Harvard U. Press has produced this new book by Aaron William Moore (East Asian history, U. of Manchester, UK) in a fine hardcover edition. Extensive use has been made of soldiers' letters and diaries from the European theatre of WWII and the author gives excerpts and analyses of war diaries from Japanese, Chinese Nationalist, and US servicemen serving in the Asia-Pacific theatre. He finds the cultural differences among soldiers are not greater than their similarities. The book brings war diaries that have never been seen outside the families into the materials available to historians and interested general readers, and considers the Chinese-Japanese war as an integrated part of the larger history of WWII. The book is the product of extensive original research; where the author has had to change names, this is indicated. The book is well written; the short excerpts are moving and illuminating, and the author's analysis works in service of increasing reader understanding of solders' experience. The book is divided into six chapters: military diaries in the modern world; the battle for Shanghai and Northern China; reconstitution of self through diary writing; the phenomenon of self-discipline among soldiers of all nations; recording the destruction of the Japanese Empire; and post-war historical memory and veterans' narratives. The author's primary thesis is that for soldiers in war, writing is mainly a means to stay focused personally rather than to record events as a journalist might. After the war, the same soldiers who had written so eloquently fell silent. Moore works to show they knew language was inadequate to evoke the experience of war, and so did not fear their accounts would traumatize others. Instead, he suggests, the same code of self-discipline that had driven them to write during the war drove them not to talk about it afterward. The book ends with a consideration of the perils of this self-discipline; as a historian, Moore offers a thoughtful look at the larger consequences of silence. The book has extensive endnotes and a very useful bibliography of war diaries. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)