A masterly narrative history of the climactic battles of the Second World War The battle for Japan that ended many months after the battle for Europe involved enormous naval, military and air operations from the borders of India to the most distant regions of China The great naval battle of Leyte Gulf the war in China the re-conquest of Burma by the British Army under General Slim the Marines on Iwojima and Okinawa LeMay's Super-fortress assaults on Japan the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the kamikaze pilots of Japan the Soviet blitzkrieg in Manchuria in the last days of the war and the terrible final acts across Japanese-occupied Asia