John Toland (author)

Last updated April 12, 2019

John Willard Toland (June 29, 1912 – January 4, 2004)^[1] was an American writer and historian. He is best known for a biography of Adolf Hitler ^[2] and a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of World War II-era Japan, The Rising Sun .

Adolf Hitler was a German politician and leader of the Nazi Party. He rose to power as Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and later Führer in 1934. During his dictatorship from 1933 to 1945, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland in September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust.

Pulitzer Prize U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature, and musical composition

The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of American (Hungarian-born) Joseph Pulitzer who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher, and is administered by Columbia University in New York City. Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. In twenty of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a US$15,000 cash award. The winner in the public service category of the journalism competition is awarded a gold medal.

The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945, by John Toland, was published by Random House in 1970 and won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. It was republished by Random House in 2003.

Biography

Toland was born in 1912 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He graduated from Williams College and attended the Yale School of Drama for a time.^[1] His original goal was to become a playwright. In the summers between college years, he traveled with hobos and wrote several plays with hobos as central characters, none of which were performed. He recalled in 1961 that in his early years as a writer he had been "about as big a failure as a man can be".^[1] He claimed to have written six complete novels, 26 plays, and a hundred short stories before completing his first sale, a short story for which The American Magazine paid $165 in 1954.^[1] At one point he managed to get an article on dirigibles into LOOK magazine; it proved extremely popular and led to his career as a historian. Dirigibles were the subject of his first full-length published book, Ships in the Sky (1957).^[1]

La Crosse is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of La Crosse County. Positioned alongside the Mississippi River, La Crosse is the largest city on Wisconsin's western border. La Crosse's estimated population in 2017 was 51,834. The city forms the core of and is the principal city in the La Crosse Metropolitan Area which includes all of La Crosse County and Houston County, Minnesota for a population of 135,298.

Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War in 1755. The college was ranked first in 2017 in the U.S. News & World Report's liberal arts ranking for the 15th consecutive year, and first among liberal arts colleges in the 2018 Forbes magazine ranking of America's Top Colleges.

The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University located in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1924 as the Department of Drama in the School of Fine Arts, the school provides training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design, directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, technical design and production, and theatre management.

His most important work may be The Rising Sun (Random House, 1970), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1971.^[3] Based on original and extensive interviews with high-ranking Japanese officials who survived the war, the book chronicles the Empire of Japan from the military rebellion of February 1936 to the end of World War II. It won the Pulitzer because it was the first book in English to tell the history of the Pacific War from the Japanese point of view (rather than the American).

The Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1962 for a distinguished book of non-fiction by an American author, published during the preceding calendar year, that is not eligible for consideration in another category.

The Empire of Japan was the historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 to the enactment of the 1947 constitution of modern Japan.

The February 26 Incident, also known as the 2-26 Incident, was an attempted coup d'état in the Empire of Japan on 26 February 1936.

Conspiracy theories

Toland generally tried to write history works as a straightforward narrative, with minimal analysis or judgment.^{[ citation needed ]} One exception to his general approach is Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath, about the Pearl Harbor attack and its subsequent investigation, where he presented evidence that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew in advance of plans to attack the naval base but remained silent. The book was widely criticized at the time,^[4] and today the majority of historians reject the Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and became a central figure in world events during the first half of the 20th century. Roosevelt directed the federal government during most of the Great Depression, implementing his New Deal domestic agenda in response to the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, which realigned American politics into the Fifth Party System and defined American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. His third and fourth terms were dominated by World War II. Roosevelt is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in American history, as well as among the most influential figures of the 20th century. Though he has also been subject to much criticism, he is generally rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is the argument that U.S. Government officials had advance knowledge of Japan's December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Ever since the Japanese attack, there has been debate as to how and why the United States had been caught off guard, and how much and when American officials knew of Japanese plans for an attack. In September 1944, John T. Flynn, a co-founder of the non-interventionist America First Committee, launched a Pearl Harbor counter-narrative when he published a forty-six page booklet entitled The Truth about Pearl Harbor.

