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In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army. By Edward J. Drea. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. ISBN 0-80321708-0. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliographic Essay.Index. Pp. xvii, 299. $45.00.
In these eclectic essays on the Imperial Japanese Army and the wars which engaged it from 1937 to 1945, Professor Edward Drea displays a wideranging and versatile knowledge of his subject. Three of his essays deal with various aspects of imperial army strategy, tactics, and doctrine, and a fourth compares Japanese and U.S. Army infantry doctrine in the Pacific War. Another splendid little essay tells us how the Japanese Army trained its soldiers to endure and obey.
Drea's interest in communications (signal) intelligence gives direction to three of his pieces. One tells the little-known story of a highly successful Australian "sigint" unit in New Guinea; the other two the effect of the U.S. "Ultra"comint efforts in the Leyte Campaign and in the preparation for the invasion of Japan.
his essay on the Allied interpretation of the Pacific War is a clear and succinct presentation of the way in which non-Japanese historians view it, but it does not add anything significant to that interpretation. It has the...