ISBN 0-313-30614-1
276 pages

Preface; Introduction; Author/Name Index; Subject Index

Appendix: Sources on the World Wide Web

   Greenwood Press has been publishing scholarly bibliographic volumes for many years, including the Bibliographies of Battles and Leaders series. This particular title is part of a somewhat different, but similar, series from Greenwood called Bibliographies and Indexes in Military Studies.
   Of its 276 pages, the first 114 are devoted to an extensive chronological listing of the wartime events which affected the Philippines. These range from the January 1941 warning by Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka not to interfere in Asian affairs through the formal surrender of Japanese forces in the Philippines on 3 September 1945.
   Here are some representative entries:

January 7, 1942
Siege of Bataan begins. North Luzon force becomes I Philippine Corps. Bataan Defense Force becomes II Philippine Corps. The defense of Bataan as far south as Mariveles Mountains is divided about equally between the two corps with I Corps responsible for the west half and II Corps for the east.

...

January, 1943
Japanese Occupation - Japanese officials in Tokyo and Manila announce plans to grant the Philippines independence.
USAFFE - Responding to reports of expanding guerilla activity in Japanese occupied territory, General MacArthur's Headquarters issues requirements guerilla units must meet for gaining American support. The statement emphasizes that guerillas will engage Japanese troops only to defend themselves and must concentrate on intelligence gathering and support for American conventional military operations. In exchange, the American command promises arms, supplies, and money.

...

June 9, 1945
Luzon - I Corps cuts Japanese escape from Cagayan Valley. 37th Division seizes Bagabag and secures crossing of Magat River east of Bagabag on Highway 5.
Mindanao - 19th Infantry captures Mandog penetrating last enemy defensive position on the island. Marine aircraft are unusually active over Mindanao during the day.

   The chronology is followed by the actual bibliographic material of over 400 items -- "[t]he emphasis is on material published over the last thirty years but some of the entries date back to the war years" -- which is divided into six main topics:

General Reference Sources and Historical Surveys
Biographies and Personal Narratives
Battles and Campaigns
Japanese Occupation Policies and Filipino Collaboration
War Crimes

   Half of these topics are further divided into multiple sub-topics. "Battles and Campaigns," for example, includes fourteen sub-divisions such as "Unit Histories," "Air Operations," and "Liberation of POWs and Civilian Internees."
   Within each of these areas, the author lists pertinent books and articles in English. Each of these listings includes author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, page count, and a brief annotation.
   Here are examples of typical entries:

155. Bergerud, Eric. Touched with Fire: The Land War in the South Pacific. New York: Viking, 1996. 566p.
Bergerud's format is topical, not geographic. The focus is on the nature of the land war in the Southwest Pacific area of which the Philippines were a part. Subjects include the impact of the terrain on operations, small unit fighting, medical care, morale, and the quality of military leadership on all levels. Based on after-action reports, oral history interviews, veterans' memoirs, and secondary sources. Footnotes. Bibliography. Index.

...

180. United States. Department of the Army. The War in the Pacific: The Fall of the Philippines. by Louis Morton. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1943. Series: United States Army in World War II
The most detailed volume covering the entire early campaign in the Philippines. Morton provides details of the prewar American buildup in the Philippines and Japanese and American operations on Luzon prior to the retreat to Bataan not found in other published volumes.

...

396. Syjuco, Felisa. The Kempai Tai in the Philippines: 1941-1945. Detroit: The Cellar Bookshop, 1989. 140p.
Brief overview of the operations of the Japanese Military Police (Kempai Tai) in the Philippines during the occupation. The author's descriptions of the Kempai Tai's atrocities in the islands are vivid and disturbing. She does little, however, to establish the social, political, and cultural sources of this behavior. Based mainly on documentary sources in the Philippine National Archives.

   The author concludes with a thorough, cross-referenced pair of indexes and -- indicating more and more convergence of print and Internet materials? -- an appendix of Web-based sources such as the U.S. Army Military History Institute (with a bum link) and the Japanese monographs collection hosted at the University of North Carolina.
   Nicely done, but most useful to the specialist.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Greenwood.
   Thanks to Greenwood for providing this review copy.