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Rain of ruin : Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the surrender of Japan / Richard Overy

Author
Overy, R. J.
Published
New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company, [2025]
Copyright Date
©2025
Edition
First edition.
Physical Description
xiii, 206 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm

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Contents
Preface: "It will be all-out" -- Defeat of Japan -- American "area bombing" -- Why the atomic bombs? -- Surrender: the "sacred decision" -- Aftermath.
Summary
"With the development of the B-29 "Superfortress" in summer 1944, strategic bombing, a central component of the Allied war effort against Germany, arrived in the Pacific theater. In 1945 Japan experienced the three most deadly bombing attacks of the war. The firebombing of Tokyo in March burned the city's most densely populated sector, killed some 85,000 residents, and left more than one million homeless. The attack was part of a months-long campaign of incendiary bombing that destroyed almost two-thirds of Japan's cities. The two atomic blasts in August killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of them civilians. The bombing brought a destabilizing devastation that, combined with a declaration of war by the Soviet Union, induced Japan, as they put it, to terminate the war. Many at the time and since have credited American air power, and especially the two atomic bombs, with Japan's surrender. But Richard Overy tells a different, more dimensional story. Drawing on his expertise on the war and its bombing campaigns, he delivers a precise recounting of these aerial attacks, and a balanced, informed assessment of how and why they occurred. Overy is astute on the Allied decision-making, and, notably, integrates the Japanese leadership as well. He ably navigates the dramatic endgame of the war, which featured factional infighting within the Japanese cabinet, a scramble by American officials to formulate an acceptable version of "unconditional surrender," and the crucial role played by the emperor, Hirohito. The atomic bombing emerges as impactful but not decisive in this rich, multilayered history"--
Subject(s)
ISBN
9781324105305 hc.
1324105305 hc.
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-192) and index.
Endowment Note
Barbara S. Klein Libraries Collection Endowment in Art History and International Affairs
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