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In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia | 
| Author: Ronald Spector
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 23832
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0812967321
Dewey Decimal Number: 950
EAN: 9780812967326
ASIN: 0812967321
Publication Date: July 8, 2008
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Product Description
The New York Times said of Ronald H. Spector’s classic account of the American struggle against the Japanese in World War II, “No future book on the Pacific War will be written without paying due tribute to Eagle Against the Sun.” Now Spector has returned with a book that is even more revealing. In the Ruins of Empire chronicles the startling aftermath of this crucial twentieth-century conflict.
With access to recently available firsthand accounts by Chinese, Japanese, British, and American witnesses and previously top secret U.S. intelligence records, Spector tells for the first time the fascinating story of the deadly confrontations that broke out–or merely continued–in Asia after peace was proclaimed at the end of World War II. Under occupation by the victorious Allies, this part of the world was plunged into new power struggles or back into old feuds that in some ways were worse than the war itself. In the Ruins of Empire also shows how the U.S. and Soviet governments, as they secretly vied for influence in liberated lands, were soon at odds.
At the time of the peace declaration, international suspicions were still strong. Joseph Stalin warned that “crazy cutthroats” might disrupt the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. Die-hard Japanese officers plotted to seize the emperor’s palace to prevent an announcement of surrender, and clandestine relief forces were sent to rescue thousands of Allied POWs to prevent their being massacred.
In the Ruins of Empire paints a vivid picture of the postwar intrigues and violence. In Manchuria, Russian “liberators” looted, raped, and killed innocent civilians, and a fratricidal rivalry continued between Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and Mao’s revolutionaries. Communist resistance forces in Malaya settled old scores and terrorized the indigenous population, while mujahideen holy warriors staged reprisals and terror killings against the Chinese–hundreds of innocent civilians were killed on both sides. In Indochina, a nativist political movement rose up to oppose the resumption of French colonial rule; one of the factions that struggled for supremacy was the Communist Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh. Korea became a powder keg with the Russians and Americans entangled in its north and south. And in Java, as the Indonesian novelist Idrus wrote, people brutalized by years of Japanese occupation “worshipped a new God in the form of bombs, submachine guns, and mortars.”
Through impeccable research and provocative analysis, as well as compelling accounts of American, British, Indian, and Australian soldiers charged with overseeing the surrender and repatriation of millions of Japanese in the heart of dangerous territory, Spector casts new and startling light on this pivotal time–and sets the record straight about this contested and important period in history.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
The political vacuum of post World War II Asia. June 2, 2008
Spector does a great job of showing what came after the Missouri surrender ceremony. Millions of undefeated Japanese soldiers occupying China, the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, Malaya, and Korea needed to be evacuated and returned to Japan. What was left was a political vacuum that needed to be occupied and the Dutch, French, Chinese, Soviet, British, and American governments sought to do this. However, many of these occupied lands had enough of the occupation and wanted their independence. The political struggles that occupied these lands would consume the world's attention for the next fifty years. Critical hot spots like China, Korea, and Vietnam would result in civil wars of extreme brutality. America was drawn into all three of these civil conflicts.
Spector does a good job of detailing these conflicts in the first two years after the end of the war. This was indeed a messy affair. Future conflicts were the result. This a nice required read for those interested in post World War II Asia. It shows why conflicts developed in many of these lands.
 The Yanks Are Coming February 10, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
An interesting survey of the aftermath of the Japanese surrender in South Asia and the Far East. Concentrating mainly on China, Korea and Indonesia. Spector completely ignores Burma and the Philippines. The space given to Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore is cursory; generally the British role is not the focus of this book. This book only works as an accompaniment to the superior " Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire" by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper. While 'Forgotten Wars' concentrated on the British experience, 'Empire' looks at the American one. But there were many theatres where these interests were in conflict. The book ends in most cases around 1948 and has a quite unnecessary post script comparing the Iraq experience.
 Bush should have read this November 23, 2007
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
This is a great summary of Asia in the post-war years. I was surprised at the extent of US and European involvement in China, Korea, and other countries after Japan surrendered.
One of the key themes is how foreign liberating armies can soon become occupiers. Americans in China soon found this out after US marines were accused of raping a Chinese student. In other countries, the liberating army unleashed the powers of nationalism before the old colonial powers could reestablish the old regimes.
My only disappointment with the book is that it did not cover Burma, Thailand, and a few other countries.
Important But Very Difficult History to Write November 6, 2007
13 out of 17 found this review helpful
The surrender of Japan in August 1945 unleased a series of events which led to the collapse of the British, French and Dutch Colonial Empires and the resumption of the Chinese Civil War. The political decisions made in the war's immediate aftermath laid the foundation for a series bloody wars that would rage across East Asia for the next thirty years. This is the big and important type of history that educated people need to know if they want to understand the second half of the Twentieth Century.
The value of "In The Ruins of Empire" is that it examines the big picture. Instead of having to read the detailed histories of individual counties, Ronald Spector presents the reader with succinct summaries of what was happening in a number of East Asian countries. By looking at the big picture, Spector keeps the reader from getting bogged down in the small details. Ronald Spector is a conscienitous historian and does an admirable job of weaving the various plot lines together.
Of all the history to write, big picture history is the most difficult to create. It requires a very sure narrative hand. Only the most gifted writers can do it well. Although, Ronald Spector is an able historian, he is no Niall Ferguson, Tony Judt or Norman Davies. Spector had a great idea in writing a popular history of 1945-1947 in East Asia. Unfortunately, he does not have the writing skill to lift this book from four stars to five stars.
