Good way to learn about the Pacific War?

by chrischi3

So, me being a bit of a history nerd, WW2 is quite the interesting topic for me. However, i dont really know that much about the Pacific War. I know the rough course of it, but thats about all. So, my question is, can anyone recommend me some good way to learn about it?

Sadly, the World War Two series on YouTube, busy covering the war week by week, has yet to reach anywhere near that point in time, and as we all know, History Channel is often dodgy (Like that one time they reported about Surigao Strait by proclaiming that the americans had "only" 6 battleships, which is like saying you are "just" fighting 3 world powers at once).

jschooltiger

Ian Toll has two fairly readable and reliable popular histories of WWII in the Pacific: Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 and The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944.

Those would probably be good places to start for you -- if you want more specific stuff, here are a few suggestions from my user profile:

Parshall and Tully, Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway: The first history of Midway that draws heavily upon Japanese primary sources and dives into Japanese doctrine and tactics. Does an especially good job of telling the story from the Japanese perspective while rebutting or refuting many of the tropes about the battle and the "failings" that armchair admirals like to point out.

David C. Evans and Mark Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941: Although this is technically a pre-war book, since it covers the navy only up to Pearl Harbor, it's great reading to understand the Japanese strategic situation and how it influenced the building of their navy.

Mark Peattie, Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909-1941: This was split off from Kaigun when Evans and Peattie realized they couldn't give it its proper treatment without making the previous book unreadably long; Peattie finished the work after Evans passed away. Like Kaigun, Sunburst is focused on the prewar Navy but is equally foundational.