Last to Die

June 22, 2015
Japanese emperor Hirohito officially surrendered to Allied forces on Aug. 15, 1945, but the message wasn’t delivered to all outposts and command centers until a few days later—a lapse that would have serious consequences for both Japanese and American forces, as Harding (The Last Battle) illustrates in this meticulously researched account of the days following Japan’s surrender. To verify that the Japanese military was complying with the peace treaty, it was necessary to confirm that military activity had ceased. This was to be accomplished by flying over key bases and installations in order to photograph them. The first of these missions was uneventful, but a subsequent mission encountered opposition from a handful of Japanese fighters and were unable to fully document all the sites. Despite this, it was decided that another mission was to be conducted the next day, with deadly consequences for U.S. Army Sergeant Anthony Marchione, the last American killed in WWII combat. Though Harding gets distracted by plane design and military minutiae early in the book, he relates his gripping account of the fight between Japanese and American forces in breathless detail, and the tale is impressive and inspiring, as is Harding’s determination to tell it.

June 15, 2015
The surrender that almost wasn't: an illuminating study of the last moments of World War II. According to conventional histories, Japan lost no time in surrendering to the Allies after the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, writes Military History editor in chief Harding (The Last Battle: When U.S. and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe, 2013), who seems to be making a specialty of the forgotten closing episodes of WWII, there was more than sporadic resistance. Despite Emperor Hirohito's order for a cease-fire, numerous military units committed mutiny by continuing to fight-and it was one such unit that killed American Airman Anthony Marchione, just 20 years old. In a neat blend of military and technological history, Harding links Marchione's story to the development of the aircraft he staffed, a lumbering target called the Consolidated Dominator, a "trouble-plagued super bomber" that barely took off before being scrapped-and whose very existence has been reduced, these days, to a few parts in private collections around the world. Harding also examines the episode surrounding Marchione's death in its global-implications context: had Gen. Douglas MacArthur chosen to retaliate, he suggests, the war in Japan might have raged on, since the anti-surrender elements in the Japanese military could have argued that the Allies, too, had violated the cease-fire agreement. There are some dense technical passages that will please aircraft enthusiasts but that civilians might find daunting ("The design featured a shoulder-mounted high-lift/low-drag Davis wing with a span of 135 feet, twin end-plate fin and rudder assemblies, and eighty-three-foot-long cylindrical fuselage, tricycle landing gear, and dual 'roll-up' bomb bays") and a few moments of semidigested, tangential information ("Italy in the early twentieth century was a land of widespread economic inequality"), but in the main, the narrative is well-executed. A worthy sortie that explores a curtain-closing moment in history that might have gone very badly indeed.

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June 1, 2015
The acceptance by Japan's emperor Hirohito of Allied surrender terms did not immediately end all hostilities. Japanese resistance continued sporadically on some Pacific islands. In Japan, some die-hard militarists, especially fighter pilots, insisted upon attacking American bombers engaged strictly in photo reconnaissance. On August 18, 1945, one of these planes was attacked over Tokyo, and Sergeant Anthony Marchione bled to death after being wounded attempting to assist an injured friend. Not yet 20 years old, Marchione was the last American to die in air combat in WWII. Harding, a military-affairs journalist, has woven together letters, interviews with family and friends, and both Japanese and American military records to provide an intense, quietly moving, and, of course, sad chronicle of a young life cut short. He traces Marchione's life as the son of Italian immigrants, his military training, and his experiences as a gunner/photographer's assistant. Harding treats the youth with admiration and affection that elicit compassion without becoming cloying or melodramatic. This is a superb look at the life and death of one young man among millions of others who loved, were loved by others, and died too soon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)