has provided these different perspectives to the readers at one place allowing them to gain understanding of this important historical incident on the basis of important archival material. The chronological account of the key events of the war portrays a clear picture of the incident. The book is a significant attempt to explain a complex and controversial issue in well organized and understandable manner and contains the perspective of all the involved parties in form of the articles written by the scholars of different viewpoints. There are some maps also included in the book and in the end a bibliography is provided to authenticate all the information and facts presented in the book. Work Cited Akira Iriye (1999), Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War: A Brief History with Documents and Essays (The Bedford Series in History and Culture), Boston: Bedford Books Read More