Tyler Alfrey Kevin Simon HIUS 222 2/19/2017 Book Review: Escape From Bataan Memoir of a U.S. Navy Ensign in the Philippines, October 1941 to May 1942 Ross E. Hoffman, argues in his book: Escape From Bataan Memoir of a U.S. Navy Ensign in the Philippines, October 1941 to May 1942, that the Second World War was a ''war of logistics'' and the reason for this title was the fact that the navy of all nations played a crucial role in the Second World war, in the European or Pacific theatre. David L. Snead, argues that the defense of the Philippines was the worst defensive defeat in our history as a superpower, this statement can be proven true, by simply mentioning the number of casualties sustained in a defensive battle, something that was new to the United States until this point in our …show more content…
Ever since the American Civil War, we had always been on the attack when engaged in a foreign war, we had rarely seen or been involved in a defensive War. The number of losses we sustained during the attack on pearl harbor and the attention given to Germany first, the Pacific theatre was termed a secondary objective. The next statement that he makes is that the reason for the defeat lay in bad decisions and judgement of the American leaders, this is far from the truth in my opinion, the decisions that had to be made were very tough to make given the situation developing, after the Pearl Harbor attacks, nine hours after, the Japanese struck the Philippines and really put our military and navy in a tough spot we had lost a large portion of our navy and men in the pacific theatre, we did not have enough men and ships to reinforce the Philippines at the time, on top of this the Japanese had a better trained and experienced army, these men had had been fighting the Chinese for many years and were excellently trained and had the full support of the Navy and Airforce of the Empire of Japan, the men we had stationed in the Philippine Islands were