As a final note, for anyone interested in this time period, I would recommend that they check out "The Aftermath: Asia" the last volume in the Time/Life series on World War II. There are some amazing photos of post war Asia that really add to the experience of reading "In the Ruins of Empire." The Chinese photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson are especially memorable. These great photos tell a truth that only the most gifted of writers can come close to conveying.
Case Studies in Occupation October 28, 2007
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
Drawing on reports and dispatches from the Office of Strategic Services as well primary source documents from both Asian and American soldiers from the years immediately after WWII, Ronald Spector takes a fresh look at a pivotal point in history in "The Ruins of Empire. As WWII ended, the Japanese surrender left a power vacuum in East Asia; countries previously under the yoke of the Japanese stood poised to claim their independence even as the American and European powers rushed in to recapture what they considered their old empire. Spanning 4 years and 5 countries, Spector's narrative documents the struggle for power and independence in the aftermath of a war that never ended for millions of Asians. Though the account is fascinating, Spector's work would have been well-served with additional context on the history, politics, ideology of the various struggles that served as a foundation to the struggles even prior to Allied re-occupation. As it is, the accounts--excellent in that they are primary sources from real people who experienced the events--seem too narrow to capture the intensely complex forces at work. Yet Ruins is worth the read because it is well-written and inherently interesting.
Spector's purpose in writing Ruins was not simply to write a history of the post-WWII East Asia. "Ruins" also serves as a series of case studies illustrating how disasterous occupations of foreign countries can be. Spector's narrative of the independence struggles against European re-occupations in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the American Korea, make a convincing case that the successful occupations of Japan and Germany were the exception rather than the rule. The re-occupations of Vietnam and Indonesia were categorical failures inflicted by countries that had recently emerged from their own imperialist threats only months earlier (Great Britain, France, and China all had a role in occupying Vietnam when Japan fell). The failure of America and Russia to build a unified Korea during their occupation led directly to the Korean war only 5 years later. Britain's reoccupation of Malaysia soon found them embroiled in a bitter decade long guerilla war. Japan's occupation and then Russia's re-occupation of Manchuria proved to have a devastating effect on China and may have set back industrial advances by years.
Ruins begins with an OSS' mission to find and repatriate American POWs held captive in Japanese Manchuria and Korea. This vignette sets the stage for the disintegration of China into civil war even as communist and nationalist armies jockeyed to fill the void left by Japan as her (as yet unbeaten) troops were repatriated. What is remarkable about the China narrative is how weak the Chinese Communist position appeared to be following the Japanese surrender. They had inferior weapons (many of which were appropriated from the defeated Japanese), their communist Russian allies had abandoned them, stripping their Manchurian base of much of its industrial capacity, and America was giving military and transportation assistance to their nationalist adversaries. However, as Liddell Hart has emphasized, the moral dimensions of war often mitigate material disadvantages found between enemies. The Chinese Communists had, through their constant battles with the Japanese, gained credibility in Chinese eyes while the Chinese Nationalist government was viewed as a corrupt kleptocracy. The communists had built up enough of a base of support that their strategy of transitioning to and from guerilla warfare allowed them to maintain organization and strength long enough withstand the initial advance of nationalist forces.
Two notable features present in the China conflict and true of Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, and Indonesia combined to draw America into two East Asian wars in the ensuing decades. First, American policy-makers were unprepared to deal with the complexities of engaging the burgeoning nationalists movements. Second, American and European policy-makers did not understand or underestimated the resilience and organizational strength of the communist organizations in East Asia.
Drawing on first-hand accounts from the diplomats and soldiers involved, Spector highlights the absence of meaningful policy direction from Washington DC. American policy-makers vacillated on whether and to what degree the US should intervene in the internal affairs of the various countries as they tried to work out their independence--especially so in China. The American inclination was towards peace--a peace that ensured no communist rule---a bias that created a contradiction in policy and therefore ineffective action. Similarly in Korea, General Hodge's occupation was an improvisation fraught with error that effectively prevented the possibility of Korean unification. In Malaysia, Indonesia, and especially in Vietnam, the US stood by while the European powers--led by Great Britain on behalf of itself, the Netherlands, and the French--attempted to reassert their claim to empire. The US' failure to stand up for the independence movements in each country puzzled communists and non-communist nationalists alike as this stance went directly against US declarations of support for national independence. This position would not go unpunished in the years ahead.
The second feature of the East Asian conflicts, with the partial exception of Indonesia was how prominent communist forces were in the struggles for independence. China and Vietnam's communist forces had been organized for nearly two decades by the time the Allied occupations came. This meant that the communist organizations in these countries had a well-developed political base, an institutional infrastructure, and the years of struggle against the Japanese had in turn produced a military capability to carry on the struggle against whoever else attempted to control their country. The ensuing conflicts between the re-occupying Allies and the communists would cost hundreds of thousands of lives in China, Vietnam, Korea, and Malaysia. Only in Indonesia did the communist forces play a secondary role to non-communist nationalists in the struggle for independence. Only in Malaysia did the communist insurgency die out after 15 years of counter-insurgency efforts by the British. The Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese experiences with communism are all well known now.
Ultimately, Ruins is a cautionary tale about the powerful motivations of culture and nationality in resisting control by foreign powers. Failure to understand these motivations and the consistent underestimation of local guerilla forces to draw on these motivations in their search for power led directly to communist tyranny in three East Asian countries in less than 10 years after the Japanese surrender. Spector advises us to learn from these lessons as we face a potent radical Islamic guerilla force through the world and adjust our response accordingly.
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