Book excerpt: In December, 1941, Japanese naval bombers destroyed the United States Pacific battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, unleashed a rampage of conquest in the Pacific Ocean and Rim, and invaded the Dutch East Indies and New Guinea. The battered United States Pacific Fleet was then confronted by the formidable Japanese naval superiority, in quality and quantity, of warships, planes, pilots and torpedoes, but staggered up from its flaming decks to first check, and then dominate a samurai-warrior obsessed foe which killled between 28-63 million Asians. Author Don Meyers analyzes the main causes of the remarkable comeback victory at the amazingly low cost of less than 0.2% of all military fatalities in WWII. Not least among them was the skill and courage of fewer than 100 pilots and sub-skippers who sank all 22 Japanese aircraft carriers and nearly 3 million tons of their Merchant Marine, leading to their unconditional surrender. There has never been a war like World War II in the Pacific.