Book description
How Australia and her allies defeated the Japanese. Pearl Harbor; The
Fall of Singapore; Curtin's Fight With Churchill; The Bombing Of Darwin;
POW Camps; The Battle of Midway; Kokoda; Buna; Kamikaze Pilots;
Hiroshima... These words alone are enough to convey the terror, courage
and drama of the Pacific War, when the balance of power stood on a
knife-edge and when the future of Australia was on the brink -
threatened by Japanese aggression on the one hand and British deception
on the other. After a conflict that took an unimaginable number of lives
and ended with the unleashing of the most powerful weapon the world had
ever seen, the Allies emerged victorious. Australia, however, was
criticised by Churchill and his generals for showing cowardice in the
face of the enemy and for not caring about the fate of other nations.
The endorsement of these claims by several military historians today
shows that the smear has not gone away. Until now. Peter Thompson
presents, for the first time, an account of the conflict that places
Australian voices and action at the heart of the struggle. Based on
exclusive interviews with eyewitnesses and written with all the pace and
verve you would expect of a master storyteller, Pacific Fury brings the
people and the battles to life in a sensational history not to be
bettered in a generation. Born in Melbourne, Peter Thompson now lives
in London, having enjoyed a successful career as a journalist in the UK.
He has written biographies of Robert Maxwell and Jack Nicholson, among
others. His most recent books are Pacific Fury (Random House, 2008),
and, with Robert Macklin, The Big Fella: The Rise and Rise of BHP
Billiton (Random House, 2009), and Anzac Fury (Random House, 2010). He
visits Australia regularly.
