Twilight of the Gods
War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945
By: Ian Toll
Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
Series: The Pacific War Trilogy, Book 3
Length: 36 hrs and 46 mins

I scheduled my reading to coincide with the release of this final book in the trilogy. The release date kept getting pushed off. But it appears to be for a good reason. Toll included a lot of extra content that didn’t seem to fit well in the other books but helped bring perspective to the story as a whole. These inline appendices and anecdotes helped me as the reader understand the decision matrices of the combatants.

Throughout this book, it continued to surprise me that despite the lack of resources that the Japanese faced that they continued to focus on the importance of their Honor. This concept in general was not a surprise to me. I continued to be surprised by the scope of their resolution and stark reality of the decisions.

The stark reality of their plight is contrasted by the sheer mass of men and material at the disposal of the commanders of the Pacific. Toll recounts in detail the number of ships and planes that the Japanese were facing. The end was certain, the question was at what cost. The deployment of nuclear arms and the resolution to use them ended the war. I appreciated Toll’s outline of the commander’s mental state before choosing to use “The Bomb.” The commanders in the Pacific were truly god’s in their own time. With the power of life and death of thousands of people. I for one am grateful that such a power has not been used since then.

Personal note:
One aspect of this period of the war for which I was nearly completely ignorant was the battle for Manilla. I was aware of the atrocities in general across the Japanese Empire, specifically the Nanking Massacre in 1937. What I was not aware of was the Manila Massacre. I found the recount of the acts by the Japanese soldiers repulsive and dehumanizing. I was incensed that depraved human beings would steep to such acts any upon any individual but they did not end there the extended their reign of terror, death, and rape to the entire citizenry. After reading through this, and recounting over and over the atrocities that were committed. It was an easy concept to consider wiping out entire cities of the Japanese. At this juncture Toll recounted one event that brought forth the beauty of humanity. At one church where the atrocities, that I will not recount here, were committed and people were left to die, a priest crawled across the floor giving the last rites to his partitioners. As he did so, he heard some individual of his flock praying for the souls of those who had committed such crimes against them. This arrested my anger and brought some very needed perspective.

Going through this experience brought forth some of the interesting effects that we as humans go through and that I head read about repeatedly through history. The generalization of specific actions by specific individuals to an entire people group. By simply reading the acts of these individual Japanese soldiers, granted several thousand of them, I was willing to pass judgment on their entire people group and condemn them to death by nuclear holocaust. The parishioner on the other hand saw them as individuals worthy of redemption and life. I was not willing to extend this chance to millions of people who although indirectly supported the war effort had not directly interacted in those acts. Sobering thoughts.

May I see the humanity in the midst of death a issue justice to all people.