Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia , written by James Bradley

The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia , written by James Bradley (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015). 417 pp. $35 (cloth). James Bradley, author of the famous popular history (and major motion picture) Flags of Our Fathers , has continued to plumb the legacy of his family’s war record, this time taking on the wisdom and necessity of the u.s . war against Japan. He does not mince words: Washington’s decision to cut off Japan’s access to oil in the autumn of 1941 was a foolish decision and forced an otherwise reticent Japan into attacking u.s . naval forces at Pearl Harbor. This decision, he writes, “thrust America into an unwanted Asian war,” for which his “father and millions of others” need not have risked or sacrificed their lives (p. 8). According to Bradley, the root of the problem was the obsessive and wholly unrealistic American attachment to China and (in his words) the “Noble Chinese Peasant.” Ultimately most concerned with the impulses that drove the Roosevelt administration’s Pacific strategy in the 1930s and 1940s, he begins with a chapter on Warren Delano, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grandfather, who made a fortune in the opium business in China in the mid-19 th Century. Like so many other Westerners http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of American-East Asian Relations Brill

The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia , written by James Bradley

Journal of American-East Asian Relations , Volume 22 (3): 280 – Oct 14, 2015

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/the-china-mirage-the-hidden-history-of-american-disaster-in-asia-0NtdOEbuQk

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Subject
Book Reviews
ISSN
1058-3947
eISSN
1876-5610
DOI
10.1163/18765610-02203009
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

(New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015). 417 pp. $35 (cloth). James Bradley, author of the famous popular history (and major motion picture) Flags of Our Fathers , has continued to plumb the legacy of his family’s war record, this time taking on the wisdom and necessity of the u.s . war against Japan. He does not mince words: Washington’s decision to cut off Japan’s access to oil in the autumn of 1941 was a foolish decision and forced an otherwise reticent Japan into attacking u.s . naval forces at Pearl Harbor. This decision, he writes, “thrust America into an unwanted Asian war,” for which his “father and millions of others” need not have risked or sacrificed their lives (p. 8). According to Bradley, the root of the problem was the obsessive and wholly unrealistic American attachment to China and (in his words) the “Noble Chinese Peasant.” Ultimately most concerned with the impulses that drove the Roosevelt administration’s Pacific strategy in the 1930s and 1940s, he begins with a chapter on Warren Delano, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grandfather, who made a fortune in the opium business in China in the mid-19 th Century. Like so many other Westerners

Journal

Journal of American-East Asian RelationsBrill

Published: Oct 14, 2015

There are no references for this article.