RACING THE SUNRISE: Reinforcing America's Pacific Outposts, 1941-1942

摘要

Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2010. 428 pp. $37.95 ISBN: 978-1-59114-956-9 In the six months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, particularly after the Japanese occupation of French Indochina, the United States made efforts to build up and reinforce its military facilities in the Far East and the Pacific, especially in Hawaii and the Philippines. The limited resources that included additional aircraft and ground forces were transported by convoys and staged far forward to influence and deter further Japanese expansion. Most of these forces were lost as the Japanese seized the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and islands closer to Hawaii, an advance finally stopped by carrier task forces in the Coral Sea and at Midway after the United States entered World War II. Development of air ferry routes, sea lines of communication, and the diversion of air and ground forces en route when the war began enabled the United States and Australia to gain the offensive. The author fills a long-standing gap in the history of World War II in the Pacific with this highly detailed book.