Historians have made widespread use of diaries to tell the story of World War II in Europe but have paid little attention to personal accounts from the Asia-Pacific Theater. This book examines over 200 diaries, and many more letters, postcards, and memoirs, written by Chinese, Japanese, and American servicemen in the Pacific from 1937 to 1945.

Introduction: World War, diary writing, and the self -- Talk about heroes: military diaries in the modern world -- Self-mobilization and the discipline of the battlefield: the battle for Shanghai and northern China -- Assembling the "new order": reconstitution of self through diary writing -- The unbearable likeness of being: the transnational phenomenon of self-discipline during the Pacific War -- The physics of writing war: recording the destruction of the Japanese Empire -- The consequences of self-discipline: postwar historical memory and veterans' narratives -- Conclusion: the peril of self-discipline.