Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

I've read many, many books about the war in the Pacific. I've always been more interested in the Pacific theater than the European theater, probably tracing back to my 8th grade history teacher (in 1964), a Marine vet who'd made two landings. I thought that between all the books about individual island campaigns, books about the overall Pacific war, books about the Enola Gay and Bockscar missions, books about strategic bombing in general, etc., etc., I knew quite a bit. I was wrong. There is so much in Frank's meticulously researched book that I knew little or nothing about, that I wouldn't even know where to start. An exceptionally important text about one of the most significant events in human history (whatever your views may be).

I found this book often brilliant in terms of research yet at times somewhat frustrating in terms of polemic. I say that despite sharing Frank's conclusion (and premise of the book) that dropping the atomic bombs was inevitable, necessary, and demonstrably saved millions of lives.

In particular, I found the book at times lapsing into polemic or argument, framing almost every fact unearthed by Frank's extensive research to fit his argument rather than letting the reader come to her own conclusions. This is most evident when Frank recounts the Japanese negotiating tactics near the end of the war, both with the Allies generally and with the Soviets specifically. It seems at times as if Frank has never negotiated something himself, as he takes every public boast by the Japanese at face value, and discounts every veiled or implied effort by elements within the military leadership as well as the Emperor to negotiate an end to the war.

At the same time, he is willing to find deep complexity and subtlety in the way the Allies dictated terms, particularly at Potsdam, so that the Japanese could hold out hope of an "unconditional surrender" that was more lenient than that extended to the Germans. I would have liked to see Frank read more into the mixed and vague signals being sent by the Japanese than he seems willing to do.

That said, there is no question an invasion of mainland Japan would have been an horrific event to the Allies, and to the Japanese, in that many more Japanese would have died in that invasion than in the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Whether that could have been avoided based on this historical record is not as clear as Frank argues, though the weight of the evidence certainly suggests there was no alternative but to proceed with the deployment of atomic weapons.

I'm skimming a library copy and have seen a couple of passages that have caused me to cock an eyebrow; one, Frank describes the preparations of the plutonium bomb on Tinian as "frantic" (end of chapter 16), and in the brief description of Unit 731 the author repeatedly relates the term for them as "murata" not "maruta". These are exceedingly minor but do suggest to me a certain lack of editorial backstopping for the author.

Still, this is an amazingly well-researched and presented work -- I'm well-read on the subject and still find interesting points and referents on nearly every page -- and I heartily recommend it to all, especially to those whose minds have been poisoned by Alperovitz's work.

The historical information in this book came as quite a surprise to me, even though I consider myself fairly knowledgeable on the subject. The work put into this book is quite extensive and it is well worth reading. I highly recommend it.

For over forty years, I've been reading about the end of World War II and Japan. Were the Japanese ready to surrender? Were the atomic bombs dropped to intimidate the Soviet Union? Was racism the real motive?

Richard Frank's DOWNFALL: THE END OF THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE EMPIRE, is the best book on this subject I've ever read. Frank takes us back to 1945, and shows what the United States knew then, and how they knew it. Based on the information they had available at the time, the U.S. and British leaders had no reason to believe that the effective leaders of Japan were going to surrender any time soon, or that any alternative course they chose would lead to fewer deaths. Further, he shows that these judgments were correct: there is still no evidence that the effective rulers of Japan would have surrendered in 1945, and all the alternatives to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have definitely led to hundreds of thousands MORE DEATHS of civilians and soldiers.

I regard the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as atrocities and crimes, but the whole of the war was a succession of atrocities and crimes, the greatest bloodbath in history. Frank shows, convincingly, that the use of atomic weapons was the least evil among the choices Harry S Truman faced.