Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 QUOTES

2 " Increasingly, U.S. submarines preyed upon the dilapidated little trawlers, junks, and sampans that were always found teeming in those waters. Most were innocently laden with noncontraband cargoes such as rice, grain, fish, coffee, sugar, or salt, and manned by Chinese, Thai, or Malayan crews. But they were plying the coastal trade between ports in Japanese-occupied territories, and that was enough to doom them. In a July 1945 patrol off the east coast of Malaya, the submarine Blenny sank sixty-three small craft with her deck guns. In most cases, but not all, skipper William Hazard gave the crews a warning before opening fire, allowing them to evacuate their vessels and take to their rafts and lifeboats. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

4 " Indiscriminate firebombing of the urban centers continued and intensified. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

6 " One could go on, but with diminishing returns. MacArthur was a serial confabulator, "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

8 " During the postwar occupation, many of MacArthur’s policies reinforced and abetted the collective amnesia of the Japanese. By order of the supreme commander, there was no concerted public effort to preserve the history or memory of the war—no monuments, no references in school textbooks, no national museum. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

10 " Anyone middle-aged or older could remember the repressive censorship regime imposed during the First World War. The “dignity” of President Woodrow Wilson had been held inviolable, and any criticism of the president or his policies, no matter how mild or well-meaning, had been grounds to prosecute or shut down an offending newspaper. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

12 " In answer to seemingly ad hoc objections, they repeatedly struck all references to the emperor or his dynasty from American and Allied public statements. That did not change until the second week of August 1945, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but before the final Japanese surrender, when the Americans implicitly promised to leave Hirohito alone. In the end, as Grew put it ruefully, the United States “demanded unconditional surrender, then dropped the bomb and accepted conditional surrender. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

14 " the Soviet leader had hoped that the U.S. president would issue a formal request for the USSR’s participation in the East Asian war, providing a pretense for the Russians to abrogate their neutrality pact with Japan. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

16 " Blond, silver, black, brown, red hair. Blue, green, brown, black eyes. White, black, skin colors of every variety. I was stunned. I realized then that we’d fought against all the peoples of the world. At the same time, I thought, what a funny country America is, all those different kinds of people fighting in "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

18 " On July 24, Stimson made a last-ditch attempt to reinsert a provision offering to retain the Japanese monarchy. According to a diary entry he made later that day, Stimson met with Truman and “spoke of the importance which I attributed to the reassurance of the Japanese on the continuance of their dynasty and I had felt that the insertion of that in the formal warning was important and might be just the thing that would make or mar their acceptance.”102 Truman declined on practical grounds, explaining that a draft of the declaration had already been sent to Chiang Kai-shek for his signature. "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945

20 " A very smart man I once knew said that anticipation was sixty percent of life, "

― Ian W. Toll , Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945