| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2005. Pp. ix, 382. $29.95.
Will we ever really know why Japan surrendered in World War II? Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has found one well-supported answer after all these years of research and debate by some of the best scholars in the historical profession. It is just one answer, however. In this judicious and meticulously researched study of the endgame of the conflict, he internationalizes (by a thorough look at American, Japanese, and Soviet literature and archives) the diplomatic and political maneuvering that led to Japanese capitulation, but in the end, his interpretation—though a very important one—continues down the interpretive road regarding the causes of the surrender rather than reaching the end of the route.	1
That is not to say that the book is ordinary; in fact, it is groundbreaking. Hasegawa managed to comb through seemingly every particle of evidence by collaborating with two colleagues, one Japanese and the other Russian. No stone is left unturned, which results in sometimes overly detailed accounts of familiar incidents and people (do we need, for instance, two pages on the old story of Harry Truman becoming president?). More often, however, he deftly explains the negotiating strategies of the powers involved, retracing the history of the war and then zeroing in on the period from spring 1945 through the surrender. No study has yet to bundle together the myriad works on the war's end in such a complete manner. Nobody has mastered the diplomatic intricacies in combination with political (especially Japanese) decisions. This work should become standard reading for scholars of World War II and American diplomacy.	. . .

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