The Japanese army of World War II campaigned over territory as extensive and diverse as any other army in history, ranging from the tropical jungles and mountains of south-east Asia to the flat coral atolls of the Pacific and the freezing sub-Arctic Aleutian Islands.
The greatest military achievements of the Sung came right at the beginning of the period, when they established their dynasty and reunified the empire in a series of campaigns which knocked out their Chinese rivals one by one.
In 960 Chao K'uang-yin, an officer of the palace guard in the relatively minor state of Chao, staged a coup and proclaimed his own regime - the Sung. He then embarked on an extraordinary series of conquests, with the aim of subduing the various kingdoms among whom China had been divided since the collapse of the T'ang in 907.
One of the subjects which I have been interested in for a very long time, but have never actually got around to gaming until now, has been the island-hopping campaign in the Pacific in World War Two. Even though WWII has always been one of the most popular periods among wargamers, the Far East is still a relatively neglected theatre of that conflict.
