The attack on Pearl Harbor was the beginning of the war in the Pacific - a war fought in places that looked like paradise and turned out to be hell. Sixty years later, 'Hell In The Pacific' breaks down the traditional view of this conflict as a war between merciless Japanese and heroic Allies. On remote islands and in dense jungles both sides threw away the rule book in a descent into pitiless horror.
This is the story of those who were there: the Japanese pilot who bombed Pearl Harbor; Allied captives who killed their Japanese prisoners, an Australian combat nurse who survived a mass execution; the pilot who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Nearly a hundred eye-witnesses reveal the extraordinary part they played in a conflict unparalleled in ferocity.
This was not just a war between the Japanese and the American military. It was Britain's "forgotten" war and a war in which many other countries - Australia, New Zealand, China, Korea, Thailand, the Phillipines, Burma and Singapore - played a part. It was also a war against civilians, leading to the world's only use of nuclear weapons.
