In contemporary academia, military history has slowly become something of a blacksheep against the ever expanding colonial, post-colonial, and cultural fields. There are, of course, significant reasons for this shift in academic perceptions. The anti-colonial movements that erupted across the globe bear incredible weight in silenced voices; important knowledge lost and oppressed that explains much of two world wars that devastated imperial Europe and Asia. Much ink has been spilled about those wars in the European and American context, yet for similar colonial reasons, one of the largest land wars of the 20th Century remains an obscure, niche topic. The Second Sino-Japanese War (debatably 1937-1945) involved millions of combatants and civilians, spanned an entire continent, witnessed some of the cruelest acts of humankind from all sides, and left unimaginable devastation. Due to language barriers, internal historiographical debates between the main belligerents, and external political pressures, a concise history of the Sino-Japanese War remained aloof for quite some time.

The Battle for China takes direct aim at producing such a volume, born out of a conference of the leading scholars of military history related to Imperial Japan and the various groups of Nationalist and Communist Chinese. Each chapter focuses on aspects of the war answering both complex and basic questions while combining these views in parallel. One can learn the basic force structures and limitations of the Nationalist armies, organization and recruitment of the Japanese Army, and first person accounts and motivation of Japanese soldiers alongside more macro scale understandings of campaigns year to year from the undeclared war that began in 1937 to the massive Ichigo Offensive that practically destroyed the Nationalist army. Each chapter attempts to rectify the orientalized nature of the war in western language writings, and explicitly refute these views in the final section to leave the reader with further lenses to expand their own rethinking of the war.

The juxtaposition of chapters play nicely, giving the reader much to consider as one is able to experience the differing viewpoints of the belligerents. How were the Nationalist commanders operating and cooperating during the Wuhan Campaign? Likewise how did the Japanese strategically plan for the same campaign? One can gain a surface level understanding to such questions and many more while simultaneously being drawn to lesser known theaters of the war such as Burma (typically thought of as an Anglo-American victory) or the brutal airwar fought for the Nationalists’ capital at Chongqing. As noted in the introduction of the work, certain aspects such as war crimes, civilian struggles, the homefront, and colonial (or puppet) armies are missing from the pages. An already long read at some 600 pages, would no doubt become bloated or mired in controversial topics best discussed (and have been discussed) in their own monograph.

Yet, if one reads deeply into each chapter, one can glimpse the ongoing historiographical war that teeters on borderline propaganda, denials, or fiction. Occasional tongue and cheek comments remain, or a literary pat on the back for the faction each author represents. This does not detract from the work, but instead heightens its own self-awareness that all wars are fought twice, once on the field and once in memory. ^[1]Viet Thanh Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).