Novels

While predominantly a writer of nonfiction, Toland also wrote two historical novels, Gods of War and Occupation. He says in his 1997 autobiography that he earned little money from his prize-winner The Rising Sun but was set for life from the earnings of Adolf Hitler, for which he also did original research.

Toland died of pneumonia on January 4, 2004, at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Connecticut.^[1]

Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung affecting primarily the small air sacs known as alveoli. Typically symptoms include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and trouble breathing. Severity is variable.

Danbury Hospital is a 371-bed hospital in Danbury, Connecticut serving patients in Fairfield County, Connecticut, as well as Westchester County and Putnam County, New York.

Danbury is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located approximately 50 miles (80 km) northeast of New York City making it part of the New York metropolitan area. Danbury's population at the 2010 census was 80,893. Danbury is the fourth most populous city in Fairfield County, and seventh among Connecticut cities. The city is within the New York combined statistical area and Bridgeport metropolitan area.

Books

Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography, 1976, ISBN 0-385-42053-6.
Battle: The Story of the Bulge, 1959, ISBN 0-8032-9437-9.
But Not in Shame: The Six Months After Pearl Harbor, 1962, ISBN 0-345-25748-0
Captured by History: One Man's Vision of Our Tumultuous Century, 1997, ISBN 0-312-15490-9
The Dillinger Days, 1963, ISBN 0-306-80626-6.
Gods of War, 1985, ISBN 0-385-18007-1.
The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs & Disasters, 1972, ISBN 0-486-21397-8.
In Mortal Combat: Korea 1950-1953, 1991, ISBN 0-688-10079-1
Infamy: Pearl Harbor And Its Aftermath, 1982, ISBN 0-385-42051-X
The Last 100 Days: The Tumultuous and Controversial Story of the Final Days of World War II in Europe, 1966, reprint (2003) ISBN 0-8129-6859-X
No Man's Land: 1918, The Last Year of the Great War, 1980, ISBN 0-385-11291-2
Occupation, 1987, ISBN 0-385-19819-1
The Flying Tigers - Copyrighted 1963 First Printing From Laurel-Leaf Books 1979. Published by Dell Publishing ISBN 0-440-92621-1
The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 , 1970 HC ISBN 0-394-44311-X, reprint ISBN 0-8129-6858-1.
Ships in the Sky: The Story of the Great Dirigibles (New York: Henry Holt; London: F. Muller, 1957)

Articles

'Death of a Dirigible', February 1959, American Heritage, Volume X Number 2, pp 18–23

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References

1 2 3 4 5 6 Barnes, Bart (January 6, 2004). "Historian John Toland Dies; Won Pulitzer for 'Rising Sun'". The Washington Post. Page B05. ^{[ dead link ]}
↑ Associated Press (January 6, 2004). "Author Toland dies at age 91". La Crosse Tribune. Archived 2004-08-23. Retrieved 2013-10-25.
↑ "General Nonfiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-11-12.
↑ United Press International (December 4, 1983). "Sailor in Pearl Harbor Waraning (sic) is Identified". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-12-23.

External links

John Toland at Library of Congress Authorities, with 36 catalog records

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[barnes-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 Barnes, Bart (January 6, 2004). "Historian John Toland Dies; Won Pulitzer for 'Rising Sun'". The Washington Post. Page B05. ^{[ dead link ]}

[AP-2] Associated Press (January 6, 2004). "Author Toland dies at age 91". La Crosse Tribune. Archived 2004-08-23. Retrieved 2013-10-25.

[pulitzer-3] "General Nonfiction". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-11-12.

[UPI-4] United Press International (December 4, 1983). "Sailor in Pearl Harbor Waraning (sic) is Identified". The New York Times. Retrieved 2014-12-23.