We read this book for my 20th century American International relations class. No one in my class seemed to really like and had a tough time understanding it. One of my classmates actually read his Embracing Defeat book and said it was a lot better. We didn't get to talk too much about it since there were three other books we had to read. I found a lecture John Dower gave on Cultures of War in 2004 at UC Santa Barbera on Youtube and I liked the lecture alot. I decided to read Cultures of War again and enjoyed the book a lot more a second time around.
What I liked about the book is it focuses on Japan and U.S. since they both have strong military cultures. I think Dower is trying to understand why Japan and U.S. start wars and continue to fight in them when it appears they can't win. Cultures of War compares and contrasts the attack on Pearl Harbor, the atomic weapons used against Japan, the 9/11/01 terrorists attacks, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dower looks at this events and looks at how it leads to war. I like how Dower says these countries governments use propaganda to portray the victims of these attacks as innocent and people tend to forget why they were attacked in the first place. For example, the US began to cut it's oil supply off to Japan during WWII and Japan was forced to invade Pacific islands for more resources.
I found reading Cultures of War to be similar in some ways to reading Lies My Teacher Told Me in that it sheds some light on events during WWII. I didn't know more Japanese died during the U.S. fire bombing over Japan then the atomic bomb drops over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also there was a lot more discussion about using the atomic weapons over Japan and a lot more reasons went behind using them then just saving Allied soldiers.
The only thing I didn't like about this book is Dower talks about how the Allies began bombing civilian targets as the war progressed. The Allies were originally very against bombing civilian targets. He used a quote from Ed McNamara "If we lost the war, we would've been tried as war criminals." I don't if he really means that because I don't think the Axis powers would've had a trial for the Allies since the Axis powers had Fascist governments. If Dower meant the Allies did some things during WWII they would consider themselves to be "war criminal" then I would agree with him after reading his book.
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What I liked about the book is it focuses on Japan and U.S. since they both have strong military cultures. I think Dower is trying to understand why Japan and U.S. start wars and continue to fight in them when it appears they can't win. Cultures of War compares and contrasts the attack on Pearl Harbor, the atomic weapons used against Japan, the 9/11/01 terrorists attacks, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Dower looks at this events and looks at how it leads to war. I like how Dower says these countries governments use propaganda to portray the victims of these attacks as innocent and people tend to forget why they were attacked in the first place. For example, the US began to cut it's oil supply off to Japan during WWII and Japan was forced to invade Pacific islands for more resources.
I found reading Cultures of War to be similar in some ways to reading Lies My Teacher Told Me in that it sheds some light on events during WWII. I didn't know more Japanese died during the U.S. fire bombing over Japan then the atomic bomb drops over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Also there was a lot more discussion about using the atomic weapons over Japan and a lot more reasons went behind using them then just saving Allied soldiers.
The only thing I didn't like about this book is Dower talks about how the Allies began bombing civilian targets as the war progressed. The Allies were originally very against bombing civilian targets. He used a quote from Ed McNamara "If we lost the war, we would've been tried as war criminals." I don't if he really means that because I don't think the Axis powers would've had a trial for the Allies since the Axis powers had Fascist governments. If Dower meant the Allies did some things during WWII they would consider themselves to be "war criminal" then I would agree with him after reading his book.
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