The Final Storm opens a new front in Jeff Shaara's gripping chronicle
of World War II as soldiers, sailors, and marines sacrifice all for one
final push toward decisive victory in the fierce maelstrom of the Pacific
theater.
As the war in Europe winds down in the wake of the Normandy invasion,
the United States has turned its vast military resources toward an all-
out effort against the Japanese. In the spring of 1945, Japan's empire
has been pressed slowly back toward its home islands, and the Americans
mount a furious assault on the last great stepping-stone to Japan itself -
the heavily fortified island of Okinawa. The three-month battle will
feature some of the most vicious combat of the entire war, as American
troops confront an enemy that would rather be slaughtered than experience
the shame of surrender.
With a narrative dexterity befitting his status as a master storyteller,
Shaara relates the story of the struggle for Okinawa through the eyes of
combatants on both sides: Private Clay Adams, a young marine whose brother
Jesse has already earned his share of glory as a paratrooper with the 82nd
Airborne in Europe; Admiral Chester Nimitz, who must unite rival army and
marine commanders into a cooperative effort; General Simon Bolivar
Buckner, Jr., the American ground commander trying to live up to the
legacy of his father, who led Confederate troops during the Civil War;
and General Mitsura Ushijima, the Japanese general in charge of defending
the island, who understands what Tokyo will not believe: that his own
fight to the death will only delay the inevitable - as the Americans
continue their advance toward the home islands and ultimate victory.
With the fights raging across the Pacific, a different kind of campaign
is being waged in extraordinary secrecy: the development of a weapon so
powerful, not even the scientists who build it know just what they are
about to unleash. Colonel Paul Tibbets, one of the finest bomber pilots
in the U.S. Army Air Corps, is selected to lead the mission to drop the
horrific new weapon on a Japanese city. As the new president, Harry S
Truman, mulls his options, and a Japanese physician named Okiro Hamishita
cares for patients at a clinic near the city of Hiroshima, citizens on
the home front await the day of reckoning that everyone knows is coming.